California Sues Spammer for $2 Million

KilroyTheVeg writes "The Mercury News reports that the California Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, filed suit against Internet marketer PW Marketing LLC, accusing the company of illegally spamming millions of Californians. The Story is here and the Sidney Morning Herald also has the story here. The suit named PW Marketing LLC (note:subpoena in link is third one down the page) and its owners Paul Willis and Claudia Griffins defendants in the suit which seeks "at least" $US2 million from them for allegedly flouting several state consumer protection laws banning spam mail. All I can say is Make 'em pay, it's the only way to hurt 'em where it counts." Update: 09/30 22:02 GMT by T : Note, that's Sydney Morning Herald.

Comments

i can see it already.

[gTsiros]

Lawyers spamming us with

"make money fast!!!
SUE US!!!"

Re:i can see it already.

[sqlrob]

that wouldn't be totally useless mail, so it wouldn't be spam..

Yes, it would be. Calling something spam doesn't say anything about what's in it. It's not based on the content of the mail, but your a priori consent in receiving it.

Don't hold your breath

[Lamont]

I live in California and think this is great, but I'm also realistic enough to know that this will be stuck in the courts for years....

Apparently...

[Skiboo]

some Californian politicians were unimpressed when they're penis didn't GROW FOUR TO FIVE INCHES OVERNIGHT. Also, it seems that some lesbian twins didn't want their 'hot bodies' after all.

So would it be spam if...

[raehl]

The State of California issued a subpoena for their email list, and then emailed everyone on the list asking if they'd received spam and would like to seek damages?

Re:So would it be spam if...

[kiolbasa]

Though humorously ironic, this may fall under the definition of barratry, which is to drum up legal turmoil among those who would otherwise not bother with it. No lawyer am I, but I think it has to be made into a class action suit before the State could go contacting people.

Re:So would it be spam if...

[BollocksToThis]

Have you been spammed recently? Want to give spammers a taste of their own medicine?

Well now you can, and it's easy!

Just send $5 in an envelope to the five State of California employees listed below, then remove the top name and add yours...

This is a good first step..

[Frank of Earth]

.. but I shudder to think of a world where I couldn't get daily reminders on how to increase my penis size or my breasts. [Most spam sites obviously don't keep gender in their databases]

It will be a brave new world without spam.

Re:This is a good first step..

[frank_adrian314159]

"get daily reminders on how to increase ... my breasts"

I always thought that two were enough for anyone, though I'm the first to admit I could be wrong.

Re:How sad.

[schon]

All the poor guy did was spam

Just because he only steals a couple of cents from a million people, doesn't mean it's not theft.

What if we arrested multiple mailers to real mailboxes?

Well, if they forged stamps in an attempt to send millions envelopes, I'm sure you would.

wanna make em pay?

[4444444]

All I can say is Make 'em pay, it's the only way to hurt 'em where it counts."

Just go to overture.com and put bulk email in the search and click on every link you see you will cost spammers several dollars per click the reason i didn't put a clickable link is because they can tell where your comming from and if they see 1000 people come from /. they won't charge the spammers

Re:wanna make em pay?

[indiigo]

You even got a score of 4! :)

Re:wanna make em pay?

[Illserve]

Overture charges them per time their links are clicked on through an overture search.

"You set the price you're willing to pay for each sales lead and pay only when your customers click through to your site. Independent research shows that advertisers receive the highest ROI from pay-for-placement search when compared to other forms of advertising"

But those dollar values seem a bit high.

Re:wanna make em pay?

[Alsee]

That just moves the money from people who sell spam tools and services to someone who advertizes spam tools and services.

Not exactly a huge improvement.

-

The Al Capone Approach

[GGardner]

My suspicion is that most of the worst spammers are slimy con-artists types, who run MLM scams, "make-money-fast" deals, and probably run their "business" on a cash-only basis. This old article, assuming it is true, shows the archetype: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/07/131825 2&mode=nested&tid=111

I bet that few of them report their ill-gotten gains to the IRS properly. Seems like one quick IRS operation could put a lot of them out of business in short order, without the need for any new laws to be carefully crafted or executed.

Re:The Al Capone Approach

[coyote-san]

I think that's out of date. I'm seeing a lot of indicators that it's now mostly done by really sleazy criminal players.

E.g., get insurance from us... we guarantee we can beat any other offer because we'll sell you a policy but be long gone when you make a claim.

Apply for a new mortgage from us... if you're really dumb, you'll pay us a kilobuck or two in upfront fees. If not, we'll still have lots of detailed information that can be used for identity theft.

Even the miracle cream that gives you both big tits and a long dick seem to be coming from just one or two sources running some pretty heavy duty software to find open relays and "dead" domains.

Re:The Al Capone Approach

[GGardner]

E.g., get insurance from us... we guarantee we can beat any other offer because we'll sell you a policy but be long gone when you make a claim

Exactly! Insurance fraud, unlike spam, is clearly illegal, and there is already legal infrastructure to deal with it. We should just apply existing law and go after these people now, without waiting for new laws, or getting tied up in court trying to deal with new laws.

