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Washington State Citizens Going After Spammers

Posted by timothy on from the justice-not-mercy dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review covers how lawyers and a writer in Washington State are going after spammers since the anti-spam law was declared constitutional in June by the state supreme court." It's a well-researched article -- I hope it spurs more people to file claims against spammers.

2 of 5 comments (clear)

  1. Any chance of making it international? by Vuarnet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since I live in Mexico, I'm pretty sure I don't really need all those emails about "clearing up my debts" or "how to lose 20 pounds in two weeks". "Herbal Viagra" indeed! (luckily I don't need _that_ either)

    I'm pretty tired of receiving between 10 to 15 daily spam emails, and that's not counting the filters I'm using in Hotmail which send ALL email coming from excite.com and msn.com directly to the trashcan.

    Heck, I'm really amazed the pr0n spam has actually decreased these past few months (maybe they heard I was receiving the herbal Viagra ads and therefore wasn't a prospective customer).

    So if you guys can send a russian programmer to jail, can't you just trade him for a hundred spammers or so? (Put them all in the same cell, too, while you're at it). The rest of the world will really thank you!

    --
    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
    Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
  2. YES! by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I believe Earthlink had sued ounder the California anti-spam law. I also recall that AOL sued some spammers.


    The problem is that for an individual to sue you have to show damages. An anti-spam law provides a floor for those damages. Otherwise you have to be able to prove that you were harmed by a certain amount of money. Being annoyed is not not easy to reduce to a dollar value. In the case of an ISP, they can show the costs in cleaning up from the spam.

    --
    Fight Spammers!