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Spammers Stoop To New Low
mathowie writes "I received an unsolicited spam this week from MonsterHut, extolling the virtues of their "products" which are "email marketing" (they're a spam cannon). After reporting it at Spamcop, I received an interesting email from their bandwidth host. It seems that before they could cancel MonsterHut's account for violating their terms of service, MonsterHut began suing them. The worst part? A judge granted MonsterHut a temporary restraining order, forcing Paetec to keep their site online while they continue spamming, before Paetec even knew about the suit. Paetec is collecting affadavits from people that received the spam, so if you did, fill one out. It may be their only chance against the court. How far will spammers go to get their word out? When's it going to stop?"
Hmmm... The identical thing involving the same two entities happened last April... I wonder if Paetec is really pursuing this or whether they're in on it and sending this "woe is me" out as a ruse.
The reply to the complaint (April 5, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To: "'21047903@reports.spamcop.net'"
Subject: RE: [SpamCop (http://www.monsterhut.com) id:21047903] Compare and
Save at CompareWebHosts.com
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 17:35:20 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
PaeTec Communications, Inc. received the attached complaint from you
regarding your contention that you received spam, i.e., that you received an
unsolicited, commercial, bulk e-mail. PaeTec is an integrated
telecommunications provider which offers access to the Internet to
businesses. PaeTec strongly opposes spamming. The e-mail about which you
complained originated from a customer of PaeTec's by the name of MonsterHut.
PaeTec's agreement with MonsterHut expressly prohibits the
sending of spam. In reliance on the complaints it received from you and
others stating that the e-mail you received from MonsterHut was spam, PaeTec
informed MonsterHut that it was terminating its contract.
MonsterHut responded by commencing litigation against
PaeTec. Prior to PaeTec being advised of the existence of the litigation,
MonsterHut obtained a temporary restraining order from the Court, which
prevents PaeTec from terminating MonsterHut's contract pending a hearing at
which both sides can present evidence. The only proof before the Court at
the time it issued the injunction was MonsterHut's claim that it had
received permission from the recipients, such as yourself, to send the
e-mail, and therefore, the e-mail was not spam. PaeTec has disputed
MonsterHut's assertion and has demanded that MonsterHut prove that you and
the other recipients solicited the e-mail. MonsterHut has also claimed that
virtually every complaint PaeTec received was simply a request to be removed
from MonsterHut's mailing lists and was not an allegation that its e-mail
was spam. PaeTec interprets your communication as not simply requesting
removal, but complaining that the e-mail was spam.
It would be very helpful for PaeTec to obtain sworn
statements, which are also known as affidavits, from you and others stating
(if true) that, to the best of your knowledge, you did not solicit e-mails
from MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to being included on the mailing list of
MonsterHut, you did not opt-in to be included on any mailing list that
indicated you were authorizing the sending of e-mails by other unspecified
parties, and that your complaint was not merely a request to have your name
removed from a mailing list. If you are willing to assist PaeTec in its
efforts to vacate the injunction and terminate MonsterHut's Internet access
service, please reply to this e-mail and advise of your willingness to do
so. On the other hand, if you did solicit e-mail from MonsterHut and/or if
you intended merely to request that your name and address be removed from
MonsterHut's mailing list, PaeTec would appreciate it if you would advise it
of those facts so that it can take them into account in deciding whether to
pursue a termination of MonsterHut's service.
The affidavit request (April 9, 2001):
From: IP Admin
To:
Subject: Monsterhut Affidavit
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 17:14:37 -0400
Importance: high
X-Priority: 1
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Status: U
Thank you very much for indicating a willingness to help PaeTec
Communications, Inc., in our litigation with MonsterHut. We have gotten a
tremendous positive response from members of the Internet community, and
this will make a big difference in our efforts to vacate the injunction and
to prevent MonsterHut from using PaeTec's network and/or IP addresses to
spam. MonsterHut contends that all of its commercial bulk e-mail is
permission-based and therefore not spam. MonsterHut also contends that most
of the complaints PaeTec has received (particularly those received through
Spam-Cop) were merely requests to be removed from MonsterHut's mailing list,
and were not allegations that the complainant had been spammed. We hope to
refute those claims with your help.
