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!!!"

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...

[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

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

[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: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."

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.

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.

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.

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: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: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: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.

It figgers

[Tablizer]

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

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

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.