Re:one of a million

[Marx_Mrvelous]

You don't have to prosecute EVERY spammer to stop, or even slow, spam. Right now a lot of legitimate (as in, not illegal) businesses buy and sell e-mail addresses and send Spam. I would bet that a high majority (over 90%) comes from the same small group of companies.

So if one of the say, 10 companies gets sued for $2,000,000 and put out of business, don't you think that the other 9 will start looknig elsewhere?

And even if my 90% weren't true, and ALL spam is from random people, prosecuting one will still put the "fear of God" in them and many will think twice before sending any spam.

I'm a big proponent of making Spam illegal, and prosecuting spammers. I believe that it will cut down Spam significantly.

Re:Oh yes...publicity always cripples businesses

[LordNimon]

Nice idea, but ineffective. The problem with spam is that there will always be people who respond to it, because they're uneducated. And because of them, spammers stay in business and the rest of us have to suffer.

Re:one of a million

[McDutchie]

ilyahndre wrote:

Its nice to see that a spammer is getting in trouble for the annoyance that they've caused. However, its one spammer, in one state, in one country. There are so many other spammers, how can destroying even one really make a difference?

There are not actually that many significant spammers. The 100 or so top scumbags listed in Spamhaus' ROKSO list send more than 90% of American and European spam, according to Spamhaus. (Read some of those evidence files, very educational.) So catching a big fish does make a significant difference.

Re:one of a million

[Bilbo]

> However, its one spammer, in one state, in one country

It's called legal precedent. In other words, once you've gone through the pain and hassle of pushing one of these through court, then it makes it a whole lot easier to get the next one.

As to the "just one," I admit I haven't read the article on this one, but remember that these are usually SPAM services that put these things out. In other words, this isn't just one message we're talking about, but potentially thousands of "clients", each one with hundreds of thousands of individual emails to users in California. Sure, knock one out and a hundred more jump in to fill the gap, but if you can prove that it will cost you money to spam CA residents, then people will start thinking twice about all those get rich quick messages. A lot of other states are watching this case, and if CA can make it stick, there will be other states to follow.

Of course, what they DON'T tell you...

[schon]

From the story:

"Statistically, California residents are the most responsive consumers to e-mail advertisers who offer various products and services," the PW Marketing advertisement said.

Of course, what they don't tell you is that the responses you get are "stop spamming me you $$%^*&&^%&*!!" :o)

"Statistically..." enterred into Babelfish

[raehl]

"Statistically, California residents are the most responsive consumers to e-mail advertisers who offer various products and services"

When enterred into Babelfish, returns:

"Statistically, California residents are the most stupid."

Re:"Statistically..." enterred into Babelfish

[schon]

"California residents are the most responsive"

When enterred into Babelfish, returns:

"Statistically, California residents are the most stupid."

Not necessarily; if those responses are "Fsck off and die!" (You'll note that it doesn't say positive responses, or sales.)

Re:"Statistically..." enterred into Babelfish

[Jeremi]

Nah, if you reply with "Fsck off and die" you're still stupid, because that lets the spammer know your email address is valid and being read by a live human... which means he is that much more likely to re-sell it to all his spammer buddies.

Re:Oh yes...publicity always cripples businesses

[ClamBoy]

The only way that spammers will stop sending you email is when people stop complaining about it (because that means it's working) and stop replying to it or responding to it in any way. Much like a 5 year old child, the only way to shut them up, IMO, is to just ignore them. Pretend they don't exist. Stop spam locally, ignore spam globally.

The part you neglect to mention is the escalation of the undesirable behaviour before you get the desirable behaviour. Even if it would work, things would get a whole lot worse before they ever got better.

cb

slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot: We're libertarians, except when it comes to spam.

Re:slogan

[spectecjr]

Slashdot: We're libertarians, except when it comes to spam.

What's libertarian about *allowing* spam?

It's not as if the law allows us to take matters into our own hands and take down the spammers personally and permanently. So this is one case where one has to turn to the law.

Personally, if people spammed me, I'd give them one warning, and then start hacking their systems. However, as this is illegal and will end up with me paying fines or in prison, this option is not open to me.

Re:slogan

[El]

Actually, I think Libertarians beleive that one of the few valid functions of government is to enforce truth in advertising and truth in labeling, thus allowing consumers to make their own informed choices. Last time I checked, 90% of the SPAM I received was blatently lying about who it was from and lying about the subject to get my attention. This is and should be illegal, and I think even most Libertarians would agree. The basic principle is "You're freedom to swing you fist ends where my nose begins." SPAMMERS are wasting my time and money without my permission (not by force or coercion, but rather by deceit), thus they are effectively connecting with my nose, and their freedom should be limited.

Re:slogan

[Tablizer]

Slashdot: We're libertarians, except when it comes to spam.

In a real libertarian society, one could hunt them down physically, tie them up, and enlarge both their penis and their breasts in one quick yank-from-hell.

Violence is the only solution!

[phsolide]

Sure, make them pay. But then, chop them up into small pieces, put the pieces into gallon jugs of gasoline, set the gas on fire and throw the burning jugs into SF Bay on national tee vee.

