Slashdot Mirror
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)."
These are either the coolest lawyers in the world or most clueless.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It looks like Morrison and Foerster is suing on its own behalf rather than some other party, and that the spammer had continued to spam even after being warned.
:)
Oops. So when can we expect a) spammers filtering to avoid spamming law firms, and b) law firms offering e-mail aliasing to avoid the spammers?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
...and win my case? I receive about 3 ads for penis enlargement a day even if I am from the opposite sex.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Who's the hitech private dick thats a sex machine to all the chicks?
-Mofo!
Who won't let you down when there's spam all around?
-Mofo!
You damn right.
That mofo is one bad mutha-
-Shut your mouth!
I'm just talkin' about Morrison and Foerster.
-We can can dig it!
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
From the eTracks homepage:
Not only is your target moving...It's picking up speed.
Now I wonder why that is. Could it be that your "target" is trying to not receive your fucking worthles spam? Perhaps they are satisfied with their penis size? Maybe they don't want to about losing 150 pounds in three days? Perhaps the Ladies Quilting Club down at the retirement center isn't interested in tight teen anal sex?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
As a collective sigh of longing sounds over the internet the unthinkable has happened. The slashdot community has fallen in love with a law firm.
Teamwork is a bunch of people doing what I tell them.
I would like to announce that I am sueing Slashdot $50 for each troll post I read each day up to a max of $25,000.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/15/195620 0
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
.. That Timothy posted the origial article.. maybe someone should lay off the booze before lunch? ;}
Original story here.
Morrison and Foerster's URL is www.mofo.com.
B-),
Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
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.)
Rather than filtering incoming mails and taking the legal route with the spammers, I'd like to remind you 2 excellent services that can be used to avoid getiing your email address on spammers' list in the first place: www.spammotel.com and sneakemail.com
If you run your own mail server you can do this stuff yourself - I mean "one-time acounts" and so on. But sneakemail is just too convenient (or I'm too lazy and tired by the time I get home...)
-- No sig today
Disclaimer: I am not trolling, I really feel this way.
The internet has always been self policing. Why should we treat SPAM differently than the rest of email? Yes it sucks, but we can always filter it. We do not need legislation to save the inbox. We need common sense. Legislation is only going to make the internet more of a 'policed state.' I feel as if it cannot be said enough, the internet is not owned by the US and it will only lead to problems if goverments are brought in for annoying crap like spammers.
No I am not a spammer.
Yes I hate spam with a passion.
However, the more geeks want rules to govern the internet, the more the other laws (as well as shit like this) will be passed and upheld.
Stop this crap now.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
mofo is known (in the North Cali legal community anyway) as a very progressive firm. they go out of their way to hire people of color, women, and handicapped folks, and take on many pro-bono cases that require a large investment. they also take "principle" cases - those cases that can likely result in a beneficial precendent but may not be profitable for the plaintiff.
so it's not surprising to me that they would expand that social-cause reach to technology too, in the legal realm.
One spammer got my attention by sending me the same mail multiple times.
:)
It took me half an hour to track down and mail the free web provider, the free mail provider, the free scripts provider, the (possibly) abused mail-relays etc etc.
Now the web-site is off-line and one by one (I hope) all his services will fail. Scripts will return errors, mailboxes will close and so on.
I guess that will p*ss that spammer off
Privacy is terrorism.
And then give them 90% of any money they get from suing over the spams sent to it. But how do I send them this proposal without it being a spam? Im serious!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
OK
it seems to me that we all just accept ads as "part of the way we live"
Each time I try to get education, entertainment,
or travel anywhere, I am bombarded with
unsolicited ads. ads that generally fuel the
out-of-control cosumerism all around us.
Read a magazine, get ads.
Watch the news on TV, get ads.
Walk down the street, get ads.
Read the newspaper, get ads.
Watch entertainment TV, get ads.
Even if I want to, I am FORCED to see ads. To be
programmed. (don't tell me to go live on an
island -- I don't want to do that either).
