Slashdot Mirror
Class Action Lawsuit Against Spammer
sfjoe writes "California-based spammer eTracks is being sued by the law firm, Morrison and Foerster (who have a very cool homepage). M & F's press release says they are "...seeking other relief, including attorneys' fees and statutorily authorized damages of $50 for each email delivered in violation of the law, up to $25,000 per day".
California's anti-spam law has already held up under appeals court scrutiny so this may very well be a major setback to the spam industry."
I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each
forged header.
[snip]Morrison & Foerster employs approximately 1,000 attorneys and 1,350 non-attorney staff in 18 offices worldwide. [/snip]
/. read slashdot. I know I get a kick when the company I work for or related subjects are news posts.
[snip] Morrison & Foerster was named by Fortune Magazine in its first list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. [/snip]
Thats alot of desktop computers and servers for a company, Always wondered how many people from the companies in articles on
Come on MoFo IT/IS guys, post some replys!
The reason people spam is that the cost is low, even in the worst case.
Spammer's worst case just got much worse.
If spamming becomes a risky, possibly very expensive proposition, the big spamhauses could be in trouble. They've got deep enough pockets to be hurt badly by such a suit. Bad news for them; good news for the rest of the Net.
Sadly, it's probably not much of a threat to spammers in China, Russia, etc.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Wow, what a day. Today I found out that a good friend of mine just started working for a Spammer. I genuinely don't know how I feel about this -- he's part of the fucking problem!!!
Anyways, the info he told me about their first spam run:
400 web page hits per day pre-spam
500K emails sent out (on behalf of a client)
192K hits to client's webpage after that
only 400 "take me off this list" messages
*sigh*
So I guess it works.
This lawsuit made it onto NPR tonight... I was rather amused by one spam executive saying the mail was not "unsolicited" because many users give their names to mailing lists when registering for products... "without knowing it" (exact quote... forgive the lack of attribution, but I'm sure someone can dig up an NPR transcript for around 6:45 PM EST on 15 March 2002).
My question then is this: how is the mail not unsolicited if the user doesn't know he's soliciting?
Plato's Socrates might argue, of course, following the Meno, that the user's psyche solicited e-mail advertisements before birth and merely forgot about his solicitation upon entering the world. Perhaps he would demonstrate this by having an uneducated slave register software and sign up to be notified of special offers that might be of interest to him... but then the Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock precisely because they didn't want to put up with that kind of nonsense.