Michigander Beats Spammer With "Junk Fax" Law

TastyWords writes "According to this link, it's possible to apply the 'junk fax law' to successfully sue a spammer in small claims court. For those who are stuck in states which either have worthless (or near-worthless) anti-spam legislation, this creative approach of the law presents a creative method of turning the table on those who choose to spam first and ask questions later. All of the details are available for enterprising anti-spammers!" Update: 02/25 00:30 GMT by T : OK, so it's Michigander, not Michiganian. Too long as a Texon, Marylandite and Tennesseenaut.

Comments

You're gravely misunderstanding the principle.

[rjh]

Lex talionis is not, and never has been, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life". Lex talionis is a view towards law that treats justice as interchangeable with retribution. If someone puts out your eye, then go over and slaughter the sonufabitch--that's lex talionis in a nutshell. What the lex talionis codes did was codify this pre-existing principle and give it color of law.

On the other hand, Hebrew law has not been viewed as proscriptive, but rather prohibitive. Instead of saying "retribution is justice", the Hebrew scriptures actually put limits on the government's ability to authorize retribution--you were forbidden from exacting vengeance past the wrong done to you. If someone put out my eye, I wasn't allowed to put their entire family to the sword.

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life" is, like much of the Old Testament, usually read with absolutely no clue about the context in which it was written. Look at the Code of Hammurabi, which is another legal code from roughly the same period in antiquity. The Code can be summed up as "if you transgress these laws in any way, you're going to get killed. Or if your transgression was really minor, just permanently maimed." That was a helluva system of laws, let me tell you. That's all it was: a system of laws. There was no concept of justice at that time, just pure, unadulterated law, and if you broke it, you died.

Then along come the Jews and their principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life"... and this system of laws was hailed as moral, merciful, and just. Why? Because it established limits on what the government could mete out for punishment.

So the next time you feel like condemning Hebrew law ("an eye for an eye") as a "morally bankrupt code", please consider the other options available at the time. And also consider that you're completely misunderstanding what the entire point of the Hebrew "an eye for an eye" instruction was and is.

It was, believe it or not, perhaps the first time in human history that someone put limits on the power of government and established that there were moral limits to governmental power. As such, it deserves our respect.

finding those responsible

[LuxFX]

What I find most interesting about this is not the use of the junk fax law, but that Mark was able to sue Sears about it. This is something I've been wondering lately anyway: even if it might be next to impossible to track down the sender of a spam email, could you not still hold the company whose products are being advertised responsible for the spam?

IANAL, but I don't find it a fair stretch to say that, possibly even in a legal sense, the spammer was respresenting the company. The same can extrapolated to cover owners of websites, etc. -- any person, company or service that is the subject of the spam.

I was doubtful of this until now -- it seems like Mark pulled it off!

So then, why we don't stop trying to stop spammers, and go after the source? By attacking those that fund the spammers the spammers will still go down, and the targets are easier to find.