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Fax-Spammers fax.com Sued For 2.2 Trillion
linuxwrangler writes "Fed up with junk faxes which have been illegal since 1991, a Silicon Valley businessman has launched a lawsuit against junk faxer fax.com. Steve Kirsch seeks the damages provided in the law: $500/fax for the last four years. If certified as a class-action on behalf of the 3 million receipients of the faxes that fax.com claims to send each day the total damages would reach 2.2 billion even without invoking the "triple-damages" clause for "willful" violations. Federal regulators hit fax.com with a 5.4 million fine just two weeks ago after the company ignored numerous warnings from the FCC and was found to be in "flagrant violation" of the law. Fax.com maintains that their actions are protected by the constitution and court decisions in this case could lay the foundation for the future of junk email regulation"
Suing a DOT com for 2.2 Trillion dollars...
;)
This isn't 1999
"Fax-Spammers fax.com Sued For 2.2 Trillion"
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Check out this letter I got after reporting one:
Mo Junk Fax Response
I was a little disappointed to say the least. This fax was hitting me every morning at 3am.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
they send faxes about missing children! Without them children would stay missing.
what honerable and praiseworthy advertisers they are.
how long is it going to be until you start getting the 'missing children' spam email? I already get them in the real mail, missing children on one side of a ad, and the otherside, filled with useless spam.
However, they should have to pay all of our phone bills and paper costs... plus trash bags, disposal costs, a reasonable fee for our time disposing of their waste, etc.
-T
I wonder if there are any fax machines that can be programmed to block faxes from certain numbers, or by other identifying data.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
the poster made an error, but the link has $2.2 trillion as well. Yes, it is an insane number, but spaming with a fax is insane as well.
2) They could both be right, if linuxwrangler is British (sorry, too lazy to check), since on the west side of the pond a trillion is a million million, while on the east side, that number is called a 'billion' (which in my head makes more sense anyway)...
3) Either way, it's a helluva lot of money to be fined, and would [ probably | hopefully ] kill off the company involved...
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
500 dollars * 3,000,000 per day * 365 day per year * 4 years = 2.2 trillion
2.2 billion x triple-damages = 6.6 billion from fax.com.
Estimated world population by US Census Bureau: 6,245,356,272
6,600,000,000 / 6,245,356,272 = 1.06
So, basically, that's enough to give every person in the world a dollar...or enough to get Worldcom back on their feet for another year or two!
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
It took me awhile to figure that one out. When I did, I was all alone camped on top of a mountain in north east Tennessee. No horny women around. Story of my life.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
"2.2 trillion....(pinkie)dollars.*snicker*"
Judge: Would the prosecution PLEASE refrain from doing that pinkie thing every single time? You're getting on my nerves...
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
Its a fine for not respecting the law and continuing to illegally fax-spam even after having been duly warned.
and its not just the paper: Its the toner, employee time to dispose and sift through all that crap, the busy fax-line preventing you from sending or recieving legitimate faxes.
Email spam is annoying and a bit time consumming, but on top of that fax-spam cosume ressources and reduce the availability of the fax machine for legitimate purposes.
At my old job we got dozens of faxes a day, most of them spam. We would often not recieve important documents faxed to us by clients because the machine was out of paper due to all the adds it spewed out.
The fine is not a compensation for those hurt, its a punitive measure meant to make it stop.
You can't take the sky from me...
Invoke the triple damages rule and that becomes 6.6 trillion, now add for interest (compounded daily of course at 5%),,, now just the interest would be a whopping $330,000,000,000 per diem which equals in simple terms a debt that will never be paid (hell even the 2.2 trillion is unattainable by a company of that nature, considering they weren't charging $500 per fax, let alone the $1500 it could theoretically cost them). Maybe Microsoft could bail them out? LOL!!!
If you do, and regulations go into effect regarding SPAM e-mail, then each and every one of us has a case. Unless the legislation that comes out of this suit has a "non-retroactive" clause (or something along those lines), then we can all take out our SPAM-induced "Net Rage" out on the sorry saps that pull this crap.
After all, isn't that the American dream? Turning a profit on the misery of others? Won't it be nice to turn the tables on these low-lifes and profit from their misery?
And what, praytell, will become of the sneaky bastards like the infamous Crushlink, the ones that lead us on into giving up our addys so they can sell the list to the SPAM crowd? If I were a SPAMer and fax.com loses, I'd be running for the hills...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
That just says "we can't start new legal action under this law while a federal court is reviewing whether this law is legal."
Why don't you try other routes? Specifically, a harrasment case of some sort. Walk into small claims court, claim they are harrasing you, get a temporary injunction against them. Suggest others to do the same.
I can't imagine that not working; if a random person were calling you on the telephone every morning at 3 am, the stalker laws would come down on them quite painfully.
The article says FAX.COM claims it send 3 million faxes per day. The lawsuit is for the last 4 years. At $500 per fax.
3,000,000*365*4*500 = 2.2 TRILLION DOLLARS.
