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."

Comments

You have the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You have the money?

[frankie]

Then you risk the lawsuit.

RTFA. Techdirt specifically said the threat had nothing to do with their decision, since it was unlikely to happen and even less likely to succeed. They pulled the information out of respect for privacy.

Personally, I disagree. In general, a business has little or no right to privacy; their address is required by law to be public knowledge. IMHO, a business that intentionally intrudes on people's lives deserves none at all. But more importantly, contact information for Alyxsandra Sachs is public, not private:

• Whitepages
• Infospace
• Switchboard

Furthermore: from the NYT article: "These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

Between downloading it from our mail server, sorting it into a local folder, skimming the preview, and pressing delete, my office spends a couple thousand dollars a year in salaried employee time. Does that answer your question, Alyx?

Re:You have the money?

[minus_273]

ah you mean this:

Sachs, Alyxsandra

112 Catamaran St
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
(310) 578-1728

Laughable.

[Tinfoil]

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?

Re:Laughable.

[bwalling]

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?

Because they are idealists, which means that they will never get anything done and they will always be inconvenienced by their ideals. That said, we can all benefit from those who believe so strongly in their ideals since the majority of us are weak enough to compromise our ideals any time it is convenient, profitable, fun, or whatever other excuse we invent.

Re:Laughable.

[Daetrin]

I've always been an eye for an eye type guy myself. If you knowingly commit a crime or immoral act, then you forgo your legal/moral protection from the same. No one complains when a thief gets fined or when the murdering bad guy in a movie gets killed (people get much more worked up about state-sanctioned death penalties, but that's more of a political thing)

If they want to send unsolicited junk mail, either because they think that it's okay, or they don't care that it's wrong, they've got no right to complain about the same thing being done to them, and people who have been spammed by them suffer no karmic penalty for doing so.

Likewise, if the spammers are going to try and claim that the right to free speech protects them, they've certainly got no right to try and sue people who use their right to free speech to tell their friends which incoming email addresses they should block.

Which spammers?

[gbjbaanb]

So, just out of idle curiosity you understand, who were these spammers that threatened the legal action?

The reason you're torn...

[DoofusOfDeath]

It's very much like capital punishment, or the "eye for an eye" rule in the Old Testament. The normal way out of this connundrum is a follows: What makes a certain act wrong, normally, is that a party without the proper authority does it. I.e., it's more OK for a judge to send someone to jail than for you to. Same thing in the Old Testament. You can't just go around killing other people, unless it's doing so to uphold a law established by God. So in this spamming scenario? If it's not breaking the law, then retribution at *least* seems just.

It's a sad fact of modern life...

[JessLeah]

...that all it takes to bring virtually any effort to a screeching halt is for somebody with more money than you to threaten a lawsuit. At that point, whammo, you have to stop what you're doing.

When you are a small site, or an individual person without a tremendous income (read: everyone short of a CEO), that basically means "any company, or even individual, can threaten to sue you, and there goes whatever you were working on."

This seems to be a rather disturbing new part of our market reality.

Recall the DeCSS case. Several dozen named defendants, and several hundred "Does", were threatened in court by the DVD-CCA, acting as a representative of the interests of some of the largest companies on Earth. Whammo, most of the people capitulated, the courts bowed to the pressure of the RIAA's fat pocketbooks, and the DVD-CCA's will became law-- DeCSS is now effectively "illegal". Cases like this spam one seem to be the result of "trickle-down" thinking-- or as Star Control 2 would have it, "dribble-down"-- whereby smaller and smaller companies begin to adopt the same nasty tactics.

Let's face it-- if you run a small and/or non-profit site, and if some company or businessperson with lots of money (or even a moderate amount of money) makes a credible threat to send in the lawyers, you're at least as likely as not to give in to their pressure. It's simple survival instinct-- no one wants to get sued, especially (A) in this economy and (B) by someone with much fatter coffers than themselves.

What this is leading to is a situation where the rich can effectively (and, as close to possible, directly-- about the only more direct way would be to put a gun to one's head!) force the poor to do whatever they want. No laws (legal, moral or otherwise) really seem to touch the really "big fish" (RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.), and they get away with a slap on the wrist-analogue at worst; now, even smaller entities like these spammers can effectively throw their monetary weight around to silence dot-bomb-impoverished techies running innocent sites.

I fear that this trend will become far more pervasive, and will get far worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better... I personally do not believe that the current Powers That Be in the US really care that much about "the little guys" getting spurious lawsuit threats every time they do something someone Richer-Than-Thou happens to dislike...

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[selderrr]

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.

