Slashdot Mirror
AOL Wins Anti-Spam Case
saikou writes "CNet writes in this story: 'A Virginia federal court awarded America Online nearly $7 million in damages as part of the Internet service providers' legal victory over a junk e-mail operation, AOL said Monday.'
Now, given tough times we should see more and more ISPs sue (and, hopefully win) the evildoers if not for their users mailboxes sake, then for their own budget. How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"
is it a good thing that i'm rooting for AOL?
I should sue AOL for that 7 million!
I'm a paying subscriber and I *still* get pop-up ads from them!
Stage one was to flood him with real junk mail. Now Stage 2 is to sue his arse off :)
'A Virginia federal court awarded America Online nearly $7 million in damages
Great, now they have to collect it. Given that the losing party will probably declare (financial) bankruptcy to avoid paying, it's probably a lost cause. As we all know, much like the Catholic church, spammers declared themselves morally bankrupt a long time ago.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
AOL sponsored spam?
(and, hopefully win) the _evildoers_ if not for their users mailboxes sake, then for their own budget
Evildoers? *shakes head*
I don't want to SUE them.
:P
:)
I want to SHOOT them.
Seriously, I think if the Mafia went after spammers, we'd be seeing a whole heckofa lot less spam.
The drawback to that is there probably isn't enough ocean to hold all of the spammers they'll give concrete shoes to.
Can we colonize Mars with spammers that lost a lawsuit?
I am confused....Aol is for Anti-Span? Does this mean we like or dislike AOL now?
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I mean, come on. Now spam is "Evil?" Annoying, yes. Illegal, maybe. Evil? Not a chance. This kind of rhetoric cheapens what real "evil" is.
Is the money going to distributed for the affected customers.? Do u think they will get their share of the "goodies" ?? when they are the ones who were most affected!!!!
don't knock it, it's got its own key!
AOL, one of the biggest abusers of unsolicited e-mail, has won a case against someone else. As we know, AOL REALLY needs the 7 million dollars too, being one of the biggest media enterprises and all.
I don't know about you guys, but this is not good news at all. I'm still hoping AOL goes down.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
25% ?!?!?! Holy dilly bars (tasty Dairy Queen treats).
Sex - Find It
Maybe this will help keep AOHell from laying off as many people as they were. Though I doubt it. But hooray to them for helping to kill SPAM!!
Now if only they'd stop spending so much on Shooting Targets, Paint Pallette's, Coasters, and Non-Recyclable TIN CASES they might be able to stop firing people and even show a profit!
Put advertisements on CD's and mail them everywhere.
How many times does it have to be said? Your right to free speech does not mean that others must bear the burden of paying for it.
What part of the first amendment requires me to pay in order for you to speak?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
What if AOL decides to sue that guy who made a fortune thru spamming?
I'd pay to see that...
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
What about the big providers that knowingly and willings host spam gangs? Surely the next target of a suit should be UU.Net. See my Boycott MCI rant for why we should go after UUNet.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
nice troll. i think it has quite good chances, great potential. good luck for the future!
;-)
Go AOL! The key here was not just "unsolicited" but also "deceptive." As if we didn't already know that at LEAST 99.99% of all product offer spams are scams...
Here is a mirror.
"I wonder if Hotmail can sue MSN for spamming their spam filter."
Spam cases win YOU!
Postmen should sue AOL for injuries incurred hauling all those CDs around.
1,000,000,000 hours free! Because no one really wants dial-up.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Do you have cable TV?
You know that a significant portion of your bill is used to fund those shitty public access channels with all those toothless, homeless preacher types and the naked people running around in front of cameras like idiots that nobody watches, right?
Considering that they send CDs without solicitation, I think it is a bit hypocritical to sue spammers for what they do to the USPS.
At least eMail spammers aren't costing the taxpayers as much money as AOL is with their CD campaign.
OTOH, it kind of sucks spending hours to clean out hundreds of spam emails, so *gasp* I guess we should root for AOL?
Try reading the article. They are not being sued over free speech issues. They were sued because of deceptive advertising and misleading people into thinking the advertisements were coming from AOL itself -- things like that.... not simply for sending advertisements.
Have you been away for some, oh, 3-4 years? Deep in a coma? Lived on a desert island?
The States was once a great place, but is turning into a Soviet-like totalitarian regime; with the people's concent!
It would hardly be a tyranny of the masses. Rather, a tyranny of huge corporations. Nothing new to see here, moving right along...
sig
the truth is, the head AOL dude fell for one of the penis enlargement scams, and got pissed.
As I see it, this is good for two things.
1. The spammer stops spamming.
2. Starts a trend of spam not being profitable
You, like the judge, can't see the forest for the trees.
In your zeal to blast spammers with this theives of service label, you don't realize that you already receive a lot of unwanted speech that you had to pay for whether directly or indirectly.
There really isn't any justification for the double standard.
I have been pwned because my
1. Attract as much spam as possible
2. Sue spammers
3. PROFIT!!!!!!
Since the software's launch, the company said, AOL has been able to reduce the amount of incoming spam by 20 percent as a result of members' spam reports.
Yahoo! Mail's Spamguard seems to be much more effective. Before using the spamguard, I was receiving nearly 10 spam mails per day. Now I get about 1 every two days.
my girlfriends name kate, i love her, and i missed two first posts by 1 post. just odd, and a reason to let my karma hit the ground. less of course i post anonymously...
muha!
- cornjchob
Yes, anyone has the right to speak freely. But, that doesn't mean we have to listen to your message. You don't have the right to force your message on me, that is my decision. So go on and speak, but only to those who WANT to listen to you.
Dear friend,
Are you having trouble paying your bills and affording subscriptions to all those porn sites?
Well our unique money making system will ensure that you can claim squillions of dollars in just a few short weeks.
Yes, based on the recent spamming decision in favor of AOL, we've produced a set of reports that you can use to earn a fortune!
By following the simple instructions contained in these reports, you can set up your own tiny ISP operation and your own spamhaus.
