AOL Sues Five Spam Companies

sugapablo writes "AOL has filed lawsuits against five spamming companies, seeking damages in the millions for unwanted email. As the AP reports, AOL hasn't actually figured out who all the defendants are though, filing the lawuits against some "John Does" and attempting to "subpoena service providers and others to try to track down the spammers"."

Comments

Maybe their lawyers should ask me

[thogard]

A major spamer just hit one of my test boxes and in the millions of messages that went to my logging server, there are clues into who is behind some of this.

Re:Overseas spammers?

[azzy]

Wouldn't it be funny if they all turned out to be AOL customers...

This did not happen

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

This is yet another lie. These companies did not send any spam. Today we slaughtered them in the airport. They are out of Saddam International Airport. The force that was in the airport, this force was destroyed. The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!

Re:AOL should sue themselves

[Andy Tanenbaum]

No joke. At least those damn AOL floppies could be overwritten and put to use. AOL could have the decency to spam with CD-RW discs.

Who should be sued?

[ASPirant]

I find it interesting that they always go for the outlet doing the spamming. Why don't they sue the individuals paying the spammers to send the emails? Instead of trying to kill the spammers, starve them by making companies think twice about using this method.

You'd think that this means of advertising would actually destroy the "goodwill" of the product being advertised. I know I have less respect for companies that use this means.

Re:Hate em all you want

[AKnightCowboy]

I know we all like to bash Aohell, but at least they're one ISP that seems to be doing something right these days... fighting spam to its death... unlike 99% of all other ISPs.

They're just fighting it because it isn't AOL advertising. I had to use AOL to check my e-mail when I was over a friend's house once and holy sheep shit batman. Right when you log on you get assaulted with tons of banner ad spam. AOL just wants an exclusive market for their spam instead of sharing it.

Double standard of community opinon?

[MrLint]

Ok here is the disclaimer right off, I do not advocate spamming, and i think there needs to be a gulag that spammers are thrown into. That much said, from the article, "filing the lawsuits gives AOL additional authority to subpoena service providers and others to try to track down the spammers" I recall much derision when the RIAA sued Verizon for customer info of alleged music traders. Now AOL is suing to get spammer customer information. I think we need to seriously consider the possibility of situational ethics. The track record of scumminess of the RIAA is widely hated, so most don't like anything they do. Likewise spammers, also so widely hated so no one cares what happens to them (even me). When is getting a customer's info right, when is it wrong? I think this is a tough question we, as a community, have to think about and perhaps ultimately face in the future.

Re:Double standard of community opinon?

[rearden]

I may be off my mark here as IANAL but there is a big difference. AOL has proven that a) there has been a tangible violation of the law b) they have tracked the violater back to a particular system(s) c) they are suing the violator and not the company the violator is using to send email.

In the RIAA vs. Verizon case RIAA was suing to get the subscriber information without ever proving that there were specific incidences of copyright violation (instead charging that P2P is ONLY used to steal music). In addition they did not sue copyright violators (as a "Jane or John Doe") and then use supoenas to get the personons name. Instead they sued Verizon to get the information directly. Verizon's argument from the begining was that that RIAA was skipping step one- 1) Show evidence of a crime and step two- 2) Seek to take action against said anonymous criminal (this may seem odd, but our legal system allows us to sue an unknown person/ group and fill in their name later). Instead RIAA sued the people who "facilitated" the crime and stated that all of Verizons customer records should be on display to the RIAA Nazi SS forces without proof or ponderance in court.

AOL, as stated, is instead going directly after the offenders and using the power of the courts to get specific information about specific crimes, not all customer information at will and on demand.

Just my $0.02

Re:AOL should sue themselves

[island_earth]

So can I sue AOL for spamming me with all those frigging CDs?

That depends. Does AOL make you pay shipping and handling for those CDs? No? Then it's not spam.

Direct marketing (i.e., junk mail, paid by the sender) may be odious, but it's a different issue from spam (essentially free to the sender, burden to pay on the rest of us, including AOL). AOL is not really being hypocritical by fighting one and using the other, no matter how funny it may seem to claim otherwise.

Re:Not just spam.

[alkali]

The animal known as "wire fraud" is a criminal violation of federal law. It's not a thing Joe Citizen can sue for. (Similarly "mail fraud.")

You can sue for garden-variety fraud under state law, but you have to have been actually defrauded (i.e., you actually believed some false statement and were damaged by relying on it). If you know you're being lied to, you haven't been defrauded.

Re:Hate em all you want

[McDutchie]

I had to use AOL to check my e-mail when I was over a friend's house once and holy sheep shit batman. Right when you log on you get assaulted with tons of banner ad spam. AOL just wants an exclusive market for their spam instead of sharing it.

Please keep your terminology straight. Spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail sent postage due. Annoying as they are, banner ads are not spam any more than commercial breaks on television. Not only are they not e-mail but they are actually paid for by the advertisers and you are soliciting them by logging on to the AOL service that includes these ads, i.e. you have the option not to do so, just as you can turn off your TV.

Comparing spam to banner ads confuses the issue by making spam seem more legitimate than it really is. It cannot be repeated enough: spam is theft of service, parasitic traffic living off of bandwidth and manhours paid for by others. This is the message that needs to be hammered into those that matter in the grand scheme of things, so that the appropriate laws get passed to throw the perpetrators in jail where they belong.

Re:AOL should sue themselves

[island_earth]

Recall that I never said that junk mail was good; just that it's different enough that AOL can fight spam and send CDs without being hypocrites.

Another key difference: although you shouldn't have to opt-out of junk mail, you can, and it mostly works. I contact the Direct Marketing Association every few years to tell their members to cut it out, and the only junk mail I get for the most part is crap my family actually requests. I haven't seen an AOL CD in years, to be honest.

Junk mail sucks, and I'd love to see it abolished, but it follows some rules we can work with, if we bother to. Spam is an uncontrolled mess, and needs to be slapped down hard. AOL isn't being hypocritical by doing that.