And then theres the possibility for TRIPPLE DAMAGES if the judge rules the violations were willfull. It's completely up to the judge, but IMO (IANAL) FAX.COM's actions were blatantly willfull as defind by the relevant law. If convicted, not assessing triple damages would be a gift.
We have a fax machine. We've been getting junk faxes semi-reularly. With luck maybe we'll be getting a peice of the pie when this is over. I hope it's triple damages (grin), not that it would change the size of the check. I'm sure single damages is enough to bankrupt them nearly a million times over.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I'm not sure fines are punitive enough to stop spammers... perhaps castration would be more appropriate.
Seriously, I don't think the spammers realize/care how much actual damage they do, and whatever penalties are in place don't seem deterrant enough. The same goes for email spammers and phone solicitors. In theory, if I tell a phone solicitor to take me off their list, they have to or face a fine, but the fine is 500 dollars. What company would even bother for a 500 dollar fine. The majority of people wouldn't bother pursuing the 500 dollar fine, so it doesn't really accumulate for the company, and a puny fee like that is hardly noticeable.
Fines for spamming (of all types) need to be increased, with the possibility of jail time. The same goes for product recalls, but that's another topic.
I kept getting one that was a woman who immediately said, "sorry, I dialed the wrong number.". I thought it was odd the first time. The second time I realized it was a recording. Some telephone sales company looking for phone numbers to use later on, no doubt. I would get the service to block "unknown" caller ids, but we get a lot of calls from Europe and they are often "unknown".
-- Will program for bandwidth
I'm probably feeding a troll. Oh well.
That's incorrect. The first amendment only guarantees you the right to free speech. It does not guarantee that you will be heard. Nobody has any legal obligation to listen to me. I have no right to use their resources to try to make them listen to me. The problem with junk faxing is that the faxer is using the faxee's resources (paper, toner, line time - and don't say that it's a flat rate per month, often a needed fax won't go through because a junk fax is taking the line). That has both direct and indirect costs to the faxee, which can be significant.
You may notice that fax.com is also a business. Many fax recipients are individuals. If you want to look at it as a conspiracy, at least realize that it's at least partially in favor of individuals.
funny munging
When you're fighting for the free speech of megalomaniac run corporations, I ask that you always keep in mind what they would do with your free speech.
I'm not trying to change your opinion. Just try to remember that information has become a commodity. So that means anyone with the capability of distributing information (everyone) is a target for people who wish to base their business on such actions. Just keep it in mind. This is war. Corporations are becoming more militant in their push for legislation while individuals are using more civil disobediance.
Personally, I value the individual's right to free speech before any group's right to free speech.
Many others have pointed it out as well, but the critical difference between junk (snail) mail and junk faxes is that junk faxes use up actual resources of the recipient, namely paper and ink, while junk mail is paid for entirely by the sender and does not cost the recipient anything (other than the time to throw it away, which is generally considered insignificant--whether that's proper is another question). To draw an extreme example, because I can't think of a better one at the moment, it's like how yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is illegal; the right to free speech is not an unrestricted right.
fax machine (unlike an email box) can only handle one file/fax at a time.
Interesting theory. On my system, the mail spool uses a locking protocol, so only one e-mail can be received at any one time.
2.2T or 6.6T, while being the potential penalties the law specified, are naturally uncollectable.
One could, however, bankrupt the company and send a message to any other scumbag who thinks this is a good business model which is, of course, the goal.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Fines for spamming (of all types) need to be increased, with the possibility of jail time.
;- )
Harder fines, sure, but jail time? No.
I don't think putting people in jail for every stupid thing is a good idea. In fact, I think there are many "crimes" that should not be punished by jail time (how many pot heads really deserve to be in jail, seriously?).
Rapist, murderers, muggers, all those people deserve to be taken away from society for a while. But minor crimes, as annoying as they might be, don't warrent imprisonment. You could make 'em do community service, make 'em bankrupt with huge fines, but don't waste precious jail space for small things.
Plus, do you really want the spammers of the future to have aquired skills like fashionning weapons out of toothbrushes or how to take advantage of a dropped soap in the showers? You'd just make 'em angrier...although maybe the spam about penis enlargement would go away.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, Yes! Jay Nixon was a driving force behind out telemarketing opt-out law. It works quite well. I filled out a web form and get no telemarketing calls except for the local newspaper trying to sell me a subscription (which I already have, they are just too lazy to check) and the occasional call from a charity that I already give to.
They are pushing an update to the law to close the remaining loopholes.
http://www.ago.state.mo.us/ has the poop. Over 1 million Missouri phone lines are registered for no call. That's a pretty good chunk of the state. We only have 5.6Mfolk. The AG's office is even enforcing the law! >$600,000 in fines levied so far.
perhaps you missed the other reply to my other message, but my understanding is that it's technically a "milliard," but that 1000 million is also used.
Judging by the corporate scandals coming to light as of late, that figure is probably close to the CEO's yearly salary.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
that the person who submitted this article (linuxwrangler) is really none other than.... Dr. EVIL!!! ;-)
No. Junk faxes are illegal because it shifts costs onto the recipient.