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[surprise_audit]

Recall the DeCSS case. Several dozen named defendants, and several hundred "Does", were threatened in court by the DVD-CCA, acting as a representative of the interests of some of the largest companies on Earth. Whammo, most of the people capitulated, the courts bowed to the pressure of the RIAA's fat pocketbooks, and the DVD-CCA's will became law-- DeCSS is now effectively "illegal".

I realize this is wishful thinking, and way too late, but what do you suppose would have happened if the various DVD-player-for-Windows software houses had taken that lesson to heart and declined to produce their players? Would the sudden lack of legal players for Windows have had a noticeable effect on the MPAA? It would certainly have had some effect on their potential market, but would it have been enough?

Ah well, too late now. And anyway, it would only have required one software house to not give a damn...

BTW, do any of the legal Windows DVD players work well in Linux?

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[Rick.C]

Let's face it-- if you run a small and/or non-profit site, and if some company or businessperson with lots of money (or even a moderate amount of money) makes a credible threat to send in the lawyers, you're at least as likely as not to give in to their pressure. It's simple survival instinct-- no one wants to get sued, especially (A) in this economy and (B) by someone with much fatter coffers than themselves.

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.

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[CausticWindow]

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.

sounds like spammers can't take their own medicine

[prmths]

This type of story is too common lately. Spammers get their emails discovered, the address is posted and they whine and bitch because they get spam. How about all of us get together and compare notes on which spams we get, find the responsible party and get busy on 'em. After all we are 'hackers' are we not? I'm sure that within the slashdot crowd lies the potential to really deal a blow against spammers. heh
we should launch the friggin holy war of tech against spam.
we have bayesian filters, RBL lists, white lists.. all sorts of tools that only attack the tip of the problem. We all need to get together and destroy the many bases of spam. The US government has its war against terror. We nerds should launch our war against spammers. We are just as capable to fight this war as the US is to fight theirs.

Re:sounds like spammers can't take their own medic

[worst_name_ever]

We all need to get together and destroy the many bases of spam.

I thought that the war for all the bases wasn't scheduled to start until A.D. 2101...

There is no question that they deserve it.

[Baron_Yam]

That if spammers had what most slashdotters considered a fully-functional mind, the old "giving them a dose of their own medicine" routine would wise them up.

Since spammers seem to have selective ethics at best, all we can really do is enjoy them drowning in their own kind of filth for a while without the warm fuzzy that they're actually learning their lesson.

I firmly believe that people who engage in anti-social behaviour that negatively affects their social group should be subjected to appropriate retribution from the affected group... I'm very disappointed that as I post this, I have yet to see someone suitably sleuthful track down and post the censored information.

The BEST way to stop spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, spammers are the messengers. You can shoot them all day and the spam will keep coming.

The target must be those who hire the spammers. After all, spammers are doing this for the money. No money, no spam.

Target the spammers income stream.

Okay, bring 'em on

[chazzf]

Alyxsandra Sachs
112 Catamaran St
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292-5769
(310)578-1728

Sue me. I'm a poor college student with plenty of free time and malicious friends. Make my day.

Re:Okay, bring 'em on

[akadruid]

in case anyone lacks the imagination, some good places to start might be:
Free Catalogues!
Free Samples!
Free Magazine Trials!
my favourite:
Free Serenity Pads!
and a load more here...
Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff!

A free gift for anyone who signs him up for more than 100!! Just post your address...

It is our duty to reward them for making a stand for spammers everywhere. These free items will come in handy for filling the extra space in those big houses.

from google

[Anonymous Coward]

http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:5ZxgA2bz1tUJ: www.techdirt.com/articles/20030424/2023243_F.shtml +techdirt+spammer+times+site:techdirt.com&hl=en&ie =UTF-8

and

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030424/202324 3_ F.shtml

not the original, but has the links to the spammers involved.

New York Times culpability for attacking spammers

[GGardner]

I was surprised to read the article in the paper about these guys -- the NYT actually printed their picture.

I wonder if the NYT hates spam as much as the rest of us do, and knows that publishing articles about specific spammers will cause certain unpleasantnesses for those spammers?

I wonder whose e-mail addy this might be?

[Anonymous Coward]

alyx@netglobalmarketing.com Maybe we should find out. Maybe we should help the person at this address find some great deals on genetalia enhancement or how to make money fast! Perhaps they can use a college degree!

The end of Slashdot

[anonymous cowfart]

Score:5, Offtopic

Okay everybody, the game is over and JessLeah is the winner. Slashdot will now be closed.

LAST POST!

What happens

[tmark]

Sure it's funny to imagine that these spammers are themselves getting deluged with spam. But what happens if some nutcase firebombs their house, abducts their children, or murders their wife, as a direct result of seeing of the spammers' "outing" ?