Then, after you've sent *yourself* several million spam messages, we show you how to get the courts to award you $7 million in damages against yourself
It's so easy anyone can do it.
But hurry, supplies of these important reports are strictly limited so don't miss out.
Do not reply to this email, we made a small typo when entering the address - it's not Ajj389782@yahoo.com it's actually zw99qwX@hotmail.com.
Or you can ring our toll-free 19-00 number and speak to one of our friendly Romanian operators who are waiting to take your order.
NOTE: this email is not spam, it has been sent because you (or someone with your hair-color) filled out a contact form on our website.
If you wish to be unsubscribed from our special offers mailing list then simply send an email to signmeup@spamhaus.spam.spam
38enmdu3nmd3i393je
Free Speech? Is it free speech if I walk up to your front yard with a Megahorn and start ranting to you about Hot Sluts 4 You or Dirty Cheap Viagra? How about discount diplomas in your subject of chioce? Would you like to share my 10 million dollars? Refill your expensive printer cartridges. Lose weight fast. Attract women now. Refinance. Here's your free pass. You've won. Hot Date. Cheap insurance for you. Business Forcast! Improve your penis size!
You wouldn't like it very much. You'd hate it in fact if it were a regular thing. While SPAM may no be trespassing, it is often fraud and that is against the law. When it's not fraud, it's often done through the use of stolen resources (in terms of server space, bandwidth, or personal information). Those too are crimes.
The few bits of spam you actually do get from legit businesses with interesting products or services are so drown out by the pure flood of crap that those who are trying to do real business without breaking any laws are harmed by the rest of the spammers.
Thus, spam isn't free speech. It's dishonest, it's annoying, it's unethical, and it's harmful to legit internet-based business.
I'm not saying spam should be outlawed altogether. I am saying that current laws should be enforced strictly against current spammers. Most of them are guilty of at least one serious crime even if it's simply an invasion of privacy.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
This is great. But for every legal victory there is over spam or p2p software doesn't this setup for another legal loophole to be found?
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
We have your settlement money ready to deliver. Seven million dollars! Unfortunately, we're having trouble getting it out of Nigeria because the current government is corrupt and has frozen our assets. If you could give us your bank account number, we could wire the money to you directly. Congratulations on your win!
Mumar Zibutu
Former King of Nigeria
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
Does AOL try to make their customers more dumb?
I have a couple friends that use AOL at home, and didn't even know that you once you dial up, you can minimize it and use IE (or whatever). I tried to explain that all AOL is really there for is to establish some connection.
Are these people really that dumb? Or does AOL lead them to believe that you HAVE to use AOL? I've never used it myself, and don't intend on it, but honestly...
Checklist:
1) sue spammers -check!
2) figure out how to recycle 1 million AOL CDs...
My usual suggestion would be taxing spam, licensing it at non-viable rates, etc. The results would be used to help defray the cost of the infrastructure, and to compensate spam victims.
and of course, you would need bounty hunters to track down the ones who are using fraudulent information.
Licensing is to verify correct legal data on spammers.
Personally, I think spammers should wear their spam licenses out in the open in public, so everyone knows who they are. Extra bonus brownie points if the spam licenses are large bright orange tags attached to the ears.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Ya but at least AOl Pay's the Postal Service for the use of the mail carriers, trucks, etc....
im glad someone is doing this on the behalf of its users. if only other isps do the same. lets hope this is a wakeup call to the internet community at large. spam will not be tolerated. please, report your spam to spamcop, or your isp.
99% of the SPAM I recieve is undesirable and expensive noise. Forged headers of commercial email certainly has nothing to do with "free speech".
And sending commercial email under the guise of someone else (ie - using my email address in the FROM: header) ) should result in very heavy fines (may I suggest to the legislators a punitive fine of US$25000 per email destination)
Some free speech advocates will complain about a loss of their freedom to send commercial information to deserving customers. Happily, there are still countless avenues to communicate to these deserving souls: telephone, personal visits, snail mail, newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads, pre-movie ads, magazines, movie product placements, tv show product placements, yellow pages, airplane banners, billboards, etc.
...when you don't know it's coming. The delete key (or close window in pop ups cases) is too late, forced speech has already taken place.
You make a huge logical jump from spam is "dishonest, it's annoying, it's unethical" to "spam isn't free speech".
Lots of speech, or free expression, is dishonest, annoying, and unethical depending on your perspective. It doesn't mean that it isn't protected.
Obviously, fraud is something that ought to be checked, but you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of fraud.
As for invasion of privacy, you'll have to provide concrete examples because I have never seen an instance of this.
Why is this modded down? This is one of the best comments ive seen in a while.
Here's a thought provoking question for you. Lets say for instance that AOL got really good at getting rid of spam to the point that you rarely recieved junk mail to an AOL account. Would you pay AOL to get a spam free email account?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
"awhile" isn't a word.
Why don't you come over here and yell your advertising out of my window? Yes, just stick your head right in that window right there. A little further to the left....a little out. OK. Hold it right there.
(/me grabs window and WHAM! closes it on your head)
Do you still feel that you have some kind of right to yell whatever you want out of a window that belongs to me?
I realize that you were trolling, but it's still useful to point out that you can yell whatever you want out of your own window. If you yell out of my window I will close it on your head.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
You're dead right -- spammers will simply run their businesses like the movie industry does.
Set up numerous little companies so that those which run into problems (such as being a box-office bust or having the snot sued out of them) can be bankrupted at no real cost to the people behind them.
I would expect that these spamhaus companies would rent their computers and other "assets" from a parent company at a rate equal to the revenues the spamming generated. That parent company would (of course) be a legally separate entity. This means that when the sued company is bankrupted for failure to pay the fines, it has neither assets nor cash in the bank and the spammers don't lose a penny.
It's a strategy that's been used countless times before in many different industries. The only losers are the *real* creditors who are unfortunate to lose their money -- but in this case that serves them right for dealing with a spammer anyway.
Holy penis, Batman! The frontpage made it look like I'd get an FP! And there are Eighty-Nine comments here! Holy cocksuckers!
