Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Files 15 Lawsuits Against Spammers
Popsikle writes "A Seattle Paper reports that 'Microsoft Corp. announced it has filed 15 lawsuits against alleged e-mail spammers in Washington state and the United Kingdom on Tuesday.' It states the tough anti-spam laws in UK and Washington allows ISP's to sue spammers. This could be a good test of the new anti-spam laws." There's coverage on CNN as well. Microsoft has picked a good venue for such a case.
It's amazing how while suing spammers and getting all the good PR, MS ise ws/business/61 13665.htm
also blocking anti-spam legislation.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercuryn
"We have personnel around the world engaged in those battles, and we are tapping that expertise and working with these people to fight spam as well." Can't they do the simple exercise of examining their own user's spam - hotmail users can give billions in a day.
If hotmail users could even get $5 per spam, they'd be richer than Tiger Woods.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
A full list can be found on microsoft's site:
u n0 3/0617SpamEnforcementFS.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/J
</karmawhore>
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
But... who do we root against? If only Linus were somehow involved, it'd all be so clear!
My brain hurts!
We hate spammers.
We hate Microsoft.
Microsoft sues spammers.
Dangit.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Let them sue until they die of old age!
And this time I don't even care how much money is sunk into the greedy hands of their respective lawyers.
AFAIK, some spammers go to great lengths to keep their identities hidden (hi-jacking other people's computer systems etc) so although the threat of legal action will be a big deterrent there's always going to be spam unless we can come up with a technological solution to stop it.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
I hope the Slashdot crowd shows a little maturity on this one. I dislike many of Microsofts tactics as much as the next man but in this case Iâ(TM)m rather pleased to see the might of their legal department behind something that could benefit us all.
Mainly just to see first hand an accused Spammer being cross-examined by a Microsoft Lawyer, dressed up in that stupid butterfly outfit...
I wonder what cost spam has on MS itself... Think of all the resources on Hotmail that get taken up with sent and received spam... Surely it would add up?
:)
Then again, it might not matter to such a large company... but it's MS, there must be some monetary explanation for all this
More likely, they are doing it to reduce the amount of spam heading in towards Hotmail and their MSN services. The cost of managing this must be large and it may even be hurting them in the fight for the MSN-AOL user segment.
In the long term, they may also be doing it as a good deal of spam is sent with their domain as a return address or with Microsoft trademarks in the subject line. As the spammers are trying to sell something, Microsoft may need to do something in order to show that they are protecting their trademarks...but IANAL, so this is speculation...
Oh no. No no no no NO. If someone spoofs millions of spams, coming from your e-mail address, and you end up being sued for vast amounts of money as a result, would you consider it fair? It is in no way Microsoft's fault that someone faked their address, and as such they shouldn't be sued for it.
I'm not sure they should be suing for it, either, although I'm strongly of the opinion that pretending to be someone else, in whatever medium, should be illegal. I believe in the right to anonymity, not the right to tell everyone you're me!
Gee, you mean like producing a secure operating system and email applications? How funny would it be if it goes to court and the spammers had to testify how easy it was to hijack Windows systems.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Doesn't mean it has to be Good vs. Evil.
Fights can be Evil vs. Evil, too.
cygnuhchur
Of course Microsoft cares about the little guy. Or rather, about him and the billion other little guys with a few spare bucks in their wallets.
The little guys impressions are important, as long as they add up and might seriously affect business.
In this case, Microsoft is the biggest karma whore of them all.
Regards,
--
*Art
It is good to know that Microsoft is taking a major step forward to combat against Spam. We need more major corporate to do similar thing as Microsoft is doing right now. These corporates have enough power and money to deal with spam in a legal way. Of course, if the spammer chooses to send out junk through an SMTP server that's outside the US territory, there is nothing much we can do. It is sad, but I am glad Microsoft is taking actions! Go Microsoft!
So this ends up in the next global legislation mess: we all agree that we need global legislation, but the big fight is whether is will be US, European or one of the SE Asian.
And this mess will only be solved when all governments have the same interests.
Root for one well placed hand grenade during the proceedings.
/syle
You must have a easily guessable hotmail address.
My hotmail username has a number & a special character in it. It has never recieved any spam in the 5 years that I have been using it.
DEATH STAR (AP) 2003/06/18 --
Darth Vader, Lord of Sith and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, has announced today his intention to sue Sauron of Mordor, the official "Dark Lord" of Middle Earth, for violating his Intellectual Property (IP).
Darth Vader spokesdroid K4VC5 briefly commented to the intergalactic press: "Darth Vader is, most certainly, the original Dark Lord, and we feel that Sauron of Mordor, no matter how creative and evil, has no right to call himself the 'Dark Lord' of Middle Earth". He added that Darth Vader legal team would pursue damages worth "several billions" of Galactic Credits.
Sauron, Dark Lord of Middle Earth, was unavailable to comment, but well-informed sources close to Mordor report that "his evilness" promised to rain death and destruction on the first legal storm trooper to ever set foot on Middle Earth.
Darth Vader spokesdroid also confirmed that Lucifer, the star attorney of Mephistopheles, Baal, Satan & Associates Law Firm (LLC) has been retained to defend a case which promises to be one of the toughest legal fight in the history of Evil(tm).
Lucifer first (and best known) legal battle involved the semitic God YHWH (pronounced: "Yahweh") for the control of the "Garden of Eden" real-estate property. That case was widely considered a draw, and was settled out of court.
