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>You'd piss away miore time than your bill is worth even trying to get them to acknowledge you.

I agree it would take time. That's the idea, they don't want to deal with piss-ant cases.

The process seems more than clear enough to me, and if they don't acknowledge you, then you have even more case to sue (you can sue the city court for refusing to apply the law). The process should be:

- Write the courthouse in Yahoo!'s state.
- Tell them you want to sue over a cross state unpaid bill.
- They write you, telling you the filing fee is $80.
- You send them the filing fee, they send you a mound of papers to fill out.
- You happily spend an hour or two reading and filling out forms.
- You return the forms to the court.
- You wait 6-12 months for a court date letter to appear. If you are lucky it is in your state. If not, it isn't. It can go either way.

There you go. But don't take my word for it, take the words of someone better informed about suing people out of state.

However, according to this lawyer, you may need to elevate it past small claims level to get anywhere if it is out of state. Again, just keep tallying up the bills until they reach the point where it becomes worth your while to sue in civil court ($1000 maybe?). I do not believe the federal court will be prohibitively priced assuming you represent yourself (it's such a cut and dried case, why shouldn't you?). And now if Yahoo! doesn't get their ass down to court, the judge will be _seriously_ pissed off.

You can find out much more information about suing in small claims court here.

I hope this helps.

Who says anti spam laws are unenforcible on the Internet?
Try either
State V Heckel # 69416-8 or


State v Heckel : Findlaw .
Same case, different archives.

Washington law applies to out of state
residents. There have been a couple of out of state cases.

Collecting on the judgement is a different question.

If you are in states with so-called "anti-spam" laws, you can start taking legal action against spammers. Check out:

• SpamLaws.com
• SueSpammers.org
• WA-State-Resident.com/
• Washington AG's spam page
• Spam Free Washington
• My small claims page :)

Sorry for the Washington-heavy links; it's my home state.

If you're too stupid to frickin' mouse over the link and check for goat links before clicking, maybe you should get off the 'Net? I'm certainly not going to give up on the hyperlink just because a few knobs have a silly photo up, and a few other knobs can't figure out how to avoid seeing that photo.

Damn the torpedoes: http://www.wa-state-resident.com/tugpayup.htm

there's quite a bit of info about this stuff at wa-state-resident.com

Normally don't follow myself, but "this just in" . It seems the spammer did try go to the Supreme Court of the United States to ensure his "god given right" to annoy us.

He appealed the Washington State Supreme Court's decision and on Monday (29-oct-2001) the US' highest court said "we don't want to hear this", which means they agree with the state court's decision and find it constitutional. There's a blurb about it in the LA Times.

The spammer's lawyers must be running the show as Heckel can barely afford a dial-up connection. Back to district court the case goes and since the spammer violated the law, a decision should come down against him. The lawyer says if this is the case he'll start a whole new set of appeals. He probably loves all the press. [Dale Crandall Bar#: 781708; 280 Court St NE #14; Salem OR 97301; Phone No: 503-363-4971]

Upon further reading, my first post was in error, there were two sets of idiots involved in the Washington state court system, the appellate court and the trial court judge - King County Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson (palmer.robinson@metrokc.gov). Judge Palmer somehow found, in her mind, that the state anti-spam law was unconstitutional and the spammer was right. This was supported by the state appellate court, but was smacked down when it reached people who actually know constitutional law.

The actual Washington Court decision is here, though it doesn't say a lot. The theory is the the Commerce Clause of the Constitution grants primary authority to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government, not the states. If a state law unduly burdens interstate commerce, then, no matter how noble the intent may be, it is unconstitutional. This is what is known as a so-called dormant commerce clause issue, the "typical" commerce clause issue being one where there is a challenge to whether a Congressional enactment is justified under Congress' (quite broad, but not unlimited) commerce power.

I don't like spam, but as a practicing lawyer, I think the Washington case was decided correctly, and that the U.S. Supremes would agree if ever called upon to visit the issue.

Of course, federal legislation would not address the First Amendment issue, but that issue won't arise until either there is federal legislation or the Colorado courts disagree with the Washingtom court on the dormant commerce clause issue.

Here in Washington state, we have had a law against unsolicited commercial e-mail since 1998. Washington's law does not flatly prohibit the sending of unsolicited e-mail, but it does make it illegal in Washington to send an unsolicited commercial e-mail using: (a) False information identifying the point of origin of the message or that hides the true origin of the sender (False Header). (b) False or misleading information in the subject line (False Subject Line). (c) A third party's e-mail address (domain name) without permission.

There is an in-state registry, where you can identify your e-mail address as being in WA state (not really effective, but it at least handles an initial hurdle on filing claims later).

A local ISP has provided a sort of "how-to" on chasing down the spammers and making money. One of the more interresting link is a step-by-step guide to getting the spammers to pay.

These laws can be effective; the catch is that it's time consuming to follow thru on them. In Colorado, at only $10 per message, it won't be worthwhile for most individuals to invest their time. Although the ISP's stand to make quite a bit if they can satisfy the courts that the spammer has reasonable knowledge or means to learn that the destination addresses were in that state.

Still, these laws don't do too much against non-US spammers. Many of them couldn't care less about a state's law since they're relatively safe from any prosecution.

Who has any statistics or relevant experience with the Washington State laws that were passed to protect citizens from unwanted emails? I moved away from Washington State just before they enacted such legislation, and I've heard only a couple anecdotes of the aftermath.

A San Jose ISP (a2i)'s approach to "aiding" spammers figure out if recipient is a Washington citizen or not. Upshot: make it possible, make it consensual to the account holder, make it entirely too cumbersome for the spammer.

The same ISP gave a link to one service/sig on the issue: www.wa-state-resident.com

Problem is, most ISPs won't sue. ISPs are in the business of providing IP connectivity, not suing spammers. Small ISPs don't generally have the money to bring about such suits in the first place, and large ISPs don't have the time to launch a dozen suits against every day's load of new dialup spammers.

What I want is something like the WA state law, which allows for a "private right of action" against the spammer. This allows the recipient of the spam, not the ISP, to sue. If the spammer doesn't show up in court to defend itself, a default judgement is entered against it, and the judgement can be sold off to a debt collection agency.

(Yes, if you live in Washington, that next spam could be worth up to $500! MAKE MONEY FAST!)

What's interesting about the WA state law is that most of the cases where people have collected $500 for being spammed haven't gone to court. Often, a demand letter in an amount less than $500 is all that's required, and the spammer, knowing it hasn't a hope in hell of winning in court, and wishing to avoid an encounter with the legal system, merely forks over the cash.

OK, that's the theory. Now the practice. Here's a guy in Washington, who sues spammers for fun. He's collected $3,900 to date.

If you live in Washington - go thou and do likewise.