...Did I say I was gay?
But I can yell whatever I like into your window, which is the correct analogy in this case.
You pay for the property you live in, but you have no control over what kind of sounds may enter from the outside except the physical barriers (akin to spam filters) that you establish yourself.
I have been pwned because my
IMHO, this is a victory for AOL users, spammers are going to scramble now to delete %@aol.com from their databases, but that's about the extent of it.
Once a backbone provider (like Level3 or %Bell%) gets up the gusto to throw this kind of lawsuit at spammers (and offshore spammers), we may actually see some reprieve.
Until then... "So easy to avoid spam, no wonder it's number one!"
Hammer of Truth
this is good news
maybe ill try this
specially since every smtp server i configured
has the following greeting:
"it is ilegal to send SPAM through this server and such action is subject to legal action, continuing the connection means accepting this agreement"
i would also sugest that everybody put something like this on their servers
-- SouNerd.com
In the last 34 hours or so, since the logs last rotated, my server has received almost 1000 spams and blocked the delivery of over 8000 more. I'll call that 6000 spams in 24 hours. This is just one mail server on a large campus with many different mail servers.
At $60,000 a day (dreaming) per machine a cluster of honeypots could wipe out the university's $11 million budget defecit in a week or two.
http://legal.web.aol.com/decisions/dljunk/cnprod.h tml
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
We are the MTV generation. Our attention spans are
As others have said, that's a huge leap.
It certainly is protected (albeit, commercial) speech to put a note in your mailbox alluding to "Dirty Cheap Viagra."
It's little more than an annoyance.
- James
You can't take a person's house in Florida. That is why a lot of spammers and other scumbags tend to live there. You can sue them for everything, but you can't get their house. So, the car, the boat, the furnature, everything will be in the wife's name.
Michael Loves Me!
I cannot believe that you are seriously suggesting that we encourage criminal organizations to dump spammers into the ocean and drown them.
Think of the marine life who would be poisoned!
Better to just shoot them into a distant star. Not our sun, beacuse all of the hot gasses inside of spammers might cause it to go nova a bit early.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
It's nice to hear some positive news about a company that gets so much bad press on slashdot, makes me believe that there are those out there that aren't completly evil...
But I still feel dirty.
--
Hollywood representatives have publicly stated that skipping commercials is "stealing."
It'd be interesting to see if AOL actually gets any dough outta these guys. I would assume that even though the penis enlargement business is rather lucrative (heh), the spammers will probably just disolve into thin air and AOL will be out the money anyhow. *shrugs*
...by suing all of their members who send all those damn spams to me. Not only would they get the person's membership fees, but would get a court settlement too!
Who knows, maybe they could make a business model out of this by allowing those people to sign up again and repeat the process...
Yes, this was a joke, don't take it too seriously.
Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"
With the amount of spam I get, it would take a full time legal staff to do this. That would kind of cancel the benefit of the $9.95 discount.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Lots of speech, or free expression, is dishonest, annoying, and unethical depending on your perspective. It doesn't mean that it isn't protected.
Commercial speech does not get the same level of protection as non-commercial speech. Look up "Central Hudson test" on Google to get more information on this.
AOL finally did something that is worth while...
those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. -isaac asimov
They are a media conglomerate, but they are about as non-evil as they get.
Time Warner was one of the biggest backers of the DMCA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
99% of the SPAM I recieve is undesirable and expensive noise.
What's the other 1%? Desirable or cheap?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Although this was said in semi-jest, I think it is a good idea.
Imagine if they had some sort of centralized spam-reporting system. Everytime you got spam, you registered it (much like CloudMark's model). Come lawsuit time, you (depending on how much spam you registered) get a chance to cash in on all the spam they sent you.
Can I sue AOL for sending me all of these AOL cds? I mean.. if that isn't spam...
~The Incredible Xan~
"Saying that men can't be lesbians is gender discrimination."
While SPAM may no be trespassing
It normally is, especially when the ISP has made their policies against it clearly known.
I'm not saying spam should be outlawed altogether.
I am. Businesses and individuals should not have to invest money in servers, bandwidth, and storage so that spammers can flood them with unwanted advertisements.
The advertisements are being delivered at the recipients' expense. That's theft, pure and simple. It's no different than someone using your credit card to pay for the postage on junk-snail-mail that they send to you.
I think postal workers will be compensated enough by getting to go around on Seg-Ways that the US government is going to buy for them. I personally know I would be;)
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
AOL is evil.
You ever try to cancel an account with them? Good three monhts before you get any results. Plus the asshole who gets rude on the phone with when you try to cancel.
There was a time when AOL was the only National ISP and most techs kept an AOL account for travel to hit email and keep in touch.
And AOL sells its own customers to spam lists. Plus the advertisements they inundate you with.
AOL bought all those companies to further there share in the marketplace. They bought Netscape(where is it now) they bought Winamp, and ICQ, which totally sucks now and gives its own nice little pop ups.
Time Warner inventing phone telemarketing as we know it. I worked in a call center running dialing systems in the early 90's.
We called people whos subsciptions were about to end, had ended, and even vaguely looked at a magazine in the airport.
Entertainment Weekly, People, Time, NewSweek, and we were hired outsourced to other magazines. And this is a Time Warner org. Still operational today. All sanctioned by time warner. BUT NOOOOOOOOO they are not evil.
AOL hates Microsoft cause they took a big part of their business. Because AOL is all about the content they want you to see. And with IE and other Browsers, it is about what you want. Sour grapes all over the place.
GEEZ
PUTO
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The crux of the Central Hudson test is that the government must prove that there is a substantial harm in having the speech or there is a substantial benefit to prohibiting it.
Nothing of the sort can be attributed to spam.
In fact, the first thing that jumps out to any legal scholar is that the Court is directed to overrule any law that is applied to speech that is fraudulent unless there is also a substantial harm associated with the speech.
Since there is no substantial harm to users, any law that prohibits spam is prima facie unconstitutional and flies in the face of precedent, not the least of which is Central Hudson.