Spammers have proven to be so stupid that only the most Flagrantly Over the Top Demonstration of Hatred will teach some of them a lesson.

That's right, spammers: you're all incoherent stumble-bums, whose ravings are not listened to in polite society. When we can legally kill you, we will.

I doubt it

[nizo]

All I can say is Make 'em pay, it's the only way to hurt 'em where it counts.

And for his next trick, the California Attorney General will squeeze blood from a turnip, unless those "make money fast" spam emails really were true, hmmmm... Don't get me wrong, sue away. Personally I wish they would make the spammers donate organs until they can pay up if/when they lose.

False slogan

[phsolide]

Libertarians have never enjoyed theft. Since email spam is theft (advertising is NOT protected speech, and even it were protected, I wouldn't have to pay to hear it), spammers are thieves, mere common criminals, not first amendment martyrs.

Try again, DMA troll.

Re:False slogan

[God! Awful]

Libertarians have never enjoyed theft. Since email spam is theft (advertising is NOT protected speech, and even it were protected, I wouldn't have to pay to hear it), spammers are thieves, mere common criminals, not first amendment martyrs.

Spam is theft? That conflicts with other typical liberterian arguments, such as "theft is depriving someone of property, therefore music/movie piracy isn't theft".

-a

Re:False slogan

[spectecjr]

Spam is theft? That conflicts with other typical liberterian arguments, such as "theft is depriving someone of property, therefore music/movie piracy isn't theft".

That's not a libertarian argument either. That's a leech's rationalization of their position.

Libertarians are for personal freedoms, with a minimum intervention of the state in their day to day business. But where others' freedoms have to be infringed to make the world work, there's nothing wrong with getting the Government involved.

Intellectual property is a highly libertarian concept. However, not all libertarians agree with this.

Besides: Spam is theft of bandwidth. Who pays for my network connection? I do. What do they pay me for their use of my data pipe, reducing the amount of data I can receive? Nothing. Therefore it's theft of my bandwidth. Not to mention it is an inconvenience, and my time is worth money.

Simon

Re:False slogan

[God! Awful]

That's not a libertarian argument either. That's a leech's rationalization of their position.

Yes, I'm aware of that (note my sig). But I also see it as "left-wing libertarianism".

Intellectual property is a highly libertarian concept. However, not all libertarians agree with this.

Particularly the ones who read /.

Besides: Spam is theft of bandwidth. Who pays for my network connection? I do.

It's the same kind of abstract theft as music/movie piracy, but I don't expect the majority of slashdotters to grasp that. You don't explicitly pay to receive spam, but the amortized infrastructure and operating costs are passed back to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

So what you're saying is that the slogan should be amended to:

Slashdot: We're libertarians, except when it comes to music/movie piracy.

-a

Re:False slogan

[God! Awful]

Yes, spam is theft. And thank you for the straw man. I doubt that anyone who's thought about the music piracy issue for longer than 6 seconds takes the extremely simplistic position straw man summary you made.

Sigh...only on Slashdot!

Try asking some regular people (i.e. non-geeks) which of the whether they consider spam theft and whether they consider music piracy theft. You may be surprised at how ignorant the average person is.

-a

Re:False slogan

[God! Awful]

In fact, spamfighters have good reason to claim this is inevitable if spam-supporting organizations aren't severely curtailed.

1. And copyright owners have good reason to claim that lost sales are inevitable if piracy is not curtailed.

Conversely, if I copy media on my own equipment, the publisher literally cannot tell that it's happening. All they know is how many copies they sell.

2. And when your mailbox fills up with spam you can't point to any one particular message and state with certainty that that was the spam e-mail that caused a legitimate message to be lost.

Yes I know that (2) is an invalid argument, but that's my point. An argument can be statistically valid, even if you can't prove it for any specific case.

-a

Re:False slogan

[Alsee]

You may be surprised at how ignorant the average person is.

Unlikely, my current expectations of the average person are about two and a half steps above my expections of yeast.

-

Full text of the injunction

[McDutchie]

is here (PDF format).

Any word on who gets the Moolah?

[miracle69]

I have an email address that is currently based in California.

This doesn't seem to be a class-action suit, so who gets the cut?

Re:How sad.

[Silent_E]

"All the poor guy did was spam!"
"What if we arrested multiple mailers to real mailboxes?"

Spam is totally different from mailers. It is free to take the time to empty my snail mailbox, but spamers can send files to my e-mail that I have to pay to download. This is why spam and fax spam is wrong: they both pass on unrequested costs to the receiver, and for stuff I didn't ask for!! I recently got some java-scripted spam that was over 5M! That is totally unacceptable.

Lawsuits working in conjunction with laws banning spam seem like the best legal (as in not illegal, NPI) way to teach folks that spaming is not a money-making business.

bad link

[StuffYourReligion]

So you've updated the story once already, but maybe you should also add an "http://" before the URL for the "Sidney (sic) Morning Herald" link?

bork bork bork

Re:I prefer the Fargo woodchipper method

[ashitaka]

White sport socks and all.

