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California Anti-Spam Law Approved
Metroid72 writes "Zdnet reports that "A California anti-spam bill passed the Senate on Wednesday, a first step toward the passage of a law that would give people the right to sue spammers." I guess there's light at the end of the tunnel"
What use is the ability to sue spammers when you dont know who they are or where they live. Sure, The Spamhaus ROSKO Project will give some details on the big players, but chances are they already have their operation sorted out 'legally' offshore already.
California requires you to serve the other party in the state - if they're in Nevada, you can't serve them, and therefore you can't sue them in small claims.
If you have a big enough case to justify higher level courts, you can server outside of the state.
But IANAL, so don't trust me :)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
The spamee needs to live in CA. In Virginia, it's realtively simple to file a suit under the anti-spam law. The county clerk is usually very helpful in letting you know what you need to do to file.
Read a story about how a guy here in VA filed and won.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
SB 342, "Unsolicited email advertisements" (Florez)
SB 186, "Privacy: unsolicited e-mail advertising" (Murray)
SB 12, "Electronic Mail Advertising" (Bowen)
AB 567, "Unsolicited electronic mail advertisements" (Simitian)
For those about to rejoice, remember this is simply the first step. It still has to finish going through the state assembly, and then get signed by Governor Davis. Let's get some of this stuff pushed through for the better of the anti-spam community, shall we?
This sig no verb.
Heres how they feel about it
With the junkfax laws, one may go after the junkfaxer (entity that sent the fax) and/or the entity on who's behalf the fax was sent. that has been proven in many cases where the fax entity could not be identified or was an offshore (often Canada) service. If your local carpet cleaning service pays a junk fax service to send the ads, then you can sue them directly. If they want to suggest they didn't do anything wrong, then just have them identify the people that sent the ads and simply add them as a defendant and let them fight it out.
Some cases will be more tough to prove, but with a little case law, you can win. One difficult case would be something like mortgage lead spams. The spammer and website are offshore, and once they have your information, then they sell the leads to numerous companies that 'claim' to not know how the information was obtained, however this will not be a valid excuse. I haven't seen the text of the bill (will a karma whore please post it if found), but I hope the wording is like that of the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991). In order to be sent a prerecorded commercial message or commercial fax, one must have a prior business relationship or have given prior *express* permission to receive such. Express permission cannot be sold nor purchased. Those of us that run our own email servers or use catch-all domain forwarding or other such service will be able to track all emails quite easily where you can simply create a new account for every location you post, web site registration, sweepstakes entry, etc so that you can decidedly trace the method a company used to obtain your address. A company trying to suggest that you must have 'subscribed or requested at some point to be added' will be shot down faster than my advances on prom night.
You don't have to worry about stopping the spammers per se, but the people that are knowingly paying others to send the illicit ads. The spammers protect themselves decently well just like junk faxers and scamming telemarketers, but when you hit their source of money, then you cut the body off the head of the snake. If the business think they were unfairly treated, then they are free to go after the spammers they paid to send the junk. States can pass all the bills they want, but until the public has rights to collect damages that have been made themselves, such laws or bills will continue to be toothless. Washington's law, from what I understand, has been decently effective. I simply do not see how Congress can site idly much longer on this issue. This is something that is affecting more people than before. The junk fax problem was quite so widespread when Congress acted in the early 1990s. Senator Disney did well with the TCPA, so maybe an anti-spam bill would be considered someday. It would see the best time to pass this is on the heels of the implementation of the FTC/FCC regulations. Awareness will be at an all time high and the same arguments DMA, Fax.com, and other scum will try to usee will have already been shot down with fresh case law or interpretation of regulations. While some people get in the news for winning spam cases using the TCPA, it seems most of those involved default judgments (like the recent Sears case). I know this isn't an junk email list, but thought some would be interested in the obvious mirroring of aspects of the TCPA. Interesting aspect is also the additional penalty 'read: tax' going to state coffers, that will be included even if it is a private action.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Could be a whole new employement niche, Spam Collection Agent.
"Hello, you bad old spammer you, I'm here to tow away your server."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Three laws have been in effect in California since 1998. They've not been widely used, but about a dozen cases that I know about have resulted in positive results for the prosecutors. You can follow current cases on the Suespammers discussion list, or read the archives.
The new law appears to be more protectionist than previous ones, which required either (a) opt-out by the recipient, (b) status as an ISP, or (c) evidence of fraud.
--Tom Geller
Founder, SpamCon Foundation
Tom Geller
I've been getting about 20 spams/day, and did some checking into where most of it comes from. And 90% of it comes from the USA.
About half of that was coming from various domains that turned out to be owned by emailhello.com. To their credit, I sent them a mail requesting I be removed from their lists, and that I not be forwarded onto anyone else. They replied saying they'd remove me with 48hours, and true to their word, they did.
This speculation that most spam doesn't come from the USA is uniformed fud, and mostly untrue!