Advertising is Free Speech.
Then please post your credit card number here. I want to send advertisements to you by conventional mail but I do not want to pay the postage myself. This way, it will be like spam. You will pay for the delivery of the ad to you and I, being the advertiser, will only shoulder a fraction of the true cost.
I guess that you are in favor of collect calls from telemarketers, too...
Does anyone see these kinds of suits scary, and threatening to our free speech that we try ever so hard to protect? When you limit peoples communications methods - and spam can be very broad, it limits our speech. I find spam an annoyance, but I'd rather AOL spend the money they spent on that lawsuit to figure out a p2p filtering system like cloudmark's most excellent product for AOL users. (cloudmark filters out 98% of my spam, 0 false positive.. works off of checksums of emails)
Yes, spam costs you money - but so does looking through all the junk mail you get at home - that filtering can take a minute or too - the same amount of time as clicking delete on your computer.
I just don't know if this is something that you truely want to support if you get to the root of the issue.
I won a judgment against Printpal.com (owned by Piggyback.com, Inc) in Oregon from VA for $580 plus court costs ($43)! I am in the process of collecting it. Check it out:
http://purplecow.com/vaspam/
I hope to offer a service soon that will help VA residents (and other states which have anti-spam laws) sue spammers. If we can all do our part, thousands of lawsuits against spammers will get them to stop!
TossableDigits.com: Temporary Phone Numb
They could offer a small bounty for every spam header you recieve on their network that you forward to their legal department. A small percentage of any legal reward from spam you recieved could be awarded.
Like the lottery.
Maybe not such a good idea.
Can anyone come up with a community-centric constructive idea? Something that will combat spam and encourage good ettiquite. Like recycling, getting five cents back for every bottle. I used to do that, when I could get that bounty back. I was a kid, so I'd go around picking up bottles and asking neighbors for their bottles.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
How deep is the hole in hell that the spam folks should go into?
Nothing of the sort can be attributed to spam.
If you think that spam causes no "substantial harm", then you pay AOL's costs for servers, bandwidth, and storage to handle over ten million spam e-mail messages per day. And while you are at it, write checks to every ISP to cover those costs. Then go back and write checks to every Internet user that has paid higher monthly fees because of spam. Respected estimates put the total cost of spam into the billions of dollars every year.
Since there is no substantial harm to users
According to industry estimates, spam increases each subscriber's monthly costs by several dollars. Just how much would it have to cost consumers before you considered it to be "substantial harm"?
There is no constitutional right to send my 5 year old nephew viagra and my 6 year old niece breast enlargement cream.
SPAMMING is stealing! You do not have a constitutional right to use my servers and my computers for advertising. I am not allowed to force you to take collect calls so I can sell you my crap.
Fight Spammers!
Come lawsuit time, you (depending on how much spam you registered) get a chance to cash in on all the spam they sent you.
You'd better be damn sure you could (a) prove a specific spammer was involved and (b) collect damages. Why? Because if you thought you'd get paid for spam, you'd sign up for all the spam you could. Your ISP's (your partner in this game) costs skyrocket, and now making some extra cash off spammers seems a lot less feasible. Even if you get a judgement against the spammer, there's no guarantee it will cover the costs to accept all that spam.
you could make a killer pyramid scheme out of this. the person at the top could find 10 people who would each send him one piece of spam. then they would each find 10 more who would send one piece of spam to everyone above them and after a couple of weeks you could sue them all for seven million dollars.
i don't know how you would convince people to actually do this, but for that much money you could come up with something.
AOL does not claim that they are substantially harmed in this suit. They are more concerned with the fraudulent aspects of the spam.
Which means that they are more concerned with the content of spam than the nature of it (it being bulk email advertising and all). So we can safely assume that they have no qualms with it, nor qualms with storing it on their servers and using bandwidth to pass it along to subscribers.
So we can see right on the face that one of the largest internet companies, one that faces mountains of spam every day, doesn't see spam as a substantial problem much less their primary problem.
The spammers are violating the terms of service of their ISP, so (IANAL) wouldn't that mean that the ISP does not have to hold up it's end of the terms of service? Assuming they don't have to, then the ISP should sue the spammer, but they should also post the spammer's full name and contact info, plus provide a copy of the spam emails the spammer sent. Then each individual person could sue the spammer individually. To hell with the class action. We could make the ass hole appear in court everyday for the next 10 years. I sure as hell wouldn't mind sacraficing one day to take this guy to court and pay the legal fees. I'd represent myself and wouldn't care if I lost if there were many others doing the same thing.
If I drive fast enough at the red light, it'll appear green.
Everyone complains about cancelling AOL memberships, but I have a hard time beleiveing them. When I called up to cancel my free subcription on the 29th day of a 30 day trial, as soon as I said I wanted to cancel the medium-friendly person transfered me to an extra-friendly person who asked why i wanted to cancel, told me I could still use AOL's wonderfull services over my DSL line for only x dollars a month, then cancelled my account, and gave me a confirmation number.
Now, the evil media conglomerate conspiracies I'm all for, but I'd say AOL provides a friendly and easy method of getting online for people who don't know the difference between "the internet" and Internet Explorer.
Spam is evil. It may not annoy any one individual much at one time, but each day millions (probably hundreds of millions) of spam mailings are received by people who then have to deal with them. Over time if they have angered and irritated that many people, who is to say that is not worse that affecting a much smaller group to a greater extent?
Then of course, there are side effects like getting porn at work in email all because I'm on some list I can't rid my name from. What if I get fired for that? (Unlikley, but still).
If you had the abiility to put a nail in the tire of a million people a day, I would call that evil as well. Spam is the ability to annoy people brought to the level where it does, in my mind, become worthy of being labeled evil.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's even assuming the "Dirty Cheap Viagra." peddler wouldn't be guilty of mail fraud. (which is much, much more commonly prosecuted than email fraud...)
Sure, you could pay to send the note via the USPS, but that's basically what AOL is asking the spammers to do anyhow...
