Earthlink Wins Another Spam Award: $16 million

linuxwrangler writes "U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. awarded Earthlink $16 million and an injunction against Howard Carmack for Carmack's use of Earthlink to deliver spam. Given that Earthlink is still awaiting payment of the $25 million it won against Kahn C. Smith last year, it views the injunction as the bigger of the two wins." A few more of these, and maybe the tide of spam will eb. Maybe. Nah.

Comments

Awards vs. Injunction

[sssmashy]

Last year the company was awarded $25 million in damages in a suit against another big junk e-mailer, Kahn C. Smith of Tennessee. Youngblood said the company hasn't collected that award. But the monetary award, Wellborn said, is less of a victory than the injunction.

Nobody will ever collect civil damages from a spammer, because the vast majority of spam does not come from legitimate companies with assets. Most spammers tend to be individuals: low-rent sleazebags with bad credit and a history of illegal or borderline illegal activities. If they actually had millions of dollars they wouldn't stoop to spamming.

The injunction is a good thing because if one of these lowlifes tries spamming again, they can throw him in jail.

Re:Awards vs. Injunction

[dubl-u]

Spam is most definitely an area where very large financial gain is possible. This obviously precludes spammers being "low-rent" sleezebags.

Even if somebody lives in a high-rent place, they can be a low-rent sleazebag. Hollywood is full of them, for example. And that the gain is possible doesn't mean that all spammers get it; the spammers I've taken the time to track down and talk to have often made very little from it.

Generalizations like this do *not* further the anti-spam cause.

Well, actually, they do, especially when they're true. It makes it much easier from a PR and lobbying perspective to be able to say paint spammers as beyond the pale.

I recently chatted with a fellow who's in the on-line porn industry. Although he doesn't spam, he knows a number of spammers. He seemed quite convinced that they were sleazebags. I've met a few myself, and all of them, excepting the once who were just plain clueless, were all sleazebags.

And all the ones I've seen profiled in the press were pathetic excuses for human beings, too. Like the guy in Minnesota, who previously was a cop. Until he got busted for selling drugs to children, that is.

So if you know some spammers who are smart, upstanding, concerned citizens, hey, share the details with us. I'd be fascinated to find once who is a vegan pacifist buddhist. No, scratch that, I'd be fucking floored.

Why isn't he in jail?

[runchbox]

The WSJ article said he'd used 350 stolen identities and credit cards to set up accounts. We've got the laws we need to put people in jail for credit card fraud -- so why is he at home avoiding phone calls?

Re:Is it just me or....

[Raven42rac]

Basically, spammers make money because some "John Doe", who does not know any better is buying their stuff. If no one clicked through and bought their stuff, it would just fizzle out. But hopefully these huge settlements will scare the "casual" ass, I mean "mass e-mail marketer" out of the "business" and the rest will be sued into oblivion. IMHO, the crux of this matter will be proving that someone either did or did not "opt-in" on some website somewhere with some "checked tiny ass checkbox" located on many websites. "I did not sign up for that", yes you did, on this date at this time. On the other hand, if you contacted them and they did not stop sending you things, then you should have a legal ground.

Moral is: do not buy their wares, and scrutinize all websites that ask for you e-mail address, read the privacy policies, and make sure you do not inadvertantly sign up for mail from "affiliates".

OK, I have a friend who is a sleazebag^W spammer

[Simon Brooke]

I went round to see a friend last night. She is a mostly sensible, mostly reasonable, fairly tech literate person. Her values are on the whole mostly in the right place. She runs a small bunsiness and until recently her business has been mostly servicing a government contract. That contract ended and was not renewed. She has laid off most of her staff, but she has no income and still two employees to pay, and she's desperate to find new work.

A couple of months ago she came and talked to me about how to set up a bulk email thing and I thought I'd succeeded in persuading her that it was a seriously bad idea and she shouldn't do it. Apparently I hadn't; last night she told me she'd started sending bulk UCE.

This isn't someone whom I'd describe as sleazy, and it isn't someone who's stupid. It's someone who is desperate. I think you will find a lot of spammers are.

The problem can be tackled, it seems to me, at two levels. Yes, if there's legislation (particularly if it has real teeth) then peopel will get a good clue that this is not a good thing to do. But it also needs there to be a professional ethic among systems and network administrators that we will not allow the infrastructure we control to be used for this sort of thing, and that we will kick offenders off and cancel accounts; and that if our management say different we will refuse to work for them - a sort of hypocratic oath for geeks.