Univ. of Texas Allowed to Block Spam

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it would not overturn a lower court ruling that allowed the University of Texas to block thousands of e-mails from an online dating service. According to court documents, the college blocked over 59,000 e-mails in 2003.

White Buffalo Ventures, which owns LonghornSingles.com, claimed UT's actions violated its constitutional rights to free speech under the First Amendment. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the CAN-SPAM act does not pre-empt the university's anti-spam policies.

According to Longhorn Singles, the company was following all anti-spam laws in its mailings, thus UT could not block the e-mails under federal law.

The service had also obtained the e-mails of university students legally, but UT claimed that the Longhorn Singles' e-mails were part of a larger spam problem that was causing the school's servers to crash.

The school then issued a cease and desist order to White Buffalo Ventures, which the company ignored. In turn, the university said it was forced to block the IP addresses of the company's e-mails. UT also said it had received several complaints from students and faculty over the volume of messages the company was sending.