The interesting part of the article was how AOL managed to reduce, by 20% the amount of spam that ended up in their users mail boxes. They have implemented some system that allows users to "vote" on the quality of the e-mail. Once a critical mass of "trusted" voters agree that a given piece of mail is spam, that piece of mail is removed from every other members inboxen.
Critical mass total number of AOL users. And if one person consistantly "votes" against the norm, then their vote is weighted less, preventing spamers from voting that their own spam is !spam. Pretty cool system. I hope some OSS mail client can incorporate such a feature soon....
AOL spams everyone via the mail with Cd's and also increasingly in peoples inboxes, ive had two emails from AOL this week to an address i have never supplied them, netscape, or any of their child companies with. i should sure them for spamming my mail server and taking up bandwidth etc.
I'd love to see AOL dump all that cash (minus legal fees, of course) into Mozilla to help further develop the bayesian filters that they're adding to moz mail.
do not read this line twice.
Who modded this down? Heaven forbid the Catholic Church actually acknowledge that it did anything wrong. Jesus Christ. The guy mentions something that's been in the news repeatedly over the last six months, and you mod him down as if he's the devil incarnate.
Typical Slashbot knee-jerk behavior. If it's not a groupthink comment completely devoid of content, or a soviet russia joke, it gets modded down.
is it a good thing that i'm rooting for AOL?
Well, isn't it possible for an evil company to make people happy?
-- Sir Gary Coleman
Does this
Let's take another tack here.
You claim that you are being stolen from because you are paying for bandwidth that they are wasting or using without your permission.
What other things do you pay for?
Do you pay taxes? Your taxes pay for the public park. The bum doesn't pay any taxes. Why should he have primary usage of the public park? Shouldn't he compensate you for his thievery?
Perhaps sleeping in the park without paying taxes should be made illegal.
OK, we all hate spam. It is prolific, and abused.
But what kind of precedent is this setting? Could this be abused too?
Let's analyze what is happening here. One person has the right to sue another because they sent a mass email. How else can that be twisted?
What about internal email? Can a person be sued because they informed everyone in the company about a bake sale for their church? After all, they ARE promoting their religion with an unsolicited email. What if somebody used a quote from Carl Marx as their sig line? Is that offensive enough to be sued over?
I am sure that everyone here can think of other examples. The point is, one particular freedom has been abused by the few, therefore, it is being taken away from the many. What else can this lead to?
Just a thot.
"Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority." - Dr. Who
The worst spam, the spam that should be prosecuted, and the spam that should be destroyed, lies to the reader. The spam likely has forged headers. A lie. The spam likely has a misleading subject line. A line. The spam most likely has claims that goes beyond the traditional advertising hyperbole. A lie. The spam may fraudulently indicate that I signed up on a list. A lie. The spam may indicate a fraudult removal claim. A lie.
There is no way that fraudulent advertising speech is covered my the first amendment. Hyperbolic speech, probably, but not outright lies.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Same thing, different application. Unauthorized use of their bandwidth. I can't wait till all forms of corporate advertising is illegal on the net, thats going to rock.
I do not believe that and I challenge you to cite your sources. Every other complaint that they have posted from previous lawsuits has claimed harm. I attended a meeting regarding the spam problem and AOL had an attorney that was a featured speaker. They very much consider spam to be a terrible problem.
In AOL v. Over the Air Equipment, Inc., AOL's attorney, Everett C. Johnson, Jr. testified:
So we can see right on the face that one of the largest internet companies, one that faces mountains of spam every day, doesn't see spam as a substantial problem much less their primary problem.
No go back and reread their testimony from the prior case and then try to keep a straight face while saying that AOL does not consider spam a substantial problem.
If you are going to make stuff up, at least try to make something up that is more difficult to prove wrong.
they made a nice open-source webserver
No kidding? AOLServer is open-source? I always figured it was some closed, propriatary thing, but it's free and Free, according to sourceforge. Son of a gun.
AOL's products kind of suck, but unlike MS they can't (or don't) force you to interact with them. So, yeah, I suppose I like AOL more than MS.
May we never see th
What we need is for the backbone providers to start charging for the bandwidth that gets used. For example: Spammer A on Backbone X sends out a billion messages a day. Backbones Y and Z charge Backbone X for taking up so much of their bandwidth. Backbone X sees it's not economically feasible to allow Spammer A to send out the spam.
This is, admittedly, simplistic. But, for once, I'd like to see economics work in an open market without having the lawyers get rich.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
I've never heard of this Jay Nelson or CN productions. Can anyone fill me in? Does he have a rap sheet like Ralsky?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It is interesting how people hide behind the letter of the law when they know they are doing something wrong (I've just been through a email chat with a computer manufacturer re DVD regioning, as they said there is no law in Australia that prohibits region locking on DVD ROM drives, there are two laws that suggest it is wrong (Copyright ammendements 1996, and section 45 Trade and Practices Act 1974)). Free speech says you are allowed to say what you want, but surely the reality is more like you are allowed to listen to what you want? I don't want to listen to spam!
the defendant was the one being abusive. they got spanked because they violated an injunction ordered by the courts.
i fail to see how the judgement against them is abusive in any way, shape, or form.
Is this for real?
Let me get this straight, AOL used to sell email addresses of its subscribers to 'similar-industries' as part of its EULA. The business model used to be based on advertising as of a few months ago when the backlash against all the pop-ups came. They then realized that most of their customers were leaving because of all these ads. Now that AOL has decided to kill its advertising based revenue stream, they are TAKING TO COURT the same companies that they used to sell email addresses to?
You think its a joke, start your own email server under your own domain. I havent recieved ONE piece of SPAM since I started doing that
I guess thats an interesting way to replace the revenue stream
They charged us for FOUR YEARS after we cancelled!
Maybe I should get part of those millions!
Can I sue on behalf of the five email accounts on my box?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
you are a total dick. what the other guy wrote made sense and you just can't deal with it. he outsmarted you and now you are taking your ball and going home. boo hoo!
