Slashdot Mirror
Spammer Fined $2,000 Plus Costs in Washington
berniecase writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Jason Heckel, of Salem, OR, has been ordered (on summary judgment, no less) by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North to pay $98,000 for sending spam to Washington state residents. Heckel's lawyers say they'll appeal on the basis that Washington's law violates the constitutional protection of interstate commerce."
Spam isn't interstate commerce, it's interstate harassment...
Spam has never helped me in a monetairy way, and for me has nothing to do with products whatsoever...
Which adds a nice cool $96,197.74 on to it.
And that was only 2/3rds of what the state asked for in costs. They also asked for $20,000 in fines.
Washington's law does not make all spam illegal. Only e-mails that use a deceptive subject line, misrepresent the e-mail's origin or use someone else's domain name without permission are prohibited.
This is interesting. Virginia's law is similar, it's an extension of the fraud laws, not of the computer crime laws. I think that is a good way to attack the issue without running into first amendment issues.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
According to the article, he sold pamphlets for $40 in quantities of 30-50 per week for about a year. This was while sending 100K to 1M e-mails per week. So, at best, he's getting a 0.04% response rate.
Doing the math assuming an average for 40 sales pe week, he made $1600/wk, or $83,200 per year before expenses.
Since the fine is $98k, his losses, before expenses, are $14,800. Ha ha! Spamming doesn't pay!
mandated by the WTO, to prevent spammers from breeding.
Yeah, we need an unaccountable, basically secret organisation of corrupt career beurecrats to have the power to fine people for sending messages out that someone doesn't want to recieve. What a wonderful plan! I'm sure their abuses of authority will be central to any calls to overthrow all world government via armed struggle over the course of the next century - since peaceful progress is for pussies, I support this plan wholeheartedly. Also, we should give the WTO the authority to try and execute journalists and peace corps volunteers.
How's about this - everyone sign an anti-spam treaty, and then make it enforceable in the courts with local jurisdiction over the spammer, regardless of were the spam went. The WTO would be guaranteed to clamp down on any spammer that wasn't part of their clique, so you miss something in enforcement, but at the very least you have a direct guarantee (which ought to be explicit in the treaty) that this power won't be used to stifle public participation or the like.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Exactly correct--the spam you receive seems to originate overseas. Actually, much of it is coming from hucksters in North America. They're just bouncing their pitches off open relays overseas.
~Idarubicin
That's right. And now all we need is for all normal email subject headers to start with Not Unsolicited Mail: to get through the spam filters. Hell, the email client can even add and remove the thing automatically. Anybody who sends a spam email with those words is committing fraud.
You may think it's silly, but it's the law. All law is location-based... think about it! By your logic, you couldn't prosecute someone for transmitting child porn because he can't be sure of the location of the recipient (whether that should be prosecuted or not is another question, and one that I won't debate here; it's clear that it can be prosecuted, which is what counts).
If there's a risk of breaking the law, the onus is on the perpetrator to ensure that he's sending his stuff only to places that he's allowed to send it. The fact that it's hard to do that isn't the law's problem... maybe that'll give the spammers a little less incentive to spam in the first place.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
There are good ways to slow them down considerably right now -- spam filters, blacklists, etc. These have made it significantly harder for spammers to get their email to their targets/victims, and reduced abysmally low response rates even further.
However, stopping spammers or any other kind of criminal entirely isn't possible. Despite the clear laws and effective enforcement, people still kill other people, steal their property, etc. What the laws and enforcement do is make it dangerous to commit crimes, and deter most people who might otherwise do so.
Before you can deter a spammer in, say, China, you've got to think of a way to make him/her think that spamming is too dangerous and not worth the trouble. That depends on, not just new laws, but a very different international legal environment. (That, or convincing the Chinese government that all spammers are members of Falun Gong.) <wry grin>
Catherine
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The law has always upheld the notion that I cannot do business, international, interstate or otherwise through misrepresenting myself.
If I am misrepresenting myself through name, address or other contact information, there are many who say this would amount to fraud and deception.
The anit-spam law does nothing more than spell out the forms of fraud and deception that are not permissible and identifies the consequences of those acts. Fraud and deception in business has always been immoral and almost always been unlawful. Like so many other laws written in the past 8 years, there isn't anything really new about them -- they merely attempt to clear up the "grey areas" associated with using newer technologies to perpetrate old crime.
