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Another Go At Making Spam Cost Money
wario78 writes: "The BBC is running a story about the law firm Morrison and Foerster which is claiming damages against the spam company Etracks based in California. They are asking for $50 in damages for each spam they receive, up to the maximum of $25,000 per day. Nice to see a lawyer doing something community-oriented for a change (even if they are just trying to make a profit from it)."
.. That Timothy posted the origial article.. maybe someone should lay off the booze before lunch? ;}
Original story here.
Case 1 can cost people money
Case 2 does not cost people money
Case 3 does not cost people money
(Indirect costs, such as increased garbage taxes don't count.)
Is it too much to ask for people to drop the incessant lawyer bashing? Lawyers as a group spend a lot of time working on "community-oriented" work. They are expected to devote at least part of their time and effort doing pro bono work, i.e. representing cases in the public interest, frequently for people who otherwise couldn't afford representation. The law is one of the last careers where this is an ordinary expectation.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
There are many reasons to stop the spammers through legislation. People here have mentioned some good ones: Freeloaders using bandwidth and other people's mail servers. I have a friend who runs a small ISP in Mexico. Some spammer used his mail server (it was set for open relay) to send out a bunch of spam.
This guy didn't want to run an ISP. He had to. He had an internet cafe and the only ISP in town shutdown, so he bought them out so he could keep his internet cafe going, his only source of income. He's not real technical. Enough to run the cafe, but the ISP was a big hurdle for him. I'm just trying to explain the reason for the open relay.
Now, after this spammer used his open relay, his mail server (and all of his clients) suddenly became blacklisted, and he was unable to send ANY e-mail. He fixed the problem, but the incident cost him dearly.
So, there's another reason. Here's another: I have TONS of stuff filtering spam. I still get tons of it every day that doesn't get filtered. So I'm constantly adding new addresses and stuff to my filters. This takes my time, not a lot, but let's say a few minutes a day. My work time. Time I could be using to be more productive at my job. This hurts my company. Multiply that by everyone in the world who has e-mail, and you start to get an idea of the scope of productivity that's lost each day because of this crap.
What right do they have to use up the bandwidth and services we pay for? What right do they have to interefere with my productivity at work? If you can justify this and other issues that others have raised, you might have a case, but I doubt you'll be able to.
I thought making profits was all lawyers ever did!
Let's see how your opinion of lawyers changes after someone wrongs you and you have to take them to court.
Lawyers are not all evil because they charge money for their services when they can.