MonsterHut Jammed for Spam

DeAshcroft writes "Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lottie E. Wilkins has ordered MonsterHut, its CEO Todd Pelow and CTO Gary Hartl to stop behaving badly. The New York Post has a story on the ruling. The suit, brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in May 2002, alleges that MonsterHut sent over 500 million messages, fraudulently claiming that they were opt-in, and ignored at least 750,000 requests by consumers to be taken off their lists. Newsday also has coverage. The AG has an official release on the case. Penalty hearing is scheduled for Feb 11, 2003."

Comments

Re:Very easy solution

[mistered]

Actually it's not a very easy solution, since in most cases "the provider which sent it" can be very difficult to determine. The From: address is completely useless, of course. You can track back through the Received: headers to find (most likely) an open relay that send the spam to you. More than likely it's in China and complaints to its owner will do nothing. Spammers also like open relays that don't add useful Received: headers (i.e., don't put the IP address in) so good luck finding out where the spam really came from.

It's about time

[andyring]

I'm glad judges and juries are finally seeing the light and understanding this whole spam mess. Free speech? Nope. It's just like junk fax laws, junk faxes are actually illegal because the recipient pays for the fax machine, paper, toner, etc. Same reason why telemarketers cannot call your cell phone (if you do get a call from them on it, just tell them it's a cell and they'll hang up quick) because you're paying for those minutes. With spam, I'm the one paying for my 'net connection, and after a certain amount of traffic, I pay by the byte. If only I could force direct mail marketers to stop snail-mailing me crap all the time. Why does a single 24-year-old guy need coupons for feminine hygiene products?

Re:It's about time

[jdreed1024]

If only I could force direct mail marketers to stop snail-mailing me crap all the time. Why does a single 24-year-old guy need coupons for feminine hygiene products?

Actually, I've found direct-mail marketers are the most amenable to taking you off their lists. Their marketing method actually costs them real money each time they send something (well, so do telemarketers, but they probably have deals with the cheap long distance carriers), so they're not interested in sending things to people that don't want them.

When I moved into my new apartment, I got the usual barrage of of "Resident" catalogs and coupon books, and credit card offers with the "low, low rate" of 24% interest. They died down a little, but were still a lot. I called the opt-out number for the credit-bureaus. (888) 5OPT-OUT. It's automated, takes two seconds, and then you just need to fill out and sign a form they send you. That gets you off the free credit offers for all 3 credit bureaus.

The other aggravating thing was that in the Boston Area, if you don't subscribe to the Globe, you still get the advertising circulars by direct mail. (Some people love this). However, I got the return address, looked them up in the phone book, and called them. They have a menu option to be removed from their mailing list - press it, and you get a real human being on the other end (that surprised me). She was very nice, and promised that I'd stop receiving the flyers by the end of the month. And indeed I haven't gotten one since.

Point of clarification...

[Compulawyer]

...for all the non-lawyers (and non- "Law & Order" watchers) out there. In New York, the "Supreme Court" is the trial court - the lowest level in the system. The next step is the Appellate Division and finally the Court of Appeals. NY's C of A is analogous to other states' Supreme Courts. And no, I have no idea why they did it like that.

Spitzer strikes again! (Spitzer for President)

[egoff]

Working in the financial services industry, I see Eliot crack down time and time and time again on evil-doers in investment banking. Its good to see he's not so focused on just one area. This guy is really great guy, always focused on the little guy. For he's a jolly good fellow!

Re:Catching them on fraud

[Uninvited Guest]

Fraud is not protected speech. There is no free speech issue for such cases.

Re:How long

[Anonymous Coward]

He lived in russia, but they didn't bust him until he came over here.. Once he came into america, he came into the jurisdiction of the american justice system.

Re:Ironic

[ShinmaWa]

Not really ironic.

The page you saw actually belonged to Ultimate Search -- a rather infamous squatter company.

Its no suprise that ultsearch put links to spam filters on there.

Re:datacommarketing.com

[odaiwai]

They're on a lot of blacklists: Choose from one of the following

http://openrbl.org/ip/65/242/117/50.htm

dave

Re:Differences between speech (free and protected)

[Uninvited Guest]

Honestly people, please look this stuff up. IN the US Constitution, there is a difference between free speech and protected speech.

Actually, that's not correct. The US Constitution has no specific reference to protected speech. Protected speech is a term that is synonymous with free speech, in the sense that all speech which is protected from restriction by the government is free speech. In particular, political speech is not the only form of protected speech.

Some forms of speech (obscenity or threats) have no right to protection at all. Corporations have the right to free, protected speech, but in a more limited form. In the case of this article and lawsuit, what the spammer puts in his ad might be unprotected speech because of false content, but the case seems to be based on misleading email recipients about the opt-in nature of the email. The following links offer some insight on free speech and protected speech.

Free Speech the First Amendment and Censorship
FreedomForum.org - The First Amendment