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Spammers Threaten Techdirt With Lawsuit
An anonymous reader writes "Found over at Declan McCullough's Politech, some spammers who had been written up in the NY Times found their contact info displayed on Techdirt, after they wrote about the NY Times story. Apparently, someone was trying to pull a Ralsky on the spammers. The spammers got pissed off and threatened to sue Techdirt - even though all the info was publicly available and other court cases have shown it's legal to post spammer's contact information. Techdirt, interestingly, took the contact info down because they feel that no one should get spammed. I'm kind of torn on this one. On the one hand, I respect Techdirt for taking such a stand, but on the other, I feel that the spammers clearly deserve to be spammed back. The fact that they threatened Techdirt, despite them not having done anything wrong (it wasn't even the folks at Techdirt who posted the info - but some readers), makes me even angrier at the spammer."
Then you risk the lawsuit. We all know what American justice is like. I'm not suprised at all, and their decision (to pull the info) has nothing to do with morality, or right and wrong, just common sense.
they feel that no one should get spammed
How very naive of them. Why shouldn't the people that force us to take extreme measures for a little bit of privacy, convenience, not be made to deal with the same garbage that we do?
tinfoilmedia
it would be great if someone posted their addresses here - talk about going from bad to worse... i'd rather be flooded by the techdirt- than the slashdot crowd ;-)
Or as Ghandi said, after awhile, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I agree with you, but compare this to the situation in the past : 100 years ago, we had the same issue with industrialists. 200 years ago with big farmers vs small farmers. 300 years ago with big guns vs small guns.
Don't pretend this to be the disease of the 21st century just because we're using the law instead of money or guns. And then again, the laws have always been bent by the guys in charge.
While i don't approve of it, it seems to be the nature of the human beast. It's amazing how we haven't exterminated ourselves.
As a side note : i find the way Berlusconi is CEO of Italy far more frightening than what the US is doing. After all, we europeans excpect US politicians to be puppets in the hands of the big corporations. But Berlusconi is a whole other matter.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
"Let me spam in peace," or
"I hate spam, please let me spam you"
> If somebody punches you, do you punch them straight back? :)
That depends if he has friends with guns.
> Do you think doing so would leave you with any credibility?
Depends.
So a burgular breaks in and punches you. You beat him up enough so that he flees. The wife is happy because now your home is safe. You gained credibility for not being a wimp.
Plain and simple spammers are scum. They steal, in terms of using open relay servers and other peoples bandwidth. The lie in that 99.9% of the things they sell don't work. They cheat in trying to hide information. Also taking the amount of spam I get can make it really hard to filter the good from the bad even with filtering each and every message
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
The issue here is your "comfort zone." If you, a geek, start talking tech in a threatening way to your techno-phobe neighbor, he's not going to argue with you or try to fight back. He's out of his element. Same with a geek who is being intimidated by someone who is law-savvy. We tend to cringe, apologize and hope they go away. The fact that they might be able to hurt us financially makes us take their threats seriously. If they did the same thing to a lawyer they would probably get a far different response.
Think about it - you and you neighbor have a little spat about a fence or a barking dog or something. You threaten to "route his Roadrunner connection through your proxy sniffer and VPN his DoS to every kiddie-porn site in the country." Imagine the expression on his face. What are his options? Hire a techie to defend himself? That costs money. He doesn't even understand what you said, except that it sounds bad and you sound serious. He's gonna fold.What we really need to do to stop this legal-bullying is to get more familiar with the law.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
If this is indeed how americans view their legal system, then I think it's time for them (you) to do something to change it.
It's one thing that your only measure of quality of life is wealth, another one entirely that relative amount of money is the only thing separating right from wrong. While the judicial system is no absolute in right vs. wrong in theory, it is in practice.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
It's mighty easy for someone (an American or otherwise) to throw that idea around, and terribly difficult to actually make it a reality.
The sad fact of the matter is that there hasn't been an effective widespread protest movement since the '60s here in the US. And there won't be any time soon.
The apathy of the American population is growing, not shrinking. Attempting to motivate them to protest anything at all is an exercise in futility.
Not to be a pessimist, but... that's how I see it. YMMV.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
What would you do, Mr. Idealist? Stand there and take it while saying, "Please don't do that!"?
Some people have suffered that same plight often enough to a) start thinking it's normal and b) take pride in it...quite often it starts in school gyms for one reason or another.
For those who are either young enough to still be in school or old enough to have kids in school already...yes, it is ok to hit back, and it's even better to give the other kid taking a beating a hand. Standing next to it and looking at it with a stupid grin only shows the fact we're still apes, just with a little less hair...most of us, in any case...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
at the risk of being flamebait
after your scenario happened once or twice, I think we would see a dramatic reduction in spam.
I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been a case of spammer lynching as yet.
Like most people the only thing that keeps me from doing it is the thought of spending 30 years in prison. Not worth taking the chance of getting a couple of fellow rabid anti-spammers to sit on your jury.
That said, if you were sitting on a jury for the trial of someone who killed a spammer, would you vote for conviction?
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
OK, if spammers get their knickers in a twist and some have ethical issues with posting that information, do the next best thing:
Create and post a HOWTO showing how to find the information yourself. You can't find everyone on Google and unless you want to pay a service $$$, there is an art to finding someone's meatspace info.
No, we have to go after both. What you suggest is something like going after the person who hired an assassin and leave the assassin go free because he was doing it for the money.
I know this isn't a very good analogy, but the point is: Everybody involved in commiting a crime should suffer the consequences. Not just who paid for it.
Leviticus 24:19 If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. 21 Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death.
Deut 19:16 If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse a man of a crime, 17 the two men involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. 18 The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother, 19 then do to him as he intended to do to his brother. You must purge the evil from among you. 20 The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. 21 Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
New Testament reference: Matthew 5:38 "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'[7] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
The nature of the "eye for eye" in the OT was not one of personal revenge, but of defining appropriate punishments to be handed down by lawful authorities (i.e., the courts). What Jesus was referring to was the idea of taking the law into your own hands, and doing it out of a sense of revenge (justice's ugly cousin). It is also interesting that the OT seems to have the harshest words for people who commit perjury.
Seriously, these people are assholes. If something like that happened, just a few times, I bet Spam would go down a lot. I wouldn't like to see their wives or children hurt, though.
What I'd really like would be to see these guys thrown in jail. Most of these people are "hackers" at least, and could probably charged under the PATRIOT act for 'cyber terrorism' or something, if the government actually gave a shit...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We tell the kids, "Never throw the first punch, always throw the last one."
Note that we use the verb, 'throw' and not 'land'. There is, of course, no need for the guy swinging at you to connect with your nose before you take action.