Junk faxes use your paper / toner / ink, and tie up your fax line for other IMPORTANT business stuff. Paper / toner isn't free. The average cost on a business class laser fax is around 6 cents per page. Multiply that out by 10 spam faxes a day, 365 days a year, times the number of fax machines your business has. Factor in the potential lost business due to not being able to receive an important document.
Please inform us on all the technological measures to stop fax spam at the receiver.... Oh. There AREN'T any?
Your right to free speech ENDS at my door. You can deliver me all the bulk US mail you want, and I have the right to heat my house with it. I also have the right to call any telemarketers four letter words until they hang up (Telemarketing should be illegal as well. It's an intrusion on my peace and quiet. For now it's not, hpowever many sgtates are begining to enact laws that restrict it much more.) Email spam, like fax spam, also forces the cost on me as I am forced to pay for bandwidth / server storage. Yeah, it's not much, but it's getting MUCH worse, and the costs are starting to be significant. Spam was so bad for AT&T that it took their servers down for a couple days a few months back. 15% of all email on the net is now spam according to Gartner, and it's increasing at a rate of 5 fold per year.
This free speech argument is a red herring anyway. It's not Free as in beer, it's Free as in Freedom in content. Freedom of speech allows you to stand on a street corner and say pretty much anything you want. You can also publish a newsletter, put up a web site, etc. Basically, you are free to get your message out but there are reasonable limits. For example, free speech doesn't mean that Kinko's is required to provide you with free photocopies to get your message out. That's essentially what's happening with fax spam, or email spam, except that it's not Kinkos paying, it's YOU, and ME. So yeah, you have freedom of speech as long as you pay for ALL costs associated with getting your message out.
Your point is taken, although the parent poster is making a perfectly valid point. Your email doesn't take 2 minutes each to transfer, typing up 100% of your bandwidth, but faxes do. Unless, of course, you are still using a 300 baud modem...
With that much $$$ this guy could afford to purchase Iridium. Finally, free satellite Internet access for everyone! ;-)
You might have run into an automated dialer that's waiting to put a recorded pitch into your voicemail/answering machine. Yes, these things are illegal (wardialing is illegal, and recorded pitches are illegal), and you can report them to the FTC.
:P)
Good luck trying to track them down in many instances just by the call - usually the bastards will not have any identifying info, and will just leave an 800 number (to get a great deal on FREE satillite TV, just call our sales agent at 800-xxx-xxxx
However, every little bit of info helps - let the FTC know you're pissed, and they can make a good case of how the system is being abused the next time they report to Congress. Who knows, maybe some bright young senator/representative might take this up as their cause...
Now, someone answer me this - why doesn't the Attorney General make this shit a criminal offense? If they're willing to put some pimply faced teen-ager away for sharing his taped copy of ST: TNG, why are they letting people who are attacking insturments of business and medicine (read the article, fax-spammers were wardialing and attacking hospital fax machines), in flagrant violation of a Federal law against such? Dual standards of justice and mismanaged priorities...
Kudos to Steve Kirsch for putting this issue into the spotlight. All we got to do is wait for the judge to allow class action status - start saving the fax-spams people!
No. They know how much damage they do. They simply don't care. They rationalize, saying that the products that they advertise and the "services" that they offer, outweigh the "minor inconvenience" of getting crap you didn't ask for, printed on paper you paid for, and tying up a machine that you have installed and pay on a monthly basis to have a dedicated line for.
Yes, jail time would be a start. Also mandatory fines against spammers which would go to educate small business owners that fax-spamming is illegal, and to report anyone trying to sell them fax-spamming services. I really don't think that there are enough people who KNOW that fax-spam is illegal, since there's so much of it, and the feds don't really make an issue of it that I've seen (with the exception of the FTC fine against fax.com.)
There's a rather interesting trend going on with the regulation of commercial speech in America. You can read about it here.
Just four years ago in an advertising class I took, the professor stood upon the mount and proclaimed that advertising isn't "protected free speech." Take that as you will.
Ahh, crap, I'm getting all varklempt. Talk amongst yourselves! Here, I'll give you a topic. With fax.com's assertion, the trend continues towards paid messages being allowed to be progressively more intrusive. Discuss!
I guess it's like issuing 12 life sentances. but really, I don't think even the tobacco companies were fined this much. While I'm no law expert, I can't recall any case that has successfully closed anywhere near that number. Dissolve the company? Yes. Will the money break down anywhere near those increments? Not a chance. Still, you're right. They definitley screwed themselves.
And to the moderator; Flaimbait? So which part of the statement was irrelevant? The over-inflated 2.2 Trillion, that slashdot posted this sensationalism or the fact that the courts will never see that number? I see the light, and it's leaking out somebodies ass...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
3 trillion amount to less than is spent on social security. the US spends a WHOLE lot more than that
According to the Office of Management and Budget, total spending of the U.S. Fed. govt in fiscal year 2002 was $2.052 trillion.