I know, and I'm pissed! I've heard those CD cans are great for carrying a couple of blank CD-R's around in your laptop bag, but they haven't sent me even one yet!!! Not one! I'm stuck carrying a bunch of wrapped CD-Rs in the super-thin jewel cases. I need an AOL CD can!
Intelligent Life on Earth
You ever try to cancel an account with them? Good three monhts before you get any results. Plus the asshole who gets rude on the phone with when you try to cancel
:)
Yes, in 1994 when I actually used the service.
It was cancelled immediately.
Why is it that whenever a person speaks to a rude customer service representative, that they assume the entire company is a collection of assholes? Perhaps it was just my limited experience in tech support, but believe it or not, it is possible that out of hundreds or thousands of good representatives, there are a few bad ones.
And AOL sells its own customers to spam lists. Plus the advertisements they inundate you with. I was unaware of this, but one of my clients has used AOL for about 8 months and has recieved a grand total of two spams, likely because of her fairly common name. (common name + email list generator).
Again, I am not saying AOL is not evil, I mean, they are a media conglomerate, and I wouldn't really be all that surprised of they shot your dog. I was saying that, as far as huge companies (which are traditionally utterly ruthless), AOL/TW isn't half bad. Please read my post again.
AOL bought all those companies to further there share in the marketplace. They bought Netscape(where is it now) they bought Winamp, and ICQ, which totally sucks now and gives its own nice little pop ups.
Yes, how evil, they purchased a web browser company whose core is open source software, they purchased Nullsoft so they could get -- gasp -- a large share of the free MP3 player market!
And regarding ICQ, if you'd use Linux clients, or even many Windows clients, there are simply no advertisements to be seen. Of course, even if there are and you use the Windows ICQ client, big deal! Running international servers for millions of people does cost money. AOL/TW is a public company. How do they justify running such a good service to their stock holders if they don't even attempt to offset some of the costs?
What was that about smoking crack? (and what a clever comment it was...) I haven't ever taken a business class and know this.
We called people whos subsciptions were about to end, had ended, and even vaguely looked at a magazine in the airport.
My parents were recieving calls from subscription services (magazines) regarding expiring accounts long before 1990. Regardless, that doesn't sound like telemarketing--telemarketing is, at least by my definition, more like, "I'd like to interest you in life insurance. We have snipers stations around your home. I do not recommend hanging up."
I do find it interesting, though, that AOL/TW invented magazines that can deduce your phone number simply by being looked at in airports.
BUT NOOOOOOOOO they are not evil.
I didn't say they were not. How many times do I need to point this out? Perhaps I should type it in multiple languages? In hex? Backwards?
Of course, even then "evil" is a somewhat ambiguous term, but let's not go there.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
because I found myself not too long ago sifting through spam sent by AOL..
>And you can thank the Bush administration (which >one? both!) for helping that process along. Please supply specific laws that either Bush, both of whom have (so far) served against a Democrat controlled Congress, are responsible for.
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-218360.html
"Not much, just more crap was added to them to make AOL money."
Yep nothing but crap added to Mozilla since then.
*rollseyes*
Nothing but the ongoing funding of Mozilla development. Oh right I forgot those Netscape employees who work on Mozilla do it for free. Netscape on their own would be bankrupt and gone today if AOL hadn't bought them. Thus Mozilla would NOT be where it is today without AOL. Yep sucks to hear, deal with it. I also noticed that ICQ and Winamp continue to be fully funded as well.
AOL may be a big bag of crap when it comes to their client software, but they served as Internet training wheels for a huge part of the Internet surfers today. They have their place.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
As far as I know, AOL doesn't have an SMTP server. The use a proprietary (maybe some form of IMAP) for their mail. Thats partially why its so fast inside AOL and so slow outside. It is also why Netscape can conenct to it but outlook can't. It is also why I got pissed when I couldn't connect to my old Compuserve SMTP server through AOL.
But as an unsolicted SMTP server i dont think so.
I'll be dragged kicking and screaming away from my server-embedded TCL modules and database connection pooling. Includes mapquest.com in its list of users, and that ain't hay.
"Oh, well I'm sorry if you don't appreciate my random murders!" - Crow T. Robot,
O, wait - been done! Hee hee. I love slashdot, and I love vigilantism. Two great tastes that taste great together.
Can I get $19.95 off my next bill if I present the spammer's head to the ISP (pre mounted and ready to hand on the wall, of course)?
That it has a [ Reply to This ] at the bottom?
--------------------------
Is this a sig?
--------------------------
How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"
This is a very interesting comment. It might actually work for states that have anti-spamming laws.
ISPs would have to make sure that the requirements for each state are clearly posted as not all bulk email would be in violation of most anti-spamming laws. In Washington State for example the law focuses on fraudulent behavior. I.E. Faked heading information, misleading subject line etc.
Washington State residents who want some protection from spam must give the spammer some way to know that their email address is a Washington State email address. I believe that the state maintains an email list that one can register their email address. If registered it is expected that the spammer has checked the list for each name prior to sending the email.
Anyway, if the spammer goes afoul of the law, the individual is allowed to collect up to $500.00 per spam and I believe that the ISP is allowed to collect $1,000.00 or more per email.
It seems like if ISPs were smart about it they could bankrupt some of the really big spammers.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Now I feel there is precedent for suing AOL for filling my mailbox with junk mail.
Is AOL good or bad? :)
While it's true that a single asshole rep shouldn't be taken as a smear on the entire company, they do have a big problem here, not just one rep. It's a structural thing. They have taken it upon themselves to make cancelling very difficult, on the apparently accurate assumption that their subscribers are rather easy to manipulate. They have a cancellation department, and those people are the only ones that can cancel your account. If you ask someone in another department, they can't transfer you, they can't even give you the number normally (unless you tell them you can't get online at all) rather they are to send you to 'keyword cancel'. There you find the number to call. There are one or two other choices, I think you can snail mail them (certified mail!), and maybe send a fax. Most people will call on the tollfree number, and it's set up to encourage that. When you call the tollfree number, you wait on hold for a fairly long period of time normally. If you hold on long enough, you eventually get a 'cancellation representative.' Now these guys are trained and expected, not to cancel your account as asked, but to find some way, any way, to talk you out of cancelling! In fact, their job performance is rated by the percentage of calls they 'save' from cancellation, and if that percentage dips below the goal, they are out looking for a job again. This can be turned to your advantage if you really didn't want to cancel, as they can and will give you free service for a month or sometimes more in order to get you off the phone without cancelling, but it's annoying as all hell if you really don't want the service. And given the pressure these kids are under to 'save' you whether you want to be saved or not, and the training they receive (adapted from the training developed for hard sell telemarketing) it's not surprising at all when one gets rude. She may, in fact, be fired for cancelling your account, so why wouldn't she be stressed out?
