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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.
They didn't appeal, I got my check. They also sent out a contract thing they wanted me to sign as a disclaimer of responsibility and liability and all this nonsense. I talked to their attorney and he said it was standard. I said, "Not standard for me and I'm not signing it, I will be depositing your check however." He wasn't too happy about that, ... Iwonder what was in the disclamer?
Although I think laws such as the junk fax law are a step in the right direction, the problem I see with most spam is that the headers have been forged to the point of illegitimacy. Sure, if they include a link to a website, you could go after the person or people listed in the WHOIS record, but it would be easy for the administrative contact to claim that he or she didn't send the spam.
Sears is an easy target -- they probably sent semi-legitimate spam that included contact and/or removal information, as well as the Sears website. However, I doubt that $500 will steer Sears in the right direction regarding spam. For $500, it's easier for them to write a check than to pursue it in court. I'd guess they made several thousand dollars off the spam mail, and that the $500 was written off as a cost of doing business.
My point is, that between completely illegitimate spam that doesn't even have any real contact information, and companies that make a lot of money off of spam and who don't mind writing a $500 check every once in a while, this law won't be very effective.
I will continue to argue that spam is a technical problem and needs a technical solution to solve it. Ultimately, even if the big companies like Sears stop spamming, there will always be the spammers who send out 100 million penis enlargement spam mails with fake headers and fake return addresses that render the spam nearly impossible to trace. The illegitimate spam problem won't be solved by laws -- it will be solved by the intelligence of the Internet community. I'd rather see this solved by technical prowess than by laws that will only encourage spammers to fake their mail headers to avoid lawsuits.
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Amazing, he did the right thing. He modified his computer until it fell under the fax machine law. He uses a modem to connect over telephone lines (not cable, not dsl). He prints his email to paper, and he has fax software installed to send scanned paper documents to other fax machines. So his equipment can be considered a fax machine.
We saw a similar thing recently, with Lexmark. Everybody can produce a plastic box that fits into Lexmark printers, and nothing can stop them from doing so. Except Lexmark & the DMCA - Lexmark found that they have to mix the plastic box (which is not protected by law) with an intellectual property item (which is protected by copyright) and an access restriction (which is protected by DMCA). Glue all 3 things together, and voila. You've got a plastic box which can not be legally copied.
So, when the law works AGAINST us consumers so often, why shouldn't it work FOR us once or twice?