(Slightly O/T) Has anyone else noticed that in the past year or so telemarketers have started leaving messages on answering machines? This seems to be an increasing trend. For instance, today I came home to find a 75-second solicitation for a trip to Disyneyland (apparently it's their 100th anniversary, according to the message) on the anwering machines for both lines in my house. Now, granted, this may not be a huge problem for most people, but I've actually had a number of occasions where my answering machine has filled up with telemarketer messages and caused me to miss "real" messages as a result. In my situation, and that of others who have similar problems, should I not be able to argue that the inconvenience of telemarketers (or at least their recent practice of leaving messages)is not "insignificant"? If I have a relatively limited amount of recording space on my digital answering machines and I'm getting numerous 60+ second advertisements every day, I think this is quite unfair, and a good example of the not-so-insignificant problems telemarketing perpetuates.
No they couldn't. As we've seen time and time again, relevant decisions in other mediums--even similar mediums such as fax, phone, or cellular--always seem inapplicable to the Internet. For some reason, our legal and judicial systems incorrectly think that anything having to do with this new-fangled Internet thing must require its own special and distinct legislation.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Then we should go forward and hack their web servers and deface their home page.
It must be legal. After all, if they can legally intrude our fax system and put messages on it, we can intrude their computers and put messages on them. Simple.
More evil idea that should be legal in California - maybe we can put an "opt-out" email address on the defaced web page that says "If you want to unsubscribe from the deface list, please email l337@yahoo.com with your full web page address"
Maybe all of us can set our spam filter to forward our spam emails to sales@fax.com...after all, it's protected free speech.
Title 47, Section 227(b) of the United States Code.
This law makes it illegal "to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine." The term "unsolicited advertisement'' is defined as "any material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person without that person's prior express invitation or permission." Damages are set at actual monetary damages, or $500, whichever is greater. The court may increase the damages up to three times this amount if it finds the defendant "willfully or knowingly" violated this law.
Under federal law, these unsolicited faxes are illegal, but fax advertisers simply ignore the law because few people know about and exercise their private right of action.
Jurisdiction
State courts are expressly given jurisdiction under 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(3). The following federal court cases have found that state courts have sole jurisdiction under this law:
International Science and Technology Institute, Inc. v. Inacom Communications, Inc., 106 F.3d 1146 (4th Cir. 1997)
Chair King, Inc. v. Houston Cellular Corporation, 1997 WL 768609 (5th Cir. 12/15/97);
Foxhall Realty Law Offices, Inc. v. Telecommunications Premium Services, LTD, 975 F.Supp. 329 (S.D.N.Y. 1997)
Make them eat one can of spam, for each piece of spam, they have sent. Do the same to e-mail spammers.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
With luck maybe we'll be getting a piece of the pie when this is over.
The way these class action suits usually go, what you'll actually get is a coupon for $10 off the purchase of your next penis enlarger.
Evil is the money of root.
Seriously, at least twice a week I get these calls (and usually at around 3 or 4AM...). And I have never had a fax machine hooked up to my phone line. No fun. But that leads to the question: How does somebody without a fax machine, and therefore unable to read how to get off their list, get off their list? (Assuming of course that they actually take people off the list if they request. But being spammers I doubt it.)
First of all, the article gets to a 2.2 trillion number by assuming that fax.com has sent 3 million faxes a day for the past four years. 365 X 4 x $500 x 3mil = 2.19 trillion. This number is based off boasts fax.com has made, not actual numbers of faxes sent out. Nor does the article take into consideration that the lawsuit isn't even a class-action lawsuit, but rather a private suit by two people, who are suing fax.com over all the faxes they've recieved at home and at work. The 2.2 trillion figure is a number a bad reporter pulled out if thin air to make a boring news article grab people's attention. If the judge in the case for some reason decided to order the remedy against fax.com be made class action, then yes they'd be out of buisness, but the fact of the matter is that this isn't a class action lawsuit, and the judge isn't going to rule that way. That being said, if these two guys win, it opens the door for a class action suit (which would easily exceed fax.com's ability to repay by many many times even if the 2.2 trillon number is bogus). Assuming fax.com has any money left trying to defend itself from the FCC and private lawsuits like this one.
BTW if you want to know why the judge won't make the damages class action it's simple. Fax.com isn't going to argue for it, and these two guys lawyers want to hit fax.com to pay the legal fees, as well as take a percantage of the damages. If they lost a class action lawsuit they'd be shut down completely, and any outstanding creditors would have first take on any assets they had left.
And if they loose the private lawsuit that would essentially kill their junk fax buisness anyways.
And while it may someday affect spam rulings, it's already pretty clear that e-mail messages don't fall under the anti-junk fax law. Potentially, loosing a private lawsuit could force them into converting into an UCE company, since that is only illegal in a handful of places.
Only incoming messages you're required to pay for are covered under that law, like say cell phone calls (if you're billed by the minute) or SMS messages (if you're charged per message recieved.) Frankly, I'd rather that UCEs be required to pay a fee (per spam), and be required to put ADV is both machine and human readable text in the subject line. The fee could cover the costs incurred by ISPs to carry all that mail traffic, and by requiring ADV in the subject people and companies especially can filter it out easily.
