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[IP] more on California Supreme court prohibits recording Californians without their consent - regardless of where you are.





Begin forwarded message:

From: "James S. Tyre" <jstyre@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 14, 2006 1:03:59 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on California Supreme court prohibits recording Californians without their consent - regardless of where you are.

Respectfully, I disagree with Lauren's first sentence.

In 1984, in Calder v. Jones, the U. S. Supreme Court set forth the so- called "effects" test of personal jurisdiction, to deal with the situation when someone in another state who has no other significant contacts with the forum state directs and causes a harmful effect in the forum state. Without going into all the details of the case, the Court said that jurisdiction in the forum state (here, California) was appropriate.

_Calder_ was a libel case, but since then, courts have expanded the doctrine to other personal wrongs. The wrong here is one that, by definition, occurs in California - the law does not apply to a Californian who is in say, Minnesota, at the time.

Time and subsequent court decisions will tell, but it's not hard to imagine that California courts will use the _Calder_ effects test to find that jurisdiction in California is appropriate over an out of state caller that does not have a physical presence in California.

-Jim

At 09:55 AM 7/14/2006 -0400, David Farber wrote:
might work against corp who do business in Cal

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 14, 2006 9:52:23 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: lauren@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] California Supreme court prohibits recording
Californians without their consent - regardless of where you are.


Dave,

My "I'm not a lawyer" analysis of this ruling suggests that its
enforceability may be problematic against entities who do not have a
physical nexus here in California.  It's this state by state
variation in 1-party vs. multiple-party laws on recording that has
made the interstate situation so complicated, and it's not clear
that anything short of changes at the federal level will be able to
harmonize these laws.  Obviously, I'd prefer to see all states
forced to abide by the multiple-party (all-party) standard, since
the current situation is utterly loophole-ridden.


--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@xxxxxxxxxx or lauren@xxxxxxxx
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
   - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com

 - - -



Begin forwarded message:

From: Ethan Ackerman <eackerma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 13, 2006 3:35:59 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: California Supreme court prohibits recording Californians
without their consent - regardless of where you are.

Greetings Dave,
Many people, especially reporters, are familiar with state laws
prohibiting phone conversations from being recorded without the
consent of one or both parties to the call.  Some states, and federal
law, require only 1 party to consent, other states require both or all parties to consent. California is one such 'all-party' consent state.
(Think Linda Tripp recording Monica Lewinsky talking about her boss,
or the floridian couple recording Newt Gingrich coordinating his
ethics probe with John Boehner, as past examples of this distinction.)

Well today, the California Supreme Court found that Georgia-based
employees of the Solomon Smith Barney brokerage who were taping
California customers with out notice or consent violated California
laws, even if they might have been complying with Georgia's '1 party'
consernt laws.

While the court refused to fine the brokers, finding their reliance on Georgia law reasonable, it did enjoin them from taping Californians in
the future.
Case is here:
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S124739.PDF

This decision will likely have a large impact on investigative
reporting, and has definite impacts on other areas of privacy and
consumer protection law as well.


-Ethan


--------------------------------------------------------------------
James S. Tyre                                      jstyre@xxxxxxxxxx
Law Offices of James S. Tyre          310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)
10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512               Culver City, CA 90230-4969
Co-founder, The Censorware Project             http://censorware.net
Policy Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation     http://www.eff.org



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