America Online, Inc. v. National Health Care Discount, Inc.
United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa
121 F. Supp. 2d 1255 (2000)
Relevant factsFree
Spammers sent unauthorized bulk email through AOL's (plaintiff) servers advertising National Health Care Discount's (defendant) plans, despite AOL's policy barring bulk-email use of its system; AOL sued NHCD under the CFAA, and the question arose whether routing email through AOL's intermediary servers counted as "accessing" AOL's protected computers.
IssueFree
Whether, for purposes of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a person who sends an email message is accessing every computer the email message travels through to reach its destination.