The upside of 'legitmizing UCE' is that instead of a 'war on spam' we can just focus on the people who are unwilling to play by the offically sanctioned rules of the game.
Basically if legit companies want to send out mass-mailings, they would have a legitimate way to do so, and so they wouldn't offer affiliate programs who harvest and spam people to make money. Even scam artists who wanted to look legit might be forced to follow the official rules, because it would be too easy to say, "well if it doesn't have ADV in the subject then it's a scam for 100% sure.."
The problem is that it's almost as much of a war to get established rules set up. People have been talking about ADV tags on usenet almost since when spamming still meant cross-posting to more than one or two newsgroups (or at all, depending on who's defintion you go by).
So glad you put up that email, truefluke. I was desperate to put up a sarcastic response but didn't want it to degenerate into Euros vs USians flaming.
Man, the US legal system is screwed if lawyers can go to court and make those sort of suggestions - what kind of sick drugs _do_ they feed trainee lawyers at college? I am so glad you are laughing as well...
That lawyer is bringing your whole legal system into disrepute, let's face it, declarations like this mean the rest of the world will completely disregard anything else your lawyers try to tell the world. Maybe they shouldn't let lawyers use calculators with more than 6-character displays.
Disclaimer: our lawyers are probably equally as mad, they just show it in more subtle ways...
Report them as crank phone calls to the police.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
But thats a waste of perfectly good Spam. Make them eat the equivalent in plain old potted meat instead!
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Recently a guy who in an act of stupidity, started heating a battery with his lighter, on a plane. He thought it would recharge it a little. The pilot in an overreaction as I see it, landed the plane at Salt Lake City where the guy was taken away by the FBI for questioning. The plane was searched, and two hours later it departed for San Francisco where it was headed. Does this guy deserve jail time for a simple act of stupidity, no. Junk faxers on the other hand, must know what they are doing is illegal. To not know this law while owning a fax machine requires an astounding lack of intelligence. Etither these people should be put in a mental hospital because they are mentally incompetent, or they should do some time as punishment.
dr evil voice: ... BILLION!?!a haa...
Why ask for 2.2 trillion when you can ask for 2.2
Muahahaha...muhaha...mmmmuuuahahahhah
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
In the UK 1 Billion = 10^12 (Million Million)
In the US 1 Billion = 10^9 (thousand Million)
(Check your dictionaries people!)
I _assume_ that in the US, a trillion is a UK Billion.
Q. Is timothy British?
Any yes before you ask, it can get confusing for us UK physists dealing with big numbers when reading US work!
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
I had a battle with fax.com a couple of years ago. By fluke i happened to find out who was ordering the spam. It was the Center for missing and exploited children. They were selling advertising to various people and trying to use the charity as a cover to do what is illegal to do commercially. (anti-telemarketing laws specifically exempt political and non-profits from laws governing them, but this does not apply to faxes).
So I complained to Sun and Computer Associates (the two biggest donors to the Center) and very quickly I got an appology from the center's director and the junk fax stopped. Until about 2 months ago when it started up again.
text of letter:
We are sorry that you have been inconvenienced
with the fax transmissions sent out by Fax.com.
If you will provide me with your fax numbers, I
will contact Fax.com and request that they remove
your numbers immediately from their database.
Our ability to use Fax.com to distribute posters
of missing children has been a great success and
has resulted in the recovery of a number of
missing children. We certainly understand your
request and will make every effort to stop the
transmissions to you when you provide me with your
fax numbers.
I am forwarding a copy of your fax message request
to Fax.com
--
Ben J. Ermini, Director
NCMEC Missing Children's Division
703-837-6236
and the response to my reply:
Thank you for your rapid response. I have directed Fax.com to remove your fax
number from their database.
Fax.com has assured us that all NCMEC poster fax transmissions are sent to fax
numbers that have agreed to participate in the poster distribution program.
We are sorry for any inconvenience that we have caused you.
Ben J. Ermini
---
so once again spammers lie. My fax is unlisted etc, and never opted into any such program.
sorry if this is long winded by fax spammers are even worse than email spammers in my book
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Odd, the title says 2.2 Trillion, the body says 2.2 Billion. Pick a number.
OK, I've done that. Can you guess what it is yet?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Hehe, nobody can tell you're from Mars when you post on the internet, eh?
Nah, I haven't a scoobie when it comes to legal stuff either. But the common sense kicks in when these guys start quoting the sort of numbers kids shout at each other in the school playground. It's really daft isn't it, I mean, I know it's all a game (no real pun intended...maybe..) and there's some sort of legal diplomacy game going on, you shout a big number and you end up with a realistic number-- but it just seems so *infantile*! I am sure there are some really sound US lawyers doing great work, saving innocent kids from prison etc, but all we hear in the UK are people suing each other for a billion dollars, suing MacDonalds for a million dollars because they split hot coffee over themselves...