Class-action lawsuits against spammers...

[Chastitina]

... would be the next logical step.

Hopefully this lawsuit will be the first of many. If enough states jump on the bandwagon & make it easier for private individuals to sue, this crap can at least be pushed out of the US (or any other country that set a good precedent). A few class-action lawsuits with only 10-20,000 offended parties receiving $100-500 apiece plus legal fees would go a *long* way to making spam economically unfeasible.

Tracking spammed e-mail addresses and affected ISPs would be the biggest challange, but a database set up to process forwarded spam (such as (uce@ftc.gov) could provide plenty of evidence as to the extent of the problem and damages. Set up a system so persons who use it reap the rewards of successful spammer prosecutions & you have the perfect incentive to get people to report this superficially "harmless" crime.

Fucking Slimy

[unicron]

These kind of actions I hold the utmost distain for, even worse than armed robbery. It's just so fucking slimy and underhanded. The levels to which these people will go would be considered incredibly resourceful if they weren't so pathetic.

Re:Spammers have every right to exist

[Todd Knarr]

Spammers have every right to exist, yes. And if they trespass on private property, to wit the privately-paid-for mailboxes of ISP subscribers, the subscribers have every right to sue the spammers for trespass and the state has every right to prosecute them for trespass. If the spammers don't like this, they can not trespass.

The Bunco Squad approach; Call Joe Friday!

[swb]

This has been my position all along. There's a lot of obstacles to going after unsolicited commercial email. The Direct Marketing Association quickly gets involved, since overly harsh penalties can excessively punish people that want to direct market to known consumers but screw up somehow. They have lobbying ability and tend to stifle legilslative debate.

And then there's the entire problem of *enforcement*. If I'm running a bulk emailing operation out of my basement and its now illegal, why don't I just rent a couple of systems in some foreign country where its not illegal that doesn't bother with a lot of American laws?

I'm far more convinced that if you put the effort into enforcing the current anti-fraud laws *now* on the books it would decimate the business that spammers need to stay spamming. The problem isn't UCE, the problem is fraud is going on unchecked on a massive scale and no one seems interested in stopping it.

Re:The Bunco Squad approach; Call Joe Friday!

[AndroidCat]

Rent hell! They scan for open proxy servers at Korean schools (or the Korean Naval GHQ firewall, narf!) and send their spam through those. That and the loads of actual Korean spam are why many networks just black-hole all of Korea (and China and .. )

Re:one of a million

[schon]

is a cutting down of spam volume worth the general erosion of freedom and enforcement dollars that it will cost

Enforcement dollars perhaps, but there is no "erosion of freedom" associated with banning spam.

Every single bit of freedom that could possibly be "lost" was gone long ago, when other types of theft were made illegal.

Re:Painful, yet obligatory joke...

[chazzf]

Ahem, that's boxen.

Re:Spammers have every right to exist

[schon]

Government has no right interfering in the business activities of spammers.

How about

"Government has no right interfering in the business activities of mafia."

Theft is illegal. Spam is theft.

Government has every right to "interefere" with such "business" activities.

Re:How sad.

[sqlrob]

Obviously, in our case, snail-mail spam is much worse than e-mail spam as far as costs go. I'm definatly not condoning(sp??) e-mail spam, but snail mail spam is big business also. While I doubt it, maybe a postitive anti-spam decision about e-junk mail could spill over into my regular mail-box... we can always hope!

It is? So you make less than the $9/hour the person who makes the mail does?

How much time do you spend sorting the spam from your mail? What about setting up the filters?

Re:Oh yes...publicity always cripples businesses

[Loki_1929]

" The part you neglect to mention is the escalation of the undesirable behaviour before you get the desirable behaviour. Even if it would work, things would get a whole lot worse before they ever got better."

Ya know? I think you're onto something here, so I'm going to throw my support behind the chap a bit further up the page who wanted to chop up the spammers and burn 'em on TV. Certainly sounds like a reasonable solution, and hey, it sounds like fun!

Will the AG go after the Secretary of State?

[Charles Dodgeson]

Anyone remember the Republican primary in California, when a desparate Bill Jones (not Bill Simon), the Secretary of State, spammed via Korean schools. At first I thought this was a frame up of the Jones campaign and offered to help them track down the spammer.

But it really was from Jones campaign, and the campaign website, advertised by the spam, got cut off by the hosting company in the last days of the campaign.

A write-up of the incident is on wired.

Re:one of a million

[pjrc]

So if one of the say, 10 companies gets sued for $2,000,000 and put out of business, don't you think that the other 9 will start looknig elsewhere?

And even if my 90% weren't true, and ALL spam is from random people, prosecuting one will still put the "fear of God" in them and many will think twice before sending any spam.

This approach didn't work for well for the RIAA... taking down Napster and others only drove Sharman Networks (Kazaa) to move operations to an island where they're harder to touch, and it's only encouraging up-and-coming fully decentralized development (gnutella, freenet, etc) of other p2p apps.

I really do hope this doesn't also happen with spammers, but they're such a seedy bunch that it's not hard to image.

