Suing Spammers: What works?

jdedman4 writes "According to Junkbusters, various civil lawsuits against Spammers have used a number of theories, including the analogizing of junk email to junk faxes. As there have been a number of "IANAL, but . . ." discussions of late, I was curious as to which legal theories, if any, you all thought might work against spammers. Does the fact that a spammer deluges us all with automated commercial email subject him and his enterprise to personal jurisdiction in the courts of the fifty states? What torts do the spammers commit (intentional affliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, false light, nuisance, et cetera?) Might an unfair trade practices lawsuit be brought? Is state or federal law a better weapon? Why haven't the legislatures been more active in this area? It seems like this is a pure public relations winner for a media-conscious political figure - everyone hates spammers. If this is such a widespread and pernicious menace(which of course it is), why hasn't some enterprising young plaintiff's attorney filed a class action suit? Is it that the spammers are essentially judgment proof, or that they are difficult to find, or all of the law is analagous but not directly helpful?"

Comments

Theft of Services

[routerwhore]

Outright theft has always been my favorite course of thought. They are stealing my bandwidth, my cpu cycles, my disk space. Not a big deal for one message, but when it comprises 30% of mail traffic, then that means my operating expense is 30% hire. This is real money they are stealing from me. If they paid me, or anyone (post office) to accept it, fine, thats different. The main reason spam needs to be made illegal is because it is outright theft.

Re:Please Explain

[dacarr]

As always, IANAL. One typically provides a URL when they spam, which can typically be traced somehow to a physical address. How this is done is left as an exercise, but in the end it'll probably involve a subpoena. The message can be traced by IP (the modern MTA's will implant them in the headers), the provider can take their own action. As for subpoena, if you want to take action, you need one against the ISP providing the account to the user. One way or another, you *can* find them.`

Here's the problem I found.

[Mustang Matt]

I tried to sue a spammer once. I talked to a lawyer for a while but the problem is that I couldn't prove much as damages.

Yes, they abused my resources and my bandwidth that I pay for but even if they sent 100 duplicate messages, that's such a small fraction of the bill that it's not worth trying to sue them.

I get a lot of spammers that send between 5-20 duplicate emails to @mydomain.com and I have a catchall setup, it pisses me off to no end that spammers can't go through their lists and clear off all 'root' and 'webmaster' and 'info', 'billing', 'support', etc. accounts off their lists.

Now I'm using SpamPal but that doesn't solve the problem, it just keeps it from being as annoying for me.

Re:Spam is also used to attack people

[jdedman4]

I would have difficulty prosecuting because I am in Canada and the spammer in the U.S. But since the same spam was also sent out in the name of an web designer in Tennessee and spamcop.net someone else may be able to prosecute.

I wonder if part of the problem is a lack of complainants. Do the people to whom this happens take the time to file an official complaint with the district attorney or federal prosecutors? Does it occur to them to contact a plaintiffs attorney to suggest a possible suit? This might make a spectacular class action lawsuit, provided that a suitably wealthy corporation could be found to sue. Stealing one's identity to send offensive pornographic or automated commercial email simply has to be tortious or illegal or negligent per se or something, you know?