I am so glad I don't have to work in an environment with people like that...
aaarghhh... I don't know about you but me and my bro always came home from school really smashed up because we were pretending to be superman and jumped off a tree onto a concrete playground or summink. We cried, teacher told us we were daft, patched us up with a plaster or two, we went home, our mum told us we were daft, we knew we were stupid, we didn't sue the school for a trillion dollars or anything (then we went back to school the next day and did the same thing and smashed ourselves up again - damn, being a kid was so much *fun*!).
Actually, in Britain both are used, but calling 1.000.000.000 a billion is the most "modern" usage. While millard is legal English, it's not very common anymore. In French and Norwegian for instance, milliard is still commonly used for 1.000.000.000, though, and billion for 1.000.000.000.000
Plus, do you really want the spammers of the future to have aquired skills like fashionning weapons out of toothbrushes or how to take advantage of a dropped soap in the showers? You'd just make 'em angrier...although maybe the spam about penis enlargement would go away
The best form of justice would be for them to be cellmates with someone to which they had sold one of the penis enlargement kits. Let them really feel the consequences of spamming.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
I keep reading the first amendment over and over. I just can't find where it says I have to pay for another person's free speech. Can somone enlighten me as to how this is a "Free Speech" issue as opposed to a theft of services issue?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I was thinking that it should be possible to create a tarpit for junk faxers.
The premise is that almost every junk fax we get at work has 1234567 as the calling telephone number. Using a filter on the incoming number that detects this and similar obviously bogus numbers, the machine could continue to take the fax forever (and not print it of course).
The obvious problem is that it takes up the fax line, but if you have 2 fax lines or set it to be tarpit in the middle of the night (when this crap often arrives), then we might have a solution.
Also, please remember to take junk faxes and recycle them so that other people in the office don't see them. Some of your dumber office-mates might actually respond to the fax.
I also write down the 800 numbers listed on it to call on pay phones when I have the spare time (like waiting at airports) to waste the spammers' money.
After canceling my whining liberal newspaper earlier this summer, they are now tossing a free advertising section on my lawn, essentially all the paper ads and classifieds w/o the news and editorials. Now, every week, I have to walk over, pick up this unsolicited garbage tossed from a drive by delivery person and heave it into the trash. Some of the neighbors are just tossing them back onto the street.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
A more fitting punishment, adopt sharia law and treat spamming as theft of service. Cut the bastard's hands off.
"The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."
MARSH v. ALABAMA
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
326 U.S. 501
I'm the best IRC client ever.
It's illegal to make automated calls to people. So if you actually did pick up when it rang, the machine wouldn't start talking to you. Sometimes it just hangs up, which is quite disconcerting.
They've been doing that for several years.
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The problem is that the government allows the corporation to pay off the fine, without direct consequences to the people who chose to commit the crimes. The responsible individuals need to feel some personal pain for their misdeeds.
(As for your example, I don't think marijuana should be illegal to begin with, but that's a different issue.)
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The courts will decide if it's free speech or theft of services. Could be interesting from an anti-spam issue.
Best Slashdot Co
No, that's out of date. In the UK a billion usually means a thousand million now as well.
Only if you speak American English (as many people in the UK seem to be going!)
See this
And this
They both echo the Oxford English dictionary! (ie a US billion = thousand million , UK billion = million million)
As I said, it gets very confusing in the UK. Esp when accountants (who deal with trendy things and small numbers + always seem to talk in US billions) start talking to us Physics types (who use big numbers all the time and therefore always use UK billions)
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Woohooo! I can hardly wait until the spammers are irradicated! Just imagine how much faster the Internet will be when it doesn't have to carry their flotsam anymore!
The ones we really need to clobber with a cluebat are the insipid morons that actually buy the crap the spammers are selling. They'd quit doing it if the flaming idiots that send money for "penis enlargers" didn't make it worth their while.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
I was at Disney World over the 2000 New Year (over 2 years ago), and they were doing the 100 year anniversary then. They even had the big 100 on the globe at Epcot Center. Maybe by 100 year anniversary, they mean it lasts 100 years...
A person sent the junk faxes or commanded a computer to do it. He is the entity that actually broke the law, even if he says he was "only following orders". Yet somehow I suspect that only the company is going to get fined, and it will just declare bankruptcy, and the people who committed the crimes won't be held liable and they'll keep to keep their houses and cars.
Individual people at Microsoft committed felony offenses in leveraging a monopoly to weaken the free market. Yet I haven't heard of a single case of any of them spending a few months in jail while their case gets sorted out, or having to liquidate their assets to pay fines.
Dmitry Sklyarov .. oh wait. He actually went to jail for what he did for his employer. Yet junk faxers and Microsoft executives are still on the streets. I smell tyranny.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They both echo the Oxford English dictionary! (ie a US billion = thousand million , UK billion = million million)
That doesn't mean anything. Dictionaries only tell you how something si being used. They can't tell you who's right.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Don't try that standing on a streetcorner and talking bit here in Lincoln, Nebraska. You will be arrested. I would suspect that this is true of many U.S. cities.