Re:Excellent

[AndroidCat]

That doesn't seem to be happening, except as one-shots until they get whacked. After all these years of spam, universities take a pretty dim view of spam. Also most university admins who have to deal with the extra load spam adds to their job are going to take a very dim view of it.

Did you use your email address on a Usenet post, on a web page contact link, or even on Slashdot recently? It could have gotten onto another "Millions CDROM" and spammers all copy each other's lists. (Shocking! They're copyright pirates too!)

As the the Nigerian 419 scam, that has connections with some Nigeria government, banking and business people.

Re:Spammers have every right to exist

[Todd Knarr]

I think I see the problem here: you consider occupying space and using bandwidth paid for by the recipient, when the recipient hasn't agreed beforehand, to be a legitimate business activity. The state and most of us consider it trespass, just like if you used our front lawn to host a business get-together without asking us first.

It figgers

[Tablizer]

The only guy remaining with an IT job in California, and they sue the poor bastard.

ca.gov story -- more info

[caferace]

Here.

Re:Painful, yet obligatory joke...

[PhxBlue]

No, he got it right. It's supposed to be horribly-translated, remember.

Extra-territorial

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with California going after spammers in Sydney is the reverse of the problem with, say, France or China going after US companies that are violating their laws against say Nazi related items or free-speech related pages in China. The extra-territorial nature of this is

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't like spam either, but what is sauce for the goose (California going after companies in Australia) WILL BE sauce for the gander (France going after Google, Chine going after others etc).

This brings up other questions too:
1. If online gambling is illegal in your jurisdiction, can you stop it where it is based?
2. Suppose you have a data haven off the coast of Britain...

What California, China, France and Italy (among many others) are trying to do is to export their laws by extending their jurisdiction extra-territorially. Instead of a free Internet, you have an Internet governed by the most restrictive laws instead of the least. This is a bad thing for freedom on the net.

For example see:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/10/0450 20 3&mode=thread&tid=153 (italian police censor blasphemous websites)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= 02/07/15/18 37255&mode=thread&tid=153 (Yahoo censoring portal)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02 /07/17/16 17225&mode=thread&tid=158 (Crypto restrictions - well it is illegal in Iraq, Britain, so you must block it in the US).

Etc...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0 2/09/02/02 46224&mode=thread&tid=153
http://yro.slashdot.org /article.pl?sid=02/09/12/13 27238&mode=thread&tid=153

If you just type in "France censor" you can find a ton on here.

Re:Extra-territorial

[Guppy06]

"The problem with California going after spammers in Sydney is the reverse of the problem with, say, France or China going after US companies that are violating their laws against say Nazi related items or free-speech related pages in China."

You put so much effort into your long post without even realizing how your analogy doesn't hold water. Such a shame. The difference between Yahoo.com (as opposed to Yahoo.fr) hosting objectionable material on web servers and unsolicited e-mail coming in from Australia is the nature of the media.

The world wide web is a pull-type medium. Barring pop-up ads (God bless Moz!) and typo-squatters, nobody has ever visited a website they didn't actually want to see. In this paritcular example, some French actually wanted to visit the sites hosted in the US and specifically requested the information be sent to their computers. France trying to uphold French laws on US servers is akin to France trying to get the US government to enforce their anti-speech laws on French citizens who happen to be in the US at the time. Or the US trying to get France to prevent US tourists (not from Nevada) from visiting French red-light districts. Essentially speaking, the "crime," the actual act, took place in a country where the act is not a crime.

On the other hand, e-mail is all push. You don't get it because you asked for it, you get it because somebody else decided to send it to you. The sender, not the recipient, is solely responsible for the e-mail in question. As a coarse analogy, it is illegal to mail a bomb into the US, not to receive one.

The spammers based in Australia were actively conducting "business" (if spam can be dignified with that word) in the State of California. While they may or may not have intended the spam to be delivered to e-mail addresses based in California, it is no accident that the spam was sent to begin with. Their actions directly and deliberately affected e-mail accounts in the State of California. They should be held just as accountable to laws in California as if they were snail-mailing unsolicited nudie magazines to US addresses.

"What California, China, France and Italy (among many others) are trying to do is to export their laws by extending their jurisdiction extra-territorially"

In this case, California is attempting to prosecute a violation of Californian law that happened to Californian e-mail accounts. The spammers are legally obliged to be aware of Californian laws before actively trying to do things to Californian e-mail accounts. I see no problem with jurisdiction in this particular trial.

Re:one of a million

[Analysis Paralysis]

90% of spam originates from about 100 individuals/companies. Details on the biggest offenders can be found on Spamhaus's ROKSO list.

Deterring these "professional" spammers (many of whom have previous convictions for fraud) should therefore have a far greater effect than the numbers would suggest. Most would probably take their "talents" to greener pastures (anyone short of a few dodgy executives?)

physical violence?

[jchristopher]

All I can say is Make 'em pay, it's the only way to hurt 'em where it counts."

Well, that's not the only way, is it? Now that the names of the spammers are public, what if some physical harm were to come to them, or their property? That might make other/future spammers think twice.