Would it be funny or just then ?

Re:What happens

[Idarubicin]

That said, if you were sitting on a jury for the trial of someone who killed a spammer, would you vote for conviction?

Um, yes? Premeditated murder is one of those things that most civilized societies prefer not to condone. (Save for when approved by the state in times of war, or when commited by the U.S. 'corrections' system.) Talk about a disproportionate response. Spammers are really, really, really annoying, and they're thieves without question--but we stopped hanging thieves more than a century ago.

On the other hand, maybe if someone just gave a spammer a really good beating, I could let that slide...

Re:Which spammers? These spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be known spammer Alyxsandra Sachs 112 Catamaran St Marina Del Rey, CA 90292-5769 (310)578-1728 info@netglobalmarketing.com 323-871-2000x11 Fax Number: 323-871-0625 Albert Ahdoot aahdoot@yahoo.com

pro se

[zogger]

--done this myself on a few occassions. It's learning some normal court room procedure and buzz words that is the most important. Usually the county clerk will help as well, finding the correct forms, etc. You can also research similar cases to see what worked and what didn't. I was actually so well prepared in two cases, cases actually against the government, that they capitulated shy of the actual court. One got to the court house steps before they caved though.

Throwing some cash at a good paralegal in advance helps too, they are usually the ones who prep their lawyers anyway, and are heaps 0 cash cheaper.

Think of court like any other construct. this does this, this does that. This comes first, then that, then that. If you follow their rules, they will let you play. and it really is just a big game, a game combined with some drama.

I haven't done it in a long time though, I imagine it's even easier now with having the internet to help with research.

I am sort of wondering now why there aren't more court cases brought against spammers in the states that have some laws against it. Even if it's hard to collect damages, just getting convictions in anti spammers favor helps establish more precedent.

Another really useful tool is to hold elected and appointed politicians and bureaucrats feet to the fire to uphold the laws via investigating if they're NOT doing their jobs, and are therefore in violations of their respective oaths,job descriptions, etc and see if they have ethics codes violations based along those lines.

Re:Which spammers? These spammers

[FyRE666]

Just read the article you linked about Alyx Sachs and her cohort. To quote her:

"These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

By contrast, she said, "70 million people have bad credit. Guess what? Now I can't get mail through to them to help them."

Did anyone else reading that feel a powerful compulsion to punch her in the face? As someone who recieves anything up to 200 pieces of spam a DAY now, I know I did.

This COMES from /.!

[I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I]

I followed the link to a cached version of the techdirt site someone linked to, and you know what?

The Address of Alyxsandra Sachs was not posted on techdirt but a link to... you guessed it, slashdot! Someone only posted this link :-).

I find this extremely funny :-)

Re:sounds like spammers can't take their own medic

[FyRE666]

It's pretty simple to make their businesses unviable. Just visit the sites they're advertising! Not just once, not twice, but 24/7. Reload the biggest pages all day long everyone! Think a spamvertised company can still turn a profit while paying for 500GB bandwidth per day? I don't think so...

Spamming = DoS attack?

[Aidtopia]

Has anybody tried to prosecute spammers for executing what amounts to a denial of service attack? When 99% of your email is unsolicited commercial bulk email, it makes that 1% very hard to find. Isn't this a small scale DoS attack on an individual? Isn't the cumulative effect on ISPs huge?

When I moved into my new home, I discovered the previous owners were mail-order people. I was receiving 100-120 catalogs every week (literally). My recycling company refused to cart off our weekly junk mail. Bills were getting lost, wedged between the pages of catalogs. I registered with the DMA, and I sent over 350 letters and made more than 100 phone calls to snail-mail spammers. Eventually it made difference. Now (three years later) we get about 10 catalogs a week. I spent a lot of time and money (postage, envelopes, etc.), but at least most of the 200 companies respected our wishes (in time, after multiple notices).

With email spam, we don't even have the option of complaining and opting-out. And yes, email bills are sometimes blocked by my ISP's spam filters. So haven't the spammers effectively eliminated our email service by flooding it? Isn't that a denial of service attack?

the address of the other two

[abhisarda]

Registrant:
Albert Ahdoot (NETGLOBALMARKETING-COM-DOM)
Net Global Marketing Inc.
18375 Ventura Blvd
Suite 326
Tarzana, CA 91356
USA
3238459660
2069841344
aahdoot@yahoo. com

Domain Name: NETGLOBALMARKETING.COM

Administrative Contact:
Richard Stewart support@usmnet.net
219 North Main
Suite 210
Bryan, TX 77803
USA
9798222827