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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 :) )"
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!!!!
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
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.
AOL/TW may be a huge media conglomerate, and their internet service may suck for geeks, but they are responsible at least in part for Mozilla, ICQ, Winamp (which is being ported to Linux), and send free coasters as a courtesy in the mail.
They are a media conglomerate, but they are about as non-evil as they get.
They are also Microsoft's second biggest problem, and anything that annoys them is fine by me.
An enemy of an enemy...
Back on topic, money seems to be the only thing spammers care about. $7 million is bound to be an eye opener.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
There are reasons to dislike AOL, but their attitude towards spam is not one.
I like AOL because:
- they've funded mozilla for so long,
- they made a nice open-source webserver, and
- they actually work to fight spam.
I dislike AOL for a number of reasons I won't bother to iterate here. Basically, they're a mixed bag, like most big companies.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.
Responsible? ICQ, Mozilla, and Winamp ALL were created independently and then were bought up by the giant AOL.
Sure, now they control them, but how much has changed in these three since they got bought? Not much, just more crap was added to them to make AOL money.
Travis
Granted, I prefer AOL/TW to MS, but that's more because (a) I feel that the first is less competent from a business standpoint, and I'd like to have competition, and (b) AOL/TW is smaller than MS (disgusting as that is).
AOL is not simply being a "nice guy" in buying ICQ, Mozilla, and Winamp, though you're right that they fund Moz development. They're fighting for control of the Internet instant-messaging market, which would put them in an incredibly powerful position of control -- essentially the dominant "telecom" provider of the future. ICQ is a smart move for them to make, because it lets them consolidate the two leading messaging clients under their control (damn few people use MSN Messenger or Yahoo). TW is a media distribution company, and MS has control over Media Player, and would like nothing more than to exercise said control to attack competitors (as they have with other monopolies and competitors in the past). Winamp helps nullify that. Finally, the same goes for IE and Mozilla -- AOL is *the* big ISP, and being at the mercy of MS's potentially auto-updated web browser is a scary thing for them. Mozilla helps them quite a bit.
Again, that doesn't mean that AOL is to be hated and despised -- I think that they're a lot less dangerous than MS -- just that they're certainly looking out for #1 in these purchases.
May we never see th
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
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.