Re:one of a million

[mkldev]

Two million dollars for a major spammer isn't disproportionate. First, assume that it costs the average person twenty seconds of time to decide if something is spam, 30 seconds to download a large html file with lots of pictures, etc. over a 56k modem, and you're at nearly a minute of lost work per message. At an engineer's salary, that's fifty cents of wasted time _PER MESSAGE_. Assume the spammer sent out ten million messages (not unreasonable). That's five million dollars worth of damage. If you ask me, they're getting off easy. Really easy.

Re:Spammers have every right to exist

[Todd Knarr]

Prosecuting under the law for this particular form of theft and trespass is exactly what the California AG is doing. They merely passed the law because, in the case of spam, it's impossible not to commit trespass and theft by doing it. Oh, some people might not mind, but you didn't know that when you did it.

As for the ISP, well, only if the ISP's TOS includes a "you must accept spam" clause. If it doesn't, then while the ISP might not have recourse the individual subscriber does because the spammer's still trespassing and taking up the subscriber's disk space and bandwidth without permission. If it were the ISP paying it might be different, but the ISP isn't paying and the subscriber has the bill from the ISP to prove it.

Overture prices have declined a bit

[billstewart]

When this suggestion first came out a year or two ago, most of the top Overture.com bids from spammers were running about $4-5. Now there's one that's almost $4, and the rest are a few in the $2 range and most below $1. I don't know if this is because of a decreased effectiveness of Overture at advertising this kind of thing, or if spammers are just getting cheaper, or if the occasional slashdotting has beaten some of them into submission :-)

I did notice a few of the Usual Suspects still there - maybe not as many of the same services, though some names sounded familiar, but many of the same harvester products. I don't know if the lists of "300 million brand-new verified addresses" have changed since then :-)

Obligatory Blues Brothers reference

[Guppy06]

"Spammers have proven to be so stupid that only the most Flagrantly Over the Top Demonstration of Hatred will teach some of them a lesson."

Use of unnecessary force in apprehending the spammers has been approved.

The state wants it for themselves

[billstewart]

If you go read the complaint, the State, for no particularly good reason, wants to be the complainant, as if it were a standard civil lawsuit, but the penalties it's asking for are "civil penalties", which are pretty much the same things as fines but with a lower standard of proof.

In other words, they want to Make Moolah Fast by suing spammers....

Re:Spammers have every right to exist

[Guppy06]

"As I said in an earlier post on this thread, if they commit an act of theft or trespass, prosecute them for theft or trespass. There's no legitimate reason to outlaw spam in and of itself"

If the majority of the voters in a state don't like it to the point where they feel that a new law against it is necessary to protect their rights to own and use their property as they wish, I think that's a damn legitimate reason to ban it. If that doesn't show that it's in the public's interest, I don't know what does. This is exactly what happened to junk faxers and this is exactly what should happen to spammers.

"what about people who don't mind receiving it,"

Two words: opt-in. Spam by definition is unsolicited.

Of course, if someone actually likes the spam they receive, they are perfectly free not to press charges. But their desire not to press charges shouldn't inhibit my desire to see them punished for the spam I received.

My hypothetical neighbor throws some pretty wild parties in his house and just about any stranger can come and do whatever they want there. Does that somehow mean I let those same strangers to the same at my house? Should the practices of my neighbor inhibit my ability to to use and protect my property as I see fit?

"or network and server operators who don't mind channeling it?"

They can find themselves named as accessories to the crime with their blatent disreguard of my property rights if they so wish. If they have a history of consciously turning a blind eye to spam if not actually promoting it, I see no reason for me not to name them in my complaint.

" As their users are free to choose to use or not use the ISPs services, if they choose to connect to their network then they agree to accept whatever spam whatever may come their way."

It's legitimate only if the potential customers are made well aware that this is the ISP's policy. And since most people in the spam trade already seem to have a great deal of difficulty in meeting truth-in-advertising requirements... Let's just say I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:one of a million

[exhilaration]

Good question - if the spammers lose, the precedent would apply only in the state of California. Only if the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and ruled in favor of California would the precent apply in all states.

But the Supreme Court is under no obligation to hear the case - they pick cases with "interesting" circumstances to establish case law. I seriously doubt they'd give spammers an audience.

So assuming that the spammers fight until the last possible appeal, this is the way it might go:

1) California State Supreme Court rules against spammers

2) Spammers appeal the ruling to Federal Circuit Court of Appeals

3) Court of Appeals rules against the spammers

4) Spammers appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court

5) Supreme Court declines to hear the case

6) Spammers are out of options

Causes of action seem wrong here; jurisdiction

[billstewart]

The complaints in this suit seem really wrong for this kind of action. Civil suits brought by the state are often somewhat bogus, but perhaps they're appropriate for the cease & desist injunction part of the lawsuit. But they're asking for "civil penalties" paid to the state, in a civil action as opposed to a criminal action, even though these are basically fines for violating business regulations. Civil actions have a lower standard of proof than criminal trials, and that's Constitutionally questionable abuse, plus they're asking for the court to award the state the legal costs for prosecuting them. A civil action would be fine if the suit were on behalf of the people being spammed, and the monies collected went to them, but that's not what they're doing. I'm not arguing that the alleged spam isn't sleazy spam that would be nice to prosecute under some appropriate laws, like fraud - it is. But this suit seems wrong.