The thing I think is that we don't have to have it this way. I know its radical but imagine for a moment a world where there were no unsolicited ads . This is a real stretch -- many of the assumptions about normal life start to break down if you take this assumption and go with it. We DO have the technology to provide everyone all the information they could want whenever they want to buy something, yet we don't. We make all the businesses compete for visual and auditory bandwidth, annoying the he!l out of everyone.
thoughts?
Spam laws
Especially
Summary of US State spam laws
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
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.
So as long as I state it ahead of time I can charge a $50 unsolicited viewing fee for every advertisement broadcast to my television. Or for every piece of junk mail sent to my house (via post)? Or for every one of those little fliers I get under my windshield wiper when I park?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Could this same idea be applied to actually suing slashdot for willfull destruction. For example if slashdots with it's thousands of readers had a big link to the lawyer's website that caused it to crash due to high load, could they turn around and sue. There is a solid history of websites being swamped by readers after following a link to the point in nearly every story in which it occurs, many people have to poin out a cache at some location (usuall google.com) and ask if slashdot could even provide their own cache. That history could demonstrate prior knowledge of the chances of damaging the web site just by the sheer display of the web link. A few years ago a local radion station hid several $100 bills in books at a local public library as a promotional thing to 'encourage' people to visit. What did not expect was the mob of people that rushed the dorrs tearing apart books in search for the free money. They ended up having to pay for several thousand dollars in damage to the property.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
So have you read the mail headers and determined that these spams indeed came from Yahoo or Hotmail? The From: address means nothing. The only thing you can trust are the headers. Most all of the spam that claims to come from these services is sent from somewhere else. Think about it. How long would it take to send 100,000 spams through a Web interface when you're limited to something like 25-50 addresses at a time? Not to mention that each and every one is going to be tagged with the spammer's computer's IP. Hotmail even uses a header called X-Originating-IP so you can't miss it.
If you want a good tutorial on how to read headers, go here. It's a bit dated, but it will give you a good foundation on what headers mean.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
... by suing spammers.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Third time's the charm, right?
While I have enjoyed this story every time that is was posted...
1 Another Go At Making Spam Cost Money by timothy with 81 comments on Tuesday April 09, @04:23PM
2 Class Action Lawsuit Against Spammer by CmdrTaco with 299 comments on Friday March 15, @04:24PM
3 MoFo Sues Spammer by timothy with 17 comments on Thursday March 14, @07:36PM
...there's a lot of other spam news out there that we could be reading. Check out http://spam.abuse.net for a variety of exciting, spam-related news and information, such as:
RULINGS IN INTEL V. HAMIDI BULK-EMAIL CASE (California Supreme Court agrees to hear Intel V. Hamidi).
Or you could read this story again...whatever... =)
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
You can sue in small claims, that is true.
You can win, in fact if the spammer fails to show you will win by default. That's usually the outcome you will be hoping for.
So now you have a judgement for $5.00. What do you think will happen next? Think the court will enforce the judgment? Think again. Think the court will garnish the spammer's wages? Think again. Small claims court has not the time nor the resources to enforce the judgments they render. You still have to run around with your piece of paper signed by the judge and try to get the system to enforce it. Eventually, after many months of trying, you might be able to get an arrest warrant for your spammer. Then you can begin trying to get the police to arrest him. How high on the list of priorities do you think warrants for delinquent $5 judgments stand?
Not very.
On the bright side, in states with anti-spam laws, you do not have to prove that spam has damaged you in order to prevail in court. The anti-spam laws generally make it easy to win your case, but they do nothing to help you enforce the judgment.
Edith Keeler Must Die
The alternative is regulating through code, but redefining the email standard so as to avoid SPAM would be problematic
Hey maybe you're actually on to something. That just helped me brainstorm a crazy idea that might involve a GOOD use of software patents!
Redefine the e-mail standard in such a way that is PATENTED. I'm sure someone could think of a way to do that.
Then, grant everyone a free license to use the patent EXCEPT spammers! Of course, come up with a fairly good definition of spam that would include sending bulk e-mail to people you have no prior relationship with.
Then, when a spammer uses the new standard, clearly violating the patent, they can have the crap sued out of them!
What do you think???