He ruled that federal prosecutors misapplied a rarely used Utah commercial bribery statute when charging the men.
There the company is accused of violating a commercial bribery statute under which it could be forced to disgorge all the fees it charged and pay punitive damages.
The editorial contended that "Utah's commercial bribery statute is a misdemeanor, and to use it as a base for 11 federal felony counts is the kind of stretch that the tyrants of England once achieved with the rack".
That year, the company began disclosing the $9 fee in fine print, after a Texas court ruled that the banks' payments to Block, if hidden, could violate the state's commercial bribery statutes.
Congress responded quickly by passing the Child Online Protection Act the next year, responding to a number of the court's concerns by defining pornography more precisely and limiting the reach of the statute to commercial Web sites.
Advanced knowledge of regulations, commercial contracts, and relevant statutes is essential in this specialty.
Banks on the other side, along with their customers, would need to comply only with the broader commercial, bankruptcy, and anti-fraud statutes under which every business operates.
"Second, the statute only applies to commercial messages, ones that Congress found drove the market for animal cruelty.
Pursuant to this statute, courts have condemned commercial stratagems that constitute unreasonable restraints on competition, among them "tying arrangements" and "exclusive dealing" contracts.
With the Court issuing a disappointing albeit carefully crafted decision, it seems that Congress can step in and write a more narrowly tailored federal statute to prohibit the commercial sale of videos depicting extreme and illegal acts of cruelty.