Attached to this e-mail is the text of a sample affidavit that
PaeTec has prepared to assist you in putting your statement into a form we
can submit to the court as evidence. The text of the proposed affidavit is
also located at a website created solely for this purpose,
. The text is somewhat generic because of
the volume of people who have indicated a willingness to sign an affidavit.
As a result, we must ask you to type in some basic information. Please fill
in your name on the first line. In item 1, please fill in the state and
county in which you live. If you do not live in the United States of
America, please modify the language in Item 1 to indicate the country in
which you live and your general location using the equivalent terminology
that is applicable in your country.
Next, please review the text in Items 2-8 very carefully to ensure
their accuracy. Feel free to make whatever additions, deletions, or
modifications you feel are necessary. Since this affidavit is being given
under oath, we want you to be sure that it accurately and truthfully
reflects the facts pertaining to your situation. In this regard, the vast
majority of the people who responded to my last e-mail stated they were
absolutely certain they had never solicited e-mail from MonsterHut. As a
result, the sample affidavit was written this way. A relatively few people
indicated that "to the best of my knowledge" they never solicited e-mail
from Monster Hut. If you feel more comfortable providing a sworn statement
with this type of qualifier, please add it to the appropriate sentence(s) in
paragraph 6 of the sample affidavit. In addition, we need you to fill in
two pieces of information. In Item 5, please indicate the month and date on
which you received your e-mail from MonsterHut, and type in the subject line
of the message you received from MonsterHut. If you cannot recall this
information, it is located below in the "Original Message" portion of this
response or in our initial e-mail to you. In Item 7, please fill in the
blank to indicate whether your initial complaint was made via Spamcop or
directly to PaeTec.
We have left a blank area after the number 9 at the end of the text
so that you may add any additional information that you believe would be
helpful to demonstrate that MonsterHut's e-mail was unsolicited by you .
For example, a large number of people indicated that the e-mail address to
which the MonsterHut e-mail was sent is used only as a contact point for
domain registration purposes with Network Solutions. As another example, a
number of others indicated the e-mail address was not active or was used
solely as a "spam trap". Many others of you indicated the address was used
for only certain specific purposes and was never used to solicit e-mail from
anyone from this address. If you do not wish to add any information, please
delete the number 9.
Once the affidavit meets with your approval, please type in your
name below the signature line next to the word "By:", print out the
affidavit as a separate document, and sign it before a notary public (or if
you are from outside the United States, the equivalent official in your
country who can attest to a signature affixed to a document that is sworn to
under oath). In order for the affidavit to be considered by the Court, we
must receive the original signed copy so
we can submit it to the Court. Therefore, please mail the original, signed
affidavit to PaeTec's outside legal counsel at the following address:
Suzanne, Galbato, Esq.
Bond, Schoeneck & King, LLP
One Lincoln Center
Syracuse, New York 13202
United States of America
If you do not wish to incur the expense of mailing, PaeTec will send you a
self-addressed, stamped envelope for you to send it the original if you
provide PaeTec with a mailing address to which it can send the envelope.
Finally, many of you requested that we ask MonsterHut for its proof
that you solicited e-mail from it. We already have made a formal request
for this proof from MonsterHut. MonsterHut has not yet formally responded
to this request and its time to do so will not expire until after PaeTec
must submit its affidavits to the Court. Moreover, in informal
communications, MonsterHut has advised our attorneys that, at this time,
MonsterHut will be unable to prove on an individual basis that most of you
solicited the e-mail because most of the complaints went through Spam-Cop,
which masks the identity of the complainants,. As a result, we have
requested that MonsterHut describe the sources from which it obtained the
names it used. It appears there may be a relatively few sources.
If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at
ipadmin@paetec.com
. On behalf of PaeTec, we want to thank you for your assistance.