Dr Evil, widely considered as an authority on Evil(tm) only commented: "Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!", and declined to elaborate any further.
That's all for business news. Film at 11.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
What stops Microsoft from appending some legal agreement in an EULA that specifies that their software can not be used by any individuals for the purpose of proliferating spam email. Define spam. Define a harsh penalty per email sent. Then try to enforce it.
What might stop this from happening? Why wouldn't we make this a part of the GPL? I think everybody besides spammers hates spam, right?
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Just this morning I got 5 emails from hotmail accounts asking if I wanted:
:-)
Spammers fake the sender's address all the time. If you dug into the mail header details I'm willing to bet they didn't come from Hotmail servers.
Try typing this in exactly as shown:
telnet your.smtp.server 25
HELO somedomain.com
MAIL FROM:
RCPT TO:
DATA
Subject: junk subject line
junk body text
.
The blank line after the subject and the dot on the line by itself are important.
Congratulations - you've just sent yourself a forged e-mail. Easy wasn't it?
The above link also states that more than half of U.S. currency is in circulation *outside* of the U.S., so there's less than $330 billion in circulation within our country. Amazing isn't it? No, that doesn't mean that Bill Gates has 20% of the nation's wealth. It just demonstrates how money is created by the banking system. There are those that misunderstand this process (or don't believe it, amazingly enough!) and state that for someone to become rich someone else has to become poor. Thanks to the banking system this is NOT necessarily the case and also explains why a $10 trillion economy can work with only $330 billion in currency.
``We don't think all commercial e-mail should be banned,'' he said. Microsoft favors self regulation by the industry ``to establish standards that can evolve over time,'' he said.
and you think it's reasonable?
It's typical duplicity from M$, "I won't let you do what I do, and that's how we make our money and bring you software that does what you wan." Microsoft has been trying all along to criple it's "client" machines so that they are dependent on Microshaft "server" machines and all dependent on M$. It does not do what I want it to and never will.
Mass mailing is just one more instance of "client" gelding and they have media help for it. A lack of mail agents in M$ software is typical, where the free world has many such as Sendmail and Exim. Their intrests here line up with traditional publishers who wish to keep the playing field uneven. To bring this lack of mailing ability to free software, AOL/MSN and others have sucessfully threatened smaller ISPs to block both inbound and outbound port 25 traffic. Forcing a cable company to give up a competitive advantage like web and mail serving stinks like an anti-trust violation, but that's what a tech told me happend recently when I was forced to use their smtp server as a relay for the first time. The excuse given was to keep cracked M$ boxes from spamming, so M$ created the problem to begin with and the cracking spammers did not lack mail agents, and it's not likely to help. No other smtp server could be used but theirs, enabling Carnivore and censorship, disabling TLS and privacy.
This is absolutely what the internet is NOT about. The internet is supposed to be a network of peer computers. There's not supposed to be central control or a difference between the ability of one computer and another. Microsoft never liked the internet anyway. They really hate free software that gives people ability that M$ doea not want them to have. Microsoft thinks it owns the internet and can make it into the next broadcast TV. They can, as long people think such things are reasonable.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What stops Microsoft from appending some legal agreement in an EULA that specifies that their software can not be used by any individuals for the purpose of proliferating spam email. Define spam. Define a harsh penalty per email sent. Then try to enforce it.
.5 seconds, which was inadequate to read the entire document, that he did not know how the scroll bars worked and thought what showed in the window was the complete agreement, that he purchased the computer with the software already installed and he never clicked "I agree" at any point, etc., etc., etc.
Microsoft does not want to risk the courts ruling that EULAs are not legal, binding contracts. If Microsoft were to take that case to court, the spammer could challenge the legality of the EULA, showing that it was not signed, that there was no evidence that he read read or understood it, that the click-through agreement allowed him to click on "I accept" without even forcing him to scroll to the end of the document, that he clicked it in
There is a reason that the BSA and software companies take pirates to court for copyright violation rather than for violating the terms of the legally questionable EULAs.
That's the amount of cash in circulation, which is tiny fraction of the actual money in the US, let alone the world. Remember, money is a fiction, no matter whether it's given a physical representation or not.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
The idea that Microsoft is doing this just for PR is silly. The idea that Microsoft is doing this to make people happy is silly too. The fact of the matter is, MS, like any good company, is doing this for money. Spam costs them a LOT. The cost of spam is huge and it is rising. Email systems aren't free, and when 80 percent of what you have going is garbage, you could save a ton of cash if you could cut that out. I dislike MS as much as the next guy, but this is getting out of hand. Some of you think that MS doesn't do ANYTHING unless it is either evil or underhanded. Fact of the matter is they do what they do to make money. Sometimes that's good for us, sometimes it's bad.
SECTION 4 - RESTRICTIONS ON USAGE
You may not use it to send spam!
You may not use it for a scam!
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
The BBC's The Money Programme are doing an edition on junk (postal) mail and spam tonight at 19:30 BST. The Money Programme tends to be fairly influential and usually has high journalistic and production values.
If you're in the UK, or have access to BBC2 tonight, watch it!
Aren't these the same people who won't actually sell your hotmail address but will collect and sell every none hotmail address that you send to or receive mail from?
MicroSoft: BOO!
Spammers: BOO!
Suing Spammers: YAY!
MicroSoft sues Spammers: BOO!--no YAY!--no BOO!--no ka-poW!!
I'm so confused...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.