Your experience is somewhat dated btw, AOL in 1994 was a very different company. I don't know exactly when the system I described was put in place, but I know it's been this way since '99, and almost certainly a bit earlier, but probably not in '94 - there was a huge cultural shift at AOL after the huge expansions of the mid to late 90s.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Well, the first thing you do is call AOL and cancel your acc't there and/or use their online systems to do the deed.
Then, if the following month, if you see a charge from them, call the customer service number on the back of the credit card you used to pay for your AOL account. Tell them that you cancelled the account, the date on which you did so, and let them know that the charges were not authorized. Let your CC company know that no future charges from AOL should be honored.
That'll do it.
A distributed system could, in theory, hedge against that. By submitting your name, you agree that it was unsolicited. If you mistakenly say it was unsolicited, all the spammer has to do is say, "Look, our log says that Mr(s) So-and-So requested this e-mail" (at which point the "spammer" turns into a not-spammer).
In my ideal world, the burden of proof would be on the spammer to show that the bulk e-mail was solicited in the first place. I refuse to believe that gazillions of people willingly sign up for penis enlargement e-mails each day.
Interesting. DirecTV has a cancellation department as well, called "CRG" or, "customer retention group", which probably operates very similarly, except they are perfectly willing to cancel your account if you aren't interested in a month of free service or whatever the offer of the day is.
:)
Also, the reason I cancelled AOL was that they did not support OS/2 Warp. The representative probably realized that OS/2 support simply wasn't going to happen, but I ran my BBS with OS/2, and running the Windows version absolutely killed my system performance (with only 8MB of RAM). Those were the days...
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
that I have this thing in my "Inbox" about "TRY AOL 8.0 FREE"? I've never done any business with them, and do they have to shout in their ads too?
C|N>K
... wait a minute. Half of the spam I get COMES from AOL. Does that mean they sued themselves?
(Yes yes. Forged headers blah blah.)
They did however invent AIM in-house (it was originally the AOL messaging service, and then they created a stand-alone client for non-AOL users). It's not perfect, but it's definitely sufficient, and it's by far the most reliable messaging network I've used (I think there's only been a single instance of greater-than-8-hour downtime in the past 6 years I've been using it, and I can't recall a single instance of downtime greater than 1 minute in the past 2-3 years).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
(these numbers are non-authorative estimates generated by an inperfect, proven to be buggy device called brain, if you want to get removed from this list, please surf elsewhere)
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
...just have your smtp server blackhole silently every spam it is asked to relay, using bayesian filters to determine what is and what is not spam.
I'm quite surprised nobody has yet tried to bait spammers with false open smtp relays (that don't relay anything but pretend to).
I am sorry I'm confused, It would seem more likely that AOL actually promotes Spam and sells it's users e-mail addresses, based what I know of them. This goes against all I know of AOL. And all of a sudden we are cheering for them since they sued one spammer, or really they mean a spammer that was not authorized by them ie making them money. This is not the warm fuzzy corporate company...
"We must not, my friend, be the bubbles of our own liberal sentiments"
--John Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson
FWIW, at my faculty we will probably also have to upgrade our DNS server because of the spamming problem, because the size of the blacklists we use have grown so big that the current one can't handle it anymore.
Not really, they'll probably continue business, just under a different name. That's the problem with modern corporate structure. When individuals become shielded from liability, there's little to no accountability.
Fsck that.YOU can start a business, get sued for an ungodly sum, and lose all your personal assets if you want to, but I'm going to stay incorporated.
I'm not about shirking your accountability, but jesus... Losing your house, your car, and anything the creditors can sell to get cash is not the way to go.
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
> (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail :) )
:P
> to you and get $9.95 disount on your next
> bill
No, no, no... actually if my ISP was willing to sue all the spammers who spammed me, *I* would be willing to pay them an extra $9.95 on every bill
Shadus
Now let's get out there and sue some spammers!
but I'd say AOL provides a friendly and easy method of getting online for people who don't know the difference between "the internet" and Internet Explorer
It's interesting that you seem to see this as a good thing. Many, including me, wouldn't. I don't think it's that vital that EVERYONE is rushed onto the internet as quickly as possible. It would be very nice if they had to learn a little bit about it before they went online. If they did, I guarentee that we wouldnt have many of the problems we do today!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I was unaware of this, but one of my clients has used AOL for about 8 months and has recieved a grand total of two spams, likely because of her fairly common name. (common name + email list generator).
The e-mail may not get much spam (I don't know as I don't personally own an AOL e-mail account) but, as AOL's e-mail is propietary, you must use their client to access your e-mail. And guess what? Their client is *CRAMMED* with advertisements. I know this because of the few times I have had to use my dad's computer to connect to the internet. You connect, you get several popup dialogs with adverts. The client has inbuilt advertisements. 'Keyword' anything will have an inbuilt advertisement. Viewing e-mail will give you an advertisement. I couldn't believe this one, it looked like a goddamn parody but it was in fact the actual AOL client, but even the SIGN OFF dialog had 3 (THREE) adverts on it!!! I mean, how much bandwidth is this wasting, especially on a 56k modem???
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I apologise in advance if this point has already been made, but I can't see it anywhere.