Also, there are jurisdictional problems - the State asserts that the defendants are doing business in Santa Clara County (northern California) so they can be tried there instead of down in southern California where they live, based on the assertion that spam was sent to email addresses in Santa Clara County - even though the one spam they're quoting in the complaint clearly says that they do business in Canyon Country, CA, and they don't list any recipients who live in Santa Clara county. That's basically equivalent to busting a snail-mail-order business from a remote jurisdiction because they mailed advertising postcards there.

I haven't read all the business regulation laws referred to, so some of the sections are probably legally correct interpretations of some of California's really bad laws, but the processes still seem inappropriate. A couple of examples:

• Second cause of action, paragraphs 17-18: California has a really obnoxious anti-privacy law making it illegal for anybody to get a mailbox without registering their True Address, which is presumably where they sleep. There have been a few revisions to it - if you're an Officially Registered Battered Spouse, the state will provide you with a mailbox, but you as a regular citizen can't use one. US Snail also has rules that you have to fill out a form when you get a mailbox from one of their competitors, and the state has rules that don't let you receive mail unless you've filled out their form.
  
• Third cause - para 19-20 - looks like it regulates doing business advertising on the internet more strictly than doing business by snailmail or TV ads, and seems to clearly violate the Constitution's Commerce Clause which makes regulation of interstate commerce strictly a Federal matter, not a state matter - otherwise each state you want to have customers from could require you to get an expensive license.
  
• Fourth Cause - it says they're misrepresenting the country they're operating from - but the complaint doesn't say what country they *are* from
  ("Canyon Country" is a city in Southern California), and if it's not in the US, it's not California's jurisdiction and California business regulations shouldn't apply to them.
  
• Fifth Cause - the state argues that by doing many of these sleazy things, they've engaged in unfair competition - but they don't say who they defendants are allegedly competing unfairly with (other spammers? How is that unfair?).
  
• Worse, in Paragraph F, it says that the defendants have used open relays in violation of Penal Code section 502 - but this isn't a criminal complaint, and allegations that somebody might be a criminal is really poor evidence in the absence of an actual criminal prosecution. It's especially tacky because they don't specifically indicate where the alleged open relays are or where the defendants live, which would affect whether a California penal code would have any jurisdiction over them.
  
• The requested injunction complains about them making misrepresentations, but the only misrepresentations it's complaining about are the email and postal addresses used to send the mail and receive the responses - they're not claiming that the actual sleazy pitch is a misrepresentation, which would be an appropriate case for the state to be involved with.
  

All told, it's a terrible case, and it ought to be possible to either find a much better set of sleazy spammers to make an example of, or do a competent and Constitutional job of prosecuting them properly

Re:one of a million

[clueless_penguin]

This is a state case, not Federal. A federal Appeals Court will never see it. The loser in the CA supreme court may appeal to the US supreme court, but it is very unlikely they will hear it. And if they do, it still doesn't apply nationwide. If the US Supreme court were to uphold a CA state law, it just means that other states (or the US congress) could pass similar legislation and have the proper case law to keep another lower court from striking it down.

Re:Realistic Spam control

[GutBomb]

spam is not profitable. well, the act of spamming is not profitable, the only people who make a profit on spam are the people selling address lists to people who think spamming itself is profitable.

Do what I do...

[telstar]

When you get spam, look up the contact for whatever domain sent the spam in the "Whois" directory, and give them a call. I do it all the time. I did it today. Works like a charm because they want to talk to you less than you want to receive their spam.

Re:Oh yes...publicity always cripples businesses

[odaiwai]

Nope, spam will stop when and only when the ISPs refuse to tolerate it. They're the only people who can stamp it out at source. Blocklists like SPEWS (http://www.spews.org) block the ISPs who don't respond to spam complaints. When their own customers start complaining that their mail can't get through because their own ISP is a spam supporter, the ISPs might start to take action.

dave

Hotmail

[Adam9]

Awesome.. now anyone (everyone) who has a Hotmail account is protected

Registrant:
Hotmail Corporation (HOTMAIL-DOM)
1065 La Avenida
Mtn. View
US

Domain Name: HOTMAIL.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Records, Custodian of (COR58) enforce_policy@HOTMAIL.COM
MSN Hotmail
1065 La Avendia
Mtn. View , CA 94043
(650) 693-7066 (FAX) (650) 693-7061

Re:What about popup ads

[cobar]

What a poor troll.

The junk postal mail receive takes us time to throw away -- and time is money. If we recycle it, it costs our local recycling center money to transport it. We pay taxes for that. That is money.

