While it gives people a one-week deadline to comply, Gray said that no judge would require someone to act before they've been properly served. And service via e-mail is not one of them. That means the clock shouldn't start ticking on the deadline for producing the information until the parties receive a physical paper request. However, that isn't much of a reassurance for people like Declan McCullagh, who received one of the e-mails on Saturday. McCullagh, a Wired reporter and Internet policy commentator who runs the Politechbot mailing list, said he only linked to the controversial programs, but he never hosted them on his site.
Several attorneys are highly critical of the e-service method.
There is a reason why the law has certain formalities attached to it. Samuelson said that there's no way to verify receipt of the documents, and until that happens, they're not binding. But others said e-service is merely a sign of the digital age. ZDNN's Robert Lemos contributed to this report. Diskeeper Get Max System Performance.