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Lawsuits Against Spammers
apc writes "Pretty good overview of the state of the law
regarding spammers, and some stories about people who have sued them and won. Nice to see the topic getting mainstream attention."
It talks about several different states and several different people who
have won cases. I still think its fairly hopeless, but I also believe forging
SMTP headers should be legally punishable by castration.
The only reason spam is so prevalant is because there are still enough suckers out there who respond to it and buy into the schemes. We need to do one of two things. Either successfully educate the suckers so the spam becomes uneconomical, or compile a real list of suckers and find a way to convince the spammers to ONLY spam them, and not the rest of the world.
Neither of these things will happen, unfortunately.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When you opened up the full headers on the spam, I assume you found the Received: lines going back from your mail server to the sending mail server, and from the originating IP to the sending mail server.
I also assume that Iowa law provides for John Doe lawsuits, in which you can identify the defendant as a specific individual even if you don't have his name, and has a long-arm statute whereby torts that occur partly in Iowa can be filed in Iowa courts.
Given those things: File your case with a John Doe defendant. Identify the defendant as the person who was using IP 123.456.789.012 at July 4, 2001, at 12:00 noon CDT. If you can explain what that means to the judge (in writing!) you can make a pretty strong case that that's one distinct individual.
When you file, have a subpoena ready for the court clerk's signature. You'll want to send it to the ISP or whoever owns the IP number, and it's for all billing or other records which would show the identity of the person using that IP at that time. Once the subpoena gets served and gets compliance, you have your defendant.
As for "large expense," I frankly don't know what it's going to cost you. Some states mandate civil spam-related stuff to go through small-claims, and some states don't give their small-claims courts the power of compulsory process. Obviously, a court that can't subpoena evidence is a joke, but don't ask me to explain it.
definitely. I put in spamassassin + vipul's razor on my utility linux machine, and I have it fetchmail my various accounts and scrub them. I use gotmail to fetch my hotmail and run it through the scrubber. this combo catches about 95% of all spam (and my hotmail account gets about 50 spams per day). Every other day I get one piece of spam or so.
Now I have all my accounts collected in one place and scrubbed. I even put in a webmail system (sqirrelmail.org) so I can fetch it remotely via ssl. If you have the means to hook up a setup like this I highly recommend it.
A single lawsuit won't do anything to stop spam, but once fifty or one hundred people start suing, it will get too expensive for many spammers. In Washington State, we've nearly a dozen folks filing lawsuits, some of them going for some serious amounts -- to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you've got spam with a phone number or ordering address in it, you can (usually) track it down to a specific company or person. If it's only got a URL, like those mortgage spams, Washington litigants are filling out the contact forms on the site, then going after the mortgage company that contacts them. When these mortgage companies get hit with a lawsuit, they either want to settle right quick, or they rat out the spammer they hired. I've been focusing on spam with phone numbers, as I find it relatively easy and fun to track down the company behind the number. It may not always be easy to find the spammer, but it's not rocket science either. Anyone can do it given a little bit of time.
The Seattle Times had a good article on Saturday about the anti-spam law, some folks who've been using it, their wins, and the troubles they've encountered with the court system. The biggest issue in Washington is that court clerks and judges aren't fully educated about procedural issues like whether one can sue an out-of-state defendant or for punitive damages in small claims court. (The answer to both is yes.) It's been pretty frustrating for us "trailblazers," as the judges are saying contradictory and often quite stupid stuff.
Here's some nifty links:
For a copy of my 24 page zine, Zen and the art of small claims, send some stamps to PO Box 95227, Seattle, WA 98145. You can also just read it online at my site, but any zinester knows that it's just not the same.