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WA Wins First Case Against Deceptive Spammer
GPFCharlie writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is running this article about the first victory by a US state against a spammer. Apparently the judge ruled that a civil trial was not even necessary, since the state had already proven their case. The law was upheld by the WA Supreme Court and an appeal was turned down by the US Supreme Court. Next phase: penalties. How about 5 million hand-written apology letters?"
I've sued nearly 20 spammers in WA Small Claims Court this year. To date I've won every case, or settled out of court. It's good to see this win at the higher court level, but it's not really news to me.
Almost every spammer violates the law (RCW 19.190) because even if the return address is valid (e.g. optin@spammers.com) they are always forged return addresses because the actual mail comes from Korea or China or a dialup somewhere.
Having said that, I do sometimes get spam from more 'legitimate' spammers (i.e. ones who actually have a website, usually mentioning keywords like CRM and direct advertising). They send mail with their own domain name, and they send it from their own servers. It's probably less than 1% of the total right now. Those emails don't fall under RCW 19.190.
I rarely go after the actual spammers but instead the companies that hire them. The spammers themselves are service and/or judgment proof, whereas the companies that hire them are usually real companies registered to do business somewhere. Having said that, you would be surprised how many companies that spam go out of business shortly thereafter. It appears to be an act of desperation for many.
I've collected over $5000 in settlements and I have $7000 in judgments outstanding. If they don't pay up, I sic Dun and Bradstreet debt collection on them so at least their D&B credit record will be ruined for all time (an unpaid court judgment is considered a Very Bad Thing on a businesses credit record). Total cost to me per case is less than $50 usually, so I can afford the unpaid judgments.
I understand the free speech arguments, but RCW 19.190 is pretty specific. First, it must be unsolicited commercial email. Secondly, they must have a misleading subject or forge the addresses. I have got spam pitches from religious types and politicians, but neither falls under RCW 19.190. And thirdly, there is a registry for WA resident to enter their addresses (http://registry.waisp.org). If the spammers are really honest, they could listwash us all from their lists. Of course, they never do this because they are always buying the latest and greatest CD full of email addresses.
It's the old rule of Garbage In Garbage Out. If you collect 20 million email addresses at random, don't complain to me about how hard it is to check them!
should everyone in the U.S. now have to follow this state law, to make sure that they don't accidentally transmit banned material to residents of that state (for example, by placing it on a website where a resident of that state could access it)?
website != email
If I go to a website, I chose to do so. If you spam me, you chose to do so.
Anyway, I'm still waiting for someone to give a real example of how this law could cause harm, not a silly hypothetical. No, a jury is not going to convict your uncle because his subject line said "funny joke" but the body wasn't funny.