Spammers Sue Anti-Spam Groups

SuperBanana writes "The Register reports in a story today that spammers have banded together under the name EmarketersAmerica.org to sue various anti-spam groups- days before a large conference on spam hosted by the FTC(which will be attended by many spammers). Anti-spam groups think the timing is not by coincidence, but believe the move may backfire because they will be able to countersue and get access to spammer's internal documents. By the way, if you're wondering who these guys are, check out Spamhaus's directory of top spammers."

Comments

This is what should happen to all spammers....

[ih8apple]

Here is what one of America's leading sports pundits has been writing:

Elliott Harris, Chicago Sun-Times: "A fan in Massachusetts, upset at Fox's decision to replace auto racing with Red Sox baseball, faces the possibility of a year in jail for sending more than 530,000 e-mails that shut down Fox's Web site in 2001. Hey, who knew a NASCAR fan would know spam was anything other than something to eat?"

FYI- link to the PDF of the lawsuit

[SuperBanana]

I found out about this from a friend(Hi Scott!) after I submitted the article. He put it best:

"It is classic... misspellings, copy + paste problems...He named rediculous people as defendents, including the brother of one anti spammer, who apparently lives in Italy and doesn't care about spam at all."

http://chickenboner.com/felstein/slapp.pdf

Re:Spammers Sue Anti-Spam Groups

[BWJones]

So, as a followup to this, from the SPAPHAUS website "90% of all spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe is sent by a hard-core group of only 180+ individuals"

It just goes to show how a few incredibly selfish individuals can bring chaos and ruin to society. It obviously does not take many to bring huge costs to business and government, so why is it so hard to prosecute these few individuals for abuse of the internet and indirect theft from business and government (taxpayer) coffers, especially if they are known?

Spamhaus slashdotted already

[mdfst13]

The Spamhaus link already doesn't work (at least not for me, YMMV).

What's really amazing isn't that spammers continue to spam but that they continue to find people who are willing to pay them to do so. Have you ever read what an email marketer considers fair results? 2% of the emails you buy will be viewed (viewed meaning that someone actually generated an http request based on the HTML inside). How do they guarantee this? If they fall short, they will .... send more emails.

This is an amazing comment on the ineffectiveness of spam. More than 98% of all spam messages are deleted unseen (or bounced). Of the remaining 2%, some of those were only "viewed" in the sense that they had active focus when the receiver hit delete. Of those that generate actual click-through, how many generate sales?

How stupid does someone have to be to buy an "email marketing campaign?" One could get better results by sending your $1000 to a local charity and putting out a press release.

Spam --- built on ignorance and stupidity.

Eddy Marin

[Caveman Og]

Here's the full dope on Eddy Marin, spammer, and why South Florida (especially Boca Raton) is now a haven for spammers.

Eddy uses a front company, "PG&C Leasing Inc." (aka lauderdale.net) to disguise his activity. This company buys the bandwidth for him to spam through. He then sets up dummy companies to act as "customers" of PG&C. If the heat gets too hot he'll "terminate" a "customer". Of course the spam just continues under another name.

He's operated like this since 1998. He's had a long time to develope a reputation among his spamming pals, and since he brings money into the local economy, Boca Raton loves him.

Here's just ONE of his netblocks:

http://www.senderbase.com/search?searchBy=ipaddr es s&searchString=209.203.192.0%2F19

The bulk of the spam from that netblock is from "OmniPoint Marketing". If you've been paying good attention. Spam also goes out from "justdous.com, prefersavings.com, dealstwoyou.com, and tlck.net". These are registered to things like "M.M.COMMERCE,INC", and "OptIn LLC" (which is Terry Williams, another Eddy Marin flunkie)

stealthemail.com ??? Give me a break!

--Og

Surely this is a joke?

[TekPolitik]

Several things point to this being a joke. If it's not a joke, their lawyer is the most incompetent lawyer on the planet.

1. The "plaintiff" in the suit is not the party alleged to have suffered damage, and cannot sue for the alleged actions.
2. Several of the defendants described as "entities" are clearly not "entities".
3. Their claim for "conversion" fails to make out even the vaguest hint of a single element required for an action in conversion.
4. They claim a "right" to equitable relief. You don't have a right to equitable relief - you have a right to ask for it, and the court can refuse it for any reason the court sees fit.
5. They're claiming injunctive relief to prevent speech. Even if speech is illegal, injunctive relief is almost never granted to restrain speech.
6. They describe IP addresses as property. I'm fairly progressive on what can constitute property, but even I have major difficulties with the concept of IP addresses being property.
7. Paragraph 37 claims that none of the alleged statements of the defendants were regarding matters of legitimate public concern. They're going to have a hard time proving that something currently in consideration in Congress and at a meeting convened by the FTC lacks an element of legitimate public concern.
8. While some of the other grounds can be argued, they are not plausibly arguable, and the "wrong plaintiff" problem is fatal anyway.

I have difficulty believing that a lawyer coud really have drafted this crud.