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Notorious spammer in court next week
The Federal Government is about to demonstrate how extremely unwise it is to flagrantly ignore the Spam Act 2003 (Cth).
Notorious spammer, Wayne Mansfield, is in Court next week for his trial for violations of the Act. In a strange move - considering this is a new law and it will require extensive legal training to formulate effective arguments as to the meaning of the law - he dumped his lawyers in August last year, and is representing himself.
The hearing will take place from Tuesday 28th February to Friday, 3rd March in the Western Australia District registry of Federal Court at 1 Victoria Avenue, Perth.
Mansfield's planned defence is already a matter of public record. He apparently has no intention to deny any of the principle facts of the case, but rather is resting his defence on the claim that he can infer consent from somebody who he spammed prior to the Act coming into force.
I gave a brief explanation (near the bottom of the page) of why this defence is entirely unviable when I was still chair of CAUBE.AU. There are in fact many more reasons why the defence is unviable, but I do not wish to give Mansfield any useful hints as to what they are by listing them all publicly.
The real problem for Mansfield though is that he has no apparent conception of what he has to prove to make this defence out. He has applied to cross-examine a lot of the spammees testifying in the case, apparently intending to ask them why they did not opt out. The problem is that he spammees' reasons for not opting out are entirely irrelevant to the question of whether the spammer's conduct in inferring consent from failure to opt out is reasonable, the key question in Mansfield's defence.
Unless Justice Nicholson (who is hearing the case) is feeling particularly generous on the day, Mansfield faces a real risk that his questions on cross-examination will be thrown out as being irrelevant (under long standing principles of common law now encoded in the Evidence Act 1995 (Cth) s56), which could leave the defence in tatters before the hearings even get to the stage of submissions on the law.
If you happen to be in Perth, you may want to attend to see what is likely to be a spectacular humiliation of Australia's most notorious spammer.