You pay a fixed amount to have a certain amount of trash collected, which the junk mail is unlikely to exceed. So, only the trash company has a legitimate claim to damages for snail mail. Additionally, there is no assurance that you would make money with your time. And most of all, by contacting the Direct Marketing Association, it is possible to opt out of 90% of junk snail mail.

Heck, pretty much anything that anybody does that we aren't *in favor* of will somehow inconvenience us and cost us money. The kid next door downloaded pr0n slows down my cable modem -- is he *stealing* from me?

That's a ridiculous statement. The kid next door has paid for his service - to the cable company. If you aren't satisfied with the service, complain to them and ask to have him shut off. Unless they guarantee you a minimum amount of bandwidth, they aren't obligated to do provide you with anything - you can quit if you don't like it.

Get real people. It doesn't cost you much money to download less that 1k messages. Especially if you have a *free* email account like yahoo, excite or hotmail. If you are careful about who you distribute your email too you can reduce a lot of your spam.

Guess what, it costs us ISPs a decent amount of money to deal with spam. If some customer stops checking his account, we get to hold his spam for him till he comes back wasting disk space. We also get to field calls from people who are pissed off at seeing porn emails in their box. And worst of all, you sometimes get that flagrant spammer who tries to send 50,000+ messages to your customers with bad return addresses - making you waste 2-3 hours of paid time cleaning out the queue so that the real messages get delivered promptly.

A final note - the one that will probably make this post be labelled as "flamebait" - how can we advocate stealing from the RIAA in the form of trading copyrighted music but have *zero* tolerance of spammers who are little more than a tiny annoyance in our lives?

Because most slashdot users are hypocrites and the file trading issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that it can be used for legal purposes even though most of the traffic is illegal.

Unsolicited spam however is black and white - abuse of my property is wrong no matter how little cost it incurs. To put it another way, would you mind if a neighbor walked through your yard everyday? Maybe not, but you would have a right to complain. And you'd probably consider taking action if 50 neighbors were doing it on a regular basis.

Does the punishment fit the crime?

[Andy_R]

Suggested remeides:

For penis enlargement spamming:
Forced 5" lengthening by pulling HARD without anasthetic

For breast enlargement spam:
forced DD surgical implants for male spammers, (same for females, but the get them in the buttocks)

For MLM get rich quick spam:
Sending $1 to every name at the top of the list, $5 to every name on the next line, $25...etc

For hot naked chick webcam spam:
Locked naked in apartment full of chickens with central heating on full - streamed over web, ofc.

For hentai spam:
Rubber tenticle orifice violation.

Copy any DVD or playstation game spam:
Copying full binary content of playstation game disk onto paper with a biro.

Re:Does the punishment fit the crime?

[sharkey]

For breast enlargement spam: forced DD surgical implants for male spammers, (same for females, but the get them in the buttocks)

Jennifer Lopez is a spammer?

Re:So it's illegal to send ANY unsolicited mail?

[odaiwai]

No - if you send junk snail mail, then you pay the postage costs. If you send spam, the recipient pays to download it. (small amounts, to be sure, but the burden of cost is on the recipient.)

That's the crucial distinction between junk snail mail and spam.

dave

NO TAX!

[Quila]

The LAST solution to any problem that anyone should ever propose is a tax, and then it should be rejected immediately. Never underestimate the insidious, spreading nature of a tax.

60+ a day now! arrrgh!

[jafac]

make em pay, don't make em pay, I don't care!

Just make the fuckers STOP!

Re:Spammers have every right to exist

[schon]

Then prosecute theft.

Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but that's pretty much what's happening.

Spammers are stealing bandwidth, and the government is passing laws against it, and then prosecuting the spammers.

What was your point again?

Can somebody hack and kill this spammer for me?

[JohnnyCannuk]

I can't do it through my corporate network

The IP is 216.34.211.29 and 216.34.211.89

The offender network is exodus.net.

They do not answer or act on my non-munged Spamcop reports (for weeks now)

Therefore, somebody please nuke them....

The link is as follows
http://clicks.sportadvisors.com/subscribe .asp?eid= 9077&lid=13&email=******@*****

Re:one of a million

[Bilbo]

The trick is, will the US Supreme Court (or the CA court for that matter) decide that the limitations imposed by the CA law are unconstitutional. The spammers have been saying that restrictions are an illegal limitation of their first ammendment Free Speach rights. Obviously, the state of California is saying that this is a matter of commerce and consumer protection, not speach.

Once the courts have decided which it is, then other states are very likely to follow suite, one way or the other.

(An interesting point is, even though the SPAM originates from outside of CA, it is directly affecting CA residents, and their property (equipment at ISP's, etc). CA can't fine someone for sending me a SPAM in New York, but once it crosses the CA state line, it's in their jurisdiction. Once the originator is offshore, then things get more complicated...)

Re:Already happening

[invenustus]

Hmm, if they are going to try to hold me to thier disclaimer, maybe I should send them a message with a disclaimer saying that by continuing to send any email to my address they are agreeing to pay me $500 per message & $1000 for any bit of personal info they share with thier "marketing partners."

That's a damn good idea! Any lawyers want to give their take on it? I guess you'd have to be able to prove you'd sent that....