Long story behind that domain name.
Kinda has a ring to it though doesn't it? hehe.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I don't know the first thing about small claims court.
Does it cost me money up front? If so, forget it. I'm so broke, it would be more effective for me to cancel my phone service. haha
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The government IS the people.
Those freedoms that cannot be abridged by government, those mean that, no matter how much your fellow countrymen bitch, whine, beg, and fuss, they CANNOT cause certain types of laws to be made.
say you want 2.2trillion dollars from somebody and NOT hold your pinky to your mouth?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is NOT the first time that class action suits have been brought up, and I think it is VERY interesting, because some claim the law was only intended to give individual claimants the chance to get damages. Still, class action suits like this have been won before. Funny -- even fax.com
has been sued before!.
There's also the question of whether junk fax statutory damages can be appropriate for class action, although obviously this is only one perspective.
Have you considered that the people who are right are the majority?
Has it occurred to you that the dictionary may be behind the times? Based on your complaints, what is correct is changing.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Heh, don't fool yourself! That "telemarketing opt-out law" is really there only to benefit the state, not the consumer!
I live in St. Louis, Missouri and recently got a "newsletter" with information on the succes of the no-call list. Basically, every time you get harassed and go to the trouble to fill out a 2 page long report about it, you get nothing. Not even confirmation that something was done about the problem. Missouri, however, sues for large sums of money, all of which they pocket afterwards. Despite their whole case being based on your written testimony, you receive no compensation.
In most cases, you don't even get your immediate problem resolved. Missouri doesn't go after every single business that calls you after you're on their "no call" list. They only chase after the easiest targets; the repeat offenders that generate hundreds of complaints from different residents. They love to brag about slapping "Miss Cleo" with a fine for her telemarketing calls trying to sell you on the "Psychic Hotline" -- but her fine was peanuts compared to what she rakes in on those 900 numbers. She probably still came out ahead on her telemarketing campaign after paying Missouri their fines.
As for closing those "remaining loopholes", if they don't - they have a completely bogus law in place, IMHO. Right now, those loopholes make the "no call list" practically worthless. Currently, it says anyone is allowed to solicit you if they're someone you've done previous business with. That means you can get calls offering you credit cards and loans all day long, if you ever opened a checking account with a large bank. Ever get your carpets cleaned with a firm like Stanley Steemer? Too bad then... can't stop them from telemarketing you randomly. It also exempts charities from calling you. I get countless calls from those places soliticing funds for the "retired firefighters" or "retired police officers", and I can't do a thing to stop it.
Lincoln, being a small city, is still substantially large (100,000+), and what you are saying is very idealistic and lofty, but not very close to reality.
We have a guy here, he was a law student for several years (can't remember if he graduated or not). He can usually be found somewhere near the downtown Lincoln area with various politically or legally charged slogans written all over his clothing.
He writes the slogans on himself because he will be arrested for bothering people if he says them out loud. He will not discuss the sayings at length with you in public even if you ask him because he could be arrested as a protester. (Were you aware that protests are illegal unless registered with the city ahead of time?) He cannot stand in one place or he will be "impeding the flow of traffic" or some such crap. (or he is a protester again, take your pick). He cannot come to the same place every day either, or so I've heard.
The first amendment? It has no meaning in my city. Think it sounds odd? No one even notices this stuff unless they dig around, do some reading, or talk to odd people like this guy. I would venture to guess that most comparable cities (and ALL larger cities) have similar "reasons" to arrest people who are exercising their freedom to peacably assemble, or even their freedom to talk in public. It's an ugly world at times, and the ACLU is NOT going to save some poor, borderline homeless political outsider like this guy.
Any number of UCLA attourneys would be rabid at the chance to go after Podunkville, gratis.
Much as I love my alma mater, I think you'd have better luck with the ACLU.
UCLA = University of California at Los Angeles
ACLU = American Civil Liberties Union
There's still a little bit of a difference between them.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
This, along with the SMS thread from yesterday, raises an interesting point. What fax, email, and SMS spam have in common is that the reception is automated. If I get a telemarketing call, I can hang up before they've had a chance to deliver their message. But, by the time I see a fax or an email or a text message so I can make that decision, they've already sent the whole thing to me. The same problem comes up with recordings left on answering machines, it seems... I hadn't encountered that yet. (BTW, many digital answering machines allow you to set a limit on the length of the message recorded, so you can cut them off at 30 seconds.)
Freedom of speech is a guarantee that the government can't prevent you from communicating an idea except for under very specific circumstances where that idea is very likely to cause harm. It is NOT a guarantee that you can inundate any particular person with your communication. Most importantly, it is not an obligation on the part of the recipient to pay for your message (in paper, toner, tied up phone lines, time spent downloading, per message fees, etc.). Maybe we need a constitutional amendment that protects the individual's right to dispose of their resources how they see fit.