That said, I hate the DMCA and all it stands for -- they go too far. But just as I have said, this is nothing new -- Copyright violation is really nothing new -- it was illegal before and it's illegal now.
Now maybe my support of anti-spam and my position against the DMCA might seem contradictory except for my view on what law is for. Law should protect the rights of all the people. When it starts to protect or create the rights of a minority at the expense of the rights of the whole population, there is a serious problem with the philosophy of law. Anti-spam law protects the rights of the whole population. The DMCA creates new rights [powers?] for a minority at the expense of our rights to fair use and criminalizes the whole nation for trivial and common acts of the public.
If your state doesn't currently have anti-spam law, write a letter to your law makers about it. It takes about as much time and effort as writing an email... in many cases, it's the same effort -- send them an email!! Anti-spam is something the whole city, state and country can get behind and might be a really cool [modern] 'issue' to talk about while campaigning for re-election. Use your voter's leverage to get things done. That's ultimately what "campaign contributions" are allegedly for anyway... money to use to get you to vote for them. Just tell them you won't vote for them unless you get the kind of law you are interested in. After that, no amount of campaign contributions would help them get re-elected... then the gravy train is over for them.
You're reading this... you're taking lots of time you could be spending writing to your law makers... are you still here? You're still reading this aren't you. You lazy-ass! Complacant cow. Say something! Do something and quit complaining that there's nothing you can do when you can. If you've already done it, do it again... are you still reading? Why? Crap...
When some people discover the truth, they just can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it.
Let's say he sends 100k spam e-mails a week, every week, for one year. He gets .004% of the people he mails to pay $40 for a pamphlet.
So he gets 40 people, a week to buy a pamphlet. That is $1,600 a week.
That is $89,600 a year
If he woulda just paid the $2,000 he would have made a dandy profit.
Here in the USA, I suffer with both.
Ad banners don't even get clicked on 0.4%, what makes you think spammers will get BUYS that high? I'd say it's more like 0.001%. But since the cost is almost zilch for them they make up for the low percentage by mass mailing millions of accounts.
eTrade SUCKS
Not that I agree with spammers or their methods, but speech is speech, whether you like it or not is irrelevant.
Many spammers argue that free speech constitutes that banning spamming is a violation of protected free speech.
This is a straw argument to avoid the real issue.
First, commercial speech is not protected by the US constition in the way free speech by US citizens is.
Second, wether I like it or not is relevant.
The right to free speech means that the government or its officials cannot forbid citizens the freedom of expression.
It does not mean, however, that citizen A has to listen to another citizen B's speech forced upon him. Free speech also does not mean that citizen A has to allow citizen B to talk freely on A's property.
As a cinema owner, I can expell a weirdo who stands up in the middle of the film and reads from the communist manifesto. As a newspaper editor, I can decide which letter the paper publishes and which not. As an internet provider, I can decide if my mail servers filter spam or not.
And finally, the very method of spamming is illegal over here in Germany and I have successfully brought a spammer to court here (although with very little financial consequences for the spammer). It's good to see that US courts are seing the light, as well.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
IANAL
If you buy, rent, lease, or contract for a service, it's chattel. If it's chattel, it's property.
If you rent a car from Avis, and while you are parked in the parking lot for Home Depot, and I put a lock on your car so you can't drive it, then I'm commiting a tortious interfearance with your contract with Avis, and depriving you of the use of something you paid for.
Even if I unlock it before you come out, it's actionable, because you MIGHT use it and you paid for it.
If I put a govenor on your rental car to keep you from going over 25 MPH, still a problem. I'm keeping you from using your rental car the way you leased it.
When you "buy" internet access, you are buying a service from someone. If I send you spam, you can't use that bandwidth while I'm sending. When I send you spam, it takes space in your mail box, depriving you of the use of that space. When you download your mail, I'm using space on your system to store spam, space you can't use for anything else until it's deleted.
As you can see, every phase of sending spam once it hits your ISP is depriving you of something you paid to use, never agreed to let me use, and is stolen every time I send you spam.
I've seen spammers try to use this arguement, and they get shot down pretty quickly.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.