Re: Judgement in the SouthWest case.

Having just read through the judgment in the Southwest Airlines case, 
the grounds of the decision seem most bizarre. The judgment in Carparts 
(the case that said the ADA applied to mail order and telephone based 
operations) was based on sound reasoning and was clearly analogous to 
the Net. However, this has now been distinguished on most spurious 
reasoning - that Southwest's Website does not give access to a physical 
building and is located in cyberspace.

Effectively, if I have read page 11 correctly this District Court has 
now said that the internet is completely above the law:
"..the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit have both recognised that 
the Internet is 'a unique medium-known to its users as 'cyberspace'--
located in no particular geographical location but available to anyone, 
anywhere in the world, with access to the Internet'.Thus because the 
Internet Website, southwest.com, does not exist in any particular 
geographical location, Plaintiffs are unable to demonstrate that 
Southwest's website impedes their access to a specific, physical, 
concrete space such as a particular airline ticket counter or travel 
agency".

I'm sure Napster's lawyers are wishing that their case had been brought 
before Patricia A Seitz..

Just my thoughts

martin
--
Martin Sloan
e: martin.sloan@orange.net


----- Original Message -----
from: tina@elfi.org
date: Monday, October 21, 2002 8:45 pm
subject: Judgement in the SouthWest case.

> 
> 
> It would seem that the Judge has passed ... a judgement in the
> SouthWest airlines cases. The story can be found at:
> 
>    http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962761.html
> 
> It is ... disappointing, but perhaps not entirely surprising. It 
> seems, to me, after a first reading - note the last paragraph - 
> that there is
> a distinct lack of understanding prevalent.
> 
> At this moment in time I admit, though it is emotional, that I am not
> entirely certain what - if anything - CAN be done to improve
> accessibility.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Tina Holmboe           [Windrose@DALnet] [tina@elfi.org] 
> [tina@htmlhelp.com]
> $_ = <<'-- '; s/../pack("c",hex($&))/eg; eval;
> 7072696e7420224a75737420616e6f74686572205065726c206861636b65722c22
> -- 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 22 October 2002 09:10:11 UTC