Will AOL sue themselves now, for the horrendus amount of spam they inflict on everybody? Let's see, they've got TV ads, internet ads, billboard ads, CDs in the mail, radio ads.... they seem to have stopped just short of e-mail spam. That doesn't mean that all their other endless advertisements aren't annoying, though.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
1) Create product/service
2) Sue customors
3) $$$!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Anyway, ring up 3 and you're put through to the consultant who'll do the usual tricks to keep you subscribed. In my case I said I wanted to cancel because my box was broken and the 'consultant' persuaded me to stay on the promise of a cheap engineer call-out and a replacement box.
Fortunately that is what I wanted them to offer me this and I had no intention of cancelling, so it went pretty well in the end. Still, it annoys me that they can't play straight.
If I simply didn't want to see the spam, I could arrange list-washing on my own and use a combination of filters. But that, of course, just makes life easier for the spammers. Instead, I wish to have spammers actually pay a fair price for their advertising instead of shifting the cost onto the recipient systems.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
They've been spamming my snail-mail box for years! I must have recieved a hundred AOL CD's.
SQ
I hate to ask for more laws, but I'd like to see a law passed that requires any company providing a recurring-charge based service to:
(a) have a cancellations department
(b) make that department's contact information readily and easily available through all means which the company can be contacted (eg, no "online-only" phone list)
(c) the cancellations department's sole job is to cancel accounts. They may only ask once for a reason for cancellation and then process the cancellation. No offers, no lying, no bullshit, immediate cancellation.
Making you jump through sales hoops to cancel your account is dishonest, there's no two ways about it.
> While SPAM may no be trespassing, it is often
> fraud and that is against the law.
Canned meat cannot trespass. It's never fraud and it's certainly not against the law.
Hormel is nice enough not to persue its trademark violation. Have a little courtesy, call it spam, not SPAM.
http://www.spam.com/
Anti-Spam Case wins YOU!
AOL roots for YOU!
I recently had the opportunity to work on a friends computer. After re-installing AOL for him I logged into his account and was appalled at all the advertisements that kept on popping up all over the place. I suggested that he move to another ISP that did not harass its users with such nonsense. Why would anyone pay money to get online and read commercial after commercial. I guess it is ok to subject users to unsolicited ads as long as the folks placing the ads are paying AOL.
The DMCA backs YOU!
all i can say is this, i have aol free that 1 yr from dell. I got my computer in late 2000, and i still have the aol, they do not seem to want to calncel it, and they add months all the time, even told them i got dsl, and i do not use it, and even they even realized i did not even logged in for months, but that does not count, they just try to put me to use their high speed content, witch is not that bad, but beside chat room, and an average of 10 spam email, there is nothing to do.
what a pant-load you are. the other guy's arguments were not what you said in your message and you still have not answered his real arguments. I'm following this thread and I want to see an intelligent debate, not you making up crap and claiming that your opponent said it.
In soviet russia, police arrest YOU for making worn-out jokes.
why are you putting all of this effort into debating with that twit? his arguments don't hold water, he will not answer the points that you make, and he is trying to put words in your mouth, so what is the point? you win. now move along and don't waste your time on him. he's trolling you and you are taking the bait.
Just because AOL is very simple and easy to use doesn't mean it's the enemy of all geeks.
Personally, I use it mostly for the large (and, yes, mature) RPG community that exists on a provider where you can create your own chat rooms with a keystroke and have the room generate any type of random numbers for you with a short text command.
There's a great article about this whole fiasco here. (If it gets slashdotted I'll post the full text.)
As long as you're on the sidewalk or in the street, that would be true. But if you step foot on my property, that's not allowed. At that point I would have the power to stop you from yelling, and it wouldn't be a violation of the right to free speech.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I have to wonder what a six year old is doing opening email unsupervised.
Come on guys, it's a classic in-group out-group thing. Most people on /. don't do spam (or, if they do, they are not dumb enough to admit it), so spam is evil. Some /.ers like looking inside other people's computers, so crackers are not evil.
It's simple human nature, we pick the definition of evil that puts us and our friends in a good light and the people we dislike or don't care about in a bad light, and then we can feel good about ourselves. The reason the govt is passing so many laws against allegedly evil crackers is that the politicians don't know any crackers, and, anyway, I bet most /.ers don't bother to vote. Politicians do know corrupt businessmen, so they have to be more careful with them.
Sure, some 8 year-olds end up looking at nasty pictures because of spam. But then they could find whatever sort of image they want in 20 seconds with Google. The solution here would be to ban ISPs from carrying pornographic images. But, judging from quite a lot of sigs, Porn is Good on /. You see, it is very important to draw the arbitrary lines in just the right places.
Virtually serving coffee
...damn few people use MSN Messenger or Yahoo
;) ICQ was the leading worldwide messenger, perhaps, as you can see in their wide range of localization options.
I am not very sure if that's true outside the US. Remember that AOL has strongholds in Australia, England and the US. In all other places you have to rely on either local programs to communicate, or word of mouth and product loyalty from the internet giants back in early nineties. There come yahoo and hotmail and their respective IM services... but hold that thought
I think that most of the success of AOL IM here is that it was just forced onto the AOL system and there was nothing else to do to get messaging to work. So any newbie in the 90s with AOL could get the power of messaging in the US. As someone said here, AOL was probably "the training wheels" of a majority of us when the internet was still pretty young.
Well, anyway, I have friends in the Caribbean that have never heard the name of AOL. Their service there is MSN IM, or even Yahoo IM. In fact, I have been really annoyed at having to get Messenger on my system just because they don't know AIM. International students other than me, from Africa and Europe who I met in college were more likely to have an ICQ account and give it out. The American college system spoiled them into using AIM, though. First jointly, and then, uniquely.
Those students all know yahoo and microsoft's hotmail and therefore it's natural to have adopted their messengers. But I believe AOL didn't have a hold of the world in messaging, though I may be pulling this out of my butt
just my 2 cents. i hope someone has a link to factual data so that i can see if this, is true after all these years of pondering about it.
"Wireless : LAN
Right, just like you paid for your TV and the electricity that powers it...how dare they flood your screen without your permission.
How about some cheese with that whine...