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Good Guys 2, Spammers 0
JoeJob writes "A couple of victories in the legal war against spammers. First, a Washington resident has been awarded a $250,000 decision against a spammer that sent him 58,000 copies of a spam. Second, looks like the spammers who are trying to sue Spamhaus, SPEWS, and other spam blacklists have decided to tuck their tails and run. Let's hope this trend continues." If you care to celebrate this, one food springs to mind.
Back in the day; when the debate about allowing comerical interest on the Internet fired up, many predicted that today' situation would be the outcome... *soft crap destroying the backbone and .com(ers) diluting the content to the lowest common denominator.
Too bad it'd never be feasible to penalize all of the people who aren't patching their systems and thus flooding people's inboxes with virus spam. I'm still getting hundreds, sometimes thousands of fscking "Your Details" e-mails every day -- despite the fact that the problem was widely publicized and (supposedly) widely patched. In a way, this is worse than spam, because not only do I often get more virus mails than regular spams, I *know* I'm using a lot more bandwidth on all the SoBig.F crap...but until it's ever feasible to punish folks who won't/can't patch their systems, I guess we're stuck with this crap, too.
How To Get Humans To Mars
How can we keep the internet a place of free exchange of ideas and NOT have spam? The problem with spam is, is the creators show an incredible lack of originality and creativity. I'd tolerate spam better if it had something truly interesting to say, or presented something that is intrinsically dull or boring in a new or interesting way. Why don't spammers use irony? Ironic spam would be a welcome addition to my daily email.
We want unlimited sharing of music files, we want free software like linux and freebsd, we want the internet to remain the wide open wondrous interface that it is...I don't see how we can have all these things and NOT have spam.
You'd have people signing up for AOL, just to get the spam.
Now 2.5mil woul be painful, but 250k doesn't seem like much. But at least another one bites the dust. And hopefully this will encourage others who have the means to continue to sue spammers. I have the will, but no means. As in I have a desire and a bunch of email records yet I have no money for a lawyer and googling for free info seems to bring up useless adds for stuff I don't need.
On another note I was eating dinner wiht a friend and she told me in VERY strong terms that spam would "never go away" and as a business practice it works great and she supports it. She said in her company's case they "send" out their marketing material to harvested emails that are sold to them froma third party. Yet inthe next sentence she complains about getting penis enlargemtn emails and breast enhancers.....
meh!
Ave Molech Setting
This is all well and good, but it will be news for real when the spam house pays up. The chances of ever collecting on this judgment are slim and none.
Actually finding and garneshing their accounts is possible but I can not imagine that will be easy or practical.
The other question I have is, how about a class action law suit. I know about 100 million people that would like to sue, the ULTIMATE class action.
Tech solutions will beat legal ones in this fight. Check out Mailinator
Lets see a thousand posts about how you set up a bayesian filter!
Oh yeah, and keep your laws away from the internet, be they anti-spam, anti-porn, anti-terrorism, anti-hatespeech.
This is a problem easily solved with technology, thanks.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It's called "punative damages". I surely don't cost $10,000 just to pick up the phone (although, there's a goal to strive for...) but the new federal "Do Not Call" list has just that as the penalty for bypassing it.
Fines are usually *not* based on the "cost" but instead of "deterent value". If the fine was a penny, the spammer might just pay it.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Okay, It seems to me that there is a simple solution to all of these spam related problems.
Instead of relying on a technological solution that will be circumvented sooner or later, why not follow the money?
Going after the spammers themselves seems to be a losing proposition because they have become adept at being elusive. The people in this equation that cannot afford to be elusive are the ones that are actually collecting money from the targets of spam. The people that are paying the spammers for their services are the ones that need to be penalized. When the spammers are no longer useful they will die out.
Making money from spam should be made illegal. I think it would be a lot more effective at reducing spam than the methods that are being used now.
If my logic is in any way flawed, please let me know.
We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose. We understand that hearing us say this is important to you...
I'm well aware of that supposed procedure ("supposed" because, after all, who can verify it?). It still comes down to the fact that I can't send email to anyone with a SPEWS-crippled mailserver - not because of my sins, or my ISP's sins, or even their upstream's regional office's sins, but because of the old actions of someone in another part of my continent.
I know that the idea is to increase collateral damage to the point that the pressure on the offending ISP. How would you recommend that I do that? I'm one of thousands of customers at my ISP. They are one of thousands of ISPs that use that upstream. What would you say is a more effective target of my efforts:
I'll leave you to guess which path I took.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
When all else fails, fall back to mindless venom.
I assert that spam is very much like spray-painting advertisements onto unwilling people's property and making them pay for the materials. In fact, I assert that spamming is actually doing exactly that. You seem to be trying to refute it through ridicule rather than intelligence.
Not that I'm surprised. Your "Internet destroyer" comment means that you're either a spammer, or someone who is just as stupid as a spammer.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The problem is not with spam, nor with laws. The problem is with the SMTP protocol. There is currently no way to track the originator's IP, nor any way set 'content type' flags. If the originator's IP were known to be accurate and preserved, it would be easy(ier) for routers to implement "The first 200 emails in x seconds are fast, then kick down to one email per minute" or "When (threshold) emails from a source is reached, insert 'Bulk Mail' flag if it doen't exist". Mail readers could then be set to accept email from 'my favourite mailing list' but ignore all other 'Bulk Mail'. At this point, spamming becomes non profitable, as most people have it auto-deleted.
This still allows people to send well targetted, unsolicited email in low volumes (Most of my clients appreciated getting an unsolicited email offering my services, because I did the research to find out they were looking for someone like me, but were unaware of me). The typical "spam" will disapear, because the volumes will not be received to make it cost justifiable.
Any laws passed on the current technology will fail because not ALL countries will pass identical laws. A slight tweek to the protocol will allow filter/routers (yes higher layer than just IP routers) and readers to, over time, eliminate the problem.
This topic is timely in my case. Today I got a message from AOL that my domain, tgrigsby.com, was banned from sending emails to anyone inside AOL. Apparently, www.comusnetorg.us was using my domain in the "Sender" of the spams they were sending. They would generate random user names and prepend them to the that domain. The domain in the emails was fiveaalive.biz, which was a junk domain registered by comusnetorg.us and which redirected to the comusnetorg.us website.
All to sell fools illegal, fake, or nonexistent prescription drugs.
I've contacted my ISP in the hopes that they can smooth the ruffled feathers at AOL. And now I'm pondering the wisdom of suing a company that, according to the whois record, is based in the UK.
I feel they owe me money for using my domain name. I've now been personally affected by their actions, and I'm PISSED. I'd like to sue for possession of every testicle in the company, delivered to me floating in a jar of pickle juice, but that seems a bit unrealistic, so I guess I'll have to go for money.
Are there any lawyers here that can comment on my chances?
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***