[1] Christopher Specht and several co-plaintiffs were users of the Netscape web browser and related software that they had downloaded from the Internet.

The plaintiffs argued that they had not been given an opportunity to review and possibly refuse all the End User License Agreements (EULAs) that came with the software.

[1] The plaintiffs brought suit at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Netscape Communications Corporation, claiming that the terms of the EULAs enabled violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, while the inability to review the EULAs before downloading the software was a violation of contract law.

Since the plaintiffs were not given sufficient opportunity to review the arbitration clause in the SmartDownload EULA, Netscape could not compel that technique for resolving the present dispute.

"[6] The court also rejected Netscape's claim against Christopher Specht in particular, holding that any benefits that he received from the SmartDownloard functionality were indirect and not sufficient for compelling arbitration.

The parties settled that dispute out of court, with Netscape agreeing to stop collecting data on the plaintiffs but with no admission of violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.