Junk snail mail is a different animal, because the cost of sending out the message is (1) non-trivial and (2) borne by the sender. Between printing and postage, they are spending several cents per message, which necessarily limits their willingness to send out mail to known unwilling folks. It also ensures that the practice will be limited to "legitimate" companies (or at the very least, ones with decent-sized budgets). The self-limiting mechanisms of traditional junk mail tend to keep it at a manageable level.
We do need to re-evaluate freedom of expression in light of automated message reception. It does change the scope and mechanism of free expression a great deal, as well as shifting the costs (monetary and non-monetary) onto the recipient. I don't think that's what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the first amendment.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
The state does benefit from the lawsuits, but I must say it's been nearly 100% effective for me since they started it.
I'm not a huge Jay Nixon fan, but I really appreciate him getting this program into effect even if it was mainly to benefit the state. That's just "theoretically" less tax money out of my pocket.
As far as the loopholes... I personally don't get any calls from companies that I did business with in the past. My credit card company has called a few times but after telling them to quit soliciting a few times they finally stopped.
Also, as far as the non-profit orgs calling, they did before too so you aren't any worse off. I have caller ID and I generally don't answer any calls labeled as private or unknown.
I agree with you, it's not perfect, but so far it's made a world of difference. I think most companies simply remove Missouri area codes from their calling lists as I think it costs them money to see if we're actually on the lists. Whether it does or not, it costs them some amount of time to compare their list with the no-call list.
I would love to get some confirmation though when I submit a report even though I only submitted one once.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
when you have a type of spam which actually costs the recipient money.
After which you arrive at Million Million, which is a Billion in the UK.
p.s. The US way of doing it makes ore sense to me. With the UK way you might end up saying "thousand" two times to read the number 22,222,222,222. That strikes me as repetitive.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I agree the company is bad. I hate spam, full stop. But the figures being quoted are why US lawyers and this part of the US legal system are a laughing stock in other countries. You are honestly saying that a lawyer is going to try to sue a company for the GNP of half the countries on planet Earth because of fax junk?
Is it like this in all legal cases in the USA, say, if somebody bumped into my auto and damaged the fender, would my lawyer try to get me ten million dollars when quite clearly a couple of hundred bucks to cover the spare part and a mechanic for an hour would be just fine?
Istick by my disclaimer, our lawyers are probably equally mad, but they are just a bit more subtle, you know? :-))
Wierdness. What is 1E9 called in the UK, then? Has it ever been determined when the usages diverged?
Any yes before you ask, it can get confusing for us UK physists dealing with big numbers when reading US work!
Isn't that why we have scientific notation?
In a similar act of stupidity, a resident of New York lit a stick of dynamite to see how fast the fuse would burn. Having not planned his next step, and unable to extinguish the fuse, he threw it out of the window, where it landed in the street and killed sixty people. Does this guy deserve jail time for his stupidity?
Yes. At least. No question.
The bit with the battery could be just as dangerous if the resulting explosion took out some vital wiring in the 'plane. Or just blew a hole in the head of the guy sitting next to him. Either way, it's dangerous stupidity, and the guy needs a jail term for it. Whether it was simple or not is irrelevant.
This from someone who thinks many of our (au) laws are overdone, and the US laws are worse.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hmm. Given that they have something approaching 100 billion in $$$CASH$$$* available (and that's just Microsoft proper, nothing said about affiliates, subsiduaries, directors etc), 2 thousand billion in liquefiable assets doesn't seem too far fetched at all. Throw in the $$$CASH$$$ resources of Bill, Steve and a few other executives plus a flock of related companies, and you'd be well on your way (I guess over half a trillion $$$) to paying the fine out of $$$CASH$$$ - without even having to sell anything!
Yo, Trey Gates must really be rattling in his boots over those `stern measures' the DoJ is taking against him. People wonder about whether Linux will torpedo him on technical merit. Taking into account everything he's stashed away over the years, pies he has fingers in, etc, the dude could probably rustle up near on ten trillion hit points IRL if the need arose.
And you can bet he's too cheap to spend even a measly $10G on the world's biggest conveyor belt.
* this is one time I miss the BLINK tag
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
So... the police are allowed to suppress many people's right to free speech (the mob shouting the man on the soapbox down) in order to protect one person's right to free speech (the man on the soapbox).
And this is constitutional?
If it wasn't before, it should now be obvious to you why the US is a legal minefield.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's kinda funny that the class action lawsuit against terrorists is just for 1 Trillion, but the one against a company that spams fax is 2.2 trillion. Hmm, would you rather be
a) Hit by an airplane, stuck in a burning building and have the building fall over, so you can hit the ground?
or
b) Have someone send you faxes that you don't want.
Now I think that both of these are legit suits. But really, faxes vs terrorism. Which one should pay the victims?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Are you sure? At that point, they don't have much life left to lose...
Also, (1) it would be fairly easy and cheap to simply loan them your own O2 tank for the trip or in some cases feed them from an airframe supply (2) standard wheelchairs won't fit through the doors or down the aisles on many 'planes so you'd probably be using the airline's chair anyway.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing