Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Spammers Win Major Court Battle
Brian Bruns writes "Well, the antispammers have won a major battle against EMarketersAmerica.org (now offline, but mirror here). The judge involved with the case has dismissed the case with prejudice, which means that all of the spammers arguments were denied. The win is a big one for the antispam community." It's always good to see my inbox come out on the winning side of a court decision. Sounds like the case was fun to watch as well.
Was the lawyer constantly telling the judge he could lengthen his penis by 2-4 inches, and that he had the hottest underage beastality porn anywhere on the net.
The judge involved ... has dismissed the case with prejudice, which means that all of the spammers arguments were denied.
I guess there are some things in life that are just plain wrong.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I'll start to see spam decrease in some of my other inboxes. No matter how much anti spam software you have, it still creeps in. Hopefully, with the outcome of this court battle, spam will start to die. DIE SPAM, DIE!
This victory is bitter sweet. While the judge did throw the case out completely, he didn't rule that the defendants' (anti-spammers) legal costs should be paid by the plaintiff (spammers).
You can help by donating to the legal defense fund established by the SpamCon Foundation. The donations are tax deductible.
Please do donate, if you have any to spare.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
"Our real costs are less than what are quoted, but we still need money."
So what are the "real costs", then? How much do you currently have, and how much more do you require?
"Give us money" will work a lot better with a real accounting of where said money is going....
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
This is fantastic, but how long till the boca raton gang move to vietnam or somewhere similar to continue their "business".
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
What, no counterclaims? No big judgement for the anti-spam people? That's not much of a win.
Why'd their website go offline? Anyone know why?
Direct link to donating to their legal defense fund
now where am i going to get my penis enlargement pills from?
Let hope the spammers learn a very valuable lesson here. *do*not attempt to legitimize your crap, you will end up with discovery proceedings. This will ruin hem, and possibly get them killed. The shady operators they work for dont want to be found the ISPs the contract with dont want to be found. they dont want the systems they hack to be found, they dont want to get nailed for tax evasion. In short.. dont ever stand in front of a train again. Next time you are gonna get plowed down.
The penis enlargement pump they sold me worked so well I need the next size up. Where will I get one now? Oh well, I guess I'll use the lost pumping time to take care of that business opportunity in Nigeria ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The judge involved with the case has dismissed the case with prejudice
<dr evil>But was it, extreme prejudice?</dr evil>
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Does anyone have any backgroundinfo on this case? The statement linked to in this slashdot article doesn't give any good details. What I can gather is the spammers tried sueing this guy for "interrupting and blocking the Internet
traffic of lawful businesses and individuals", "damages from blocking", and "Libel". It does not however say any of the things this person did to cause the spammers to sue.
This "press release" also seems very poorly written and not very professional. "Nor indeed will any spammers try suing us again after the very public fiasco Marin's junior ambulance-chaser endured..." So he's calling his lawyer who saved his ass an "ambulance chaser". jeebus. this guy is probably in ass in real life.
Just use the attached form and return along with your membership dues.
I think that says enough about MarketersAmerica.org
Take that EMA. It's a shame we can't hang spammers.
The first link is dead.. and the supposed mirror takes you to a copy of the emarketersamerica.org site, which has NO INFO on the outcome of the court case.
A link to a copy of the actual article would be more helpful...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Note the email address on the emailmarketersamerica.org site:
admin@emarketersamerica.org
Go ahead spambots...
maybe someone should take verisign to court for letting spammers use their dns servers.
---
Phil Harvey
Construct Software
Object Oriented Content Management
I imagine this question has already been answered, but I still wonder - what's the point, exactly, of spam? The Spamhaus Project says that "90% of spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe is sent by a hard-core group of under 200 spam outfits." Yet these companies/individuals know that their marketing hardly ever works (what's the reply rate of spam? Something like .0001%?). So why do they keep coming to work? Are they idiots? Or just malignant bastards? And why do companies keep using spam for advertising? Is it so much more cost-effective to use brain-dead spamvertising over something actually thought-out?
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
Oh no wonder all those spam cans were gone when I went to Safeway today...
http://www.palmzone.net
it's time to reject some more ip-adresses, isn't it?
from emarketersamerica.org[mirror]:
"[...]as they [SPEWS] endeavor to destroy our right to market via the Internet. To date they've been much louder then our industry."
First, "louder then"?
Second, how the -heck- do you get louder than spam? These days, I get so much spam that procmail makes (real) NOISE trying to filter it...
falxx
I know that I'd love a @spamhaus.org address. I bet a spammer wouldn't touch one of those addresses with a 10' pole.
Felstein, Marin & Co literally ran for their lives from our lawyer, they had a very close shave indeed and were extremely lucky the Judge accepted their pleas for dismissal.
This may just be a pet peeve of mine, but why is it that so many educated people use the word "literally" when they mean precisely the opposite?
The sentence conjures up images of screaming shysters fleeing desperately from the good guy's lawyer, who in a frenzy of righteous anger is attempting to chase them down and cut their throats. That may be how the judicial system works in Afghanistan, but not in America, the land of the Free and Non-Literal.
What level of court was this case tried at? I'm afraid the spammers could appeal to a higher court.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Their site is offline even before it was linked to on slashdot? Thats something new!
Did Slashdot just crash a website BEFORE it had even linked to it or was that an edit?
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And, most importantly we create jobs!
Which, I suppose is true: I work for a medium sized University, and 4 of our 40+ employees in Info Services work at least part time on fighting spam. Of course we all overworked, so there would be other things for them to do.
But what about the tens of thousands of dollars we spend to keep our email systems able to store a dozen T-bytes of spam? That's important for the economy too, right?
Sort of like how criminals help the economy by necessatating prisons, hand cuffs, bullets for themselves and the police, etc.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Could someone translate that newsgroup post into English? I'm sure it makes sense if you're deeply involved in the case, but if you're not it's a little on the opaque side of black.
but recently I've started getting spam that looks like
<conspiracy theory> secret messages. They have wierd almost white words like moon, apocalypse, and kansas after large bold titles. </conspiracy theory>
Anybody else been getting these?
Oddly enough they tend to be the ones about keeping spam out of my email box.
Ok, I'm not a lawyer, and some of you may have heard me say this before. So, before you start blasting my idea (or praising it?), know that I dislike the DMCA as much as the next guy and that I am interested in feedback about the legal issues here.
As I understand it, the DMCA makes it illegal to even try to circumvent any security system on a digital device. I define digital security systems (and I don't think I am alone) as any hardware or software that keeps private information inside of a system and unwanted information and software (viruses, hackers, Trojan-horses and the like) outside of the system. In this case, my spam-blocking software can be considered a security measure. So then, any spammer that adds random characters, hides words in images or any other techniques to get through my blocking software is then intentionally circumventing my security software. If this is all true, then can't we persecute spammers on the bases of the DMCA. I think that this may lead to two benefits. First, we may be able to slow or stop spam in the US. Secondly, those that put the DMCA there in the first place (namely big businesses) would have a reason to fight the DMCA. So, where is the flaw in my logic here?
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
It seems that more and more, the United states is just shooting itself in the foot. America was built upon the idea of preying upon the ignorant and the weak. If you can't say no to a telemarketer, or delete a piece of spam, then you deserve to be bilked out of some money. Most business is based around sales. Most of those sales are to people that don't really need what they bought. So what? Control yourself before you look to control the way companies try to market their product. Its not like they're pulling out your credit card and billing you. Well, not most of the time.
well when jerks like this, and their big trucks, input on anything, they always stick there dicks in their own mouths.
Dude, you are obviously over compensating for not sucking on a teat as a child and a small penis, why else would you show yourself to be a TOTAL DUMBASS.
get a life
get a girlfriend(not your right hand)
get an iq over 50
get a job
find someone who cares
The defendants are asking for donations to recover attorney's fees.
New Business Plan:
1. Get sued by spammer.
2. ???
3. Win case.
4. Solicit donations from Internet to cover legal fees.
5. Profit!
The antispammers should send messages informing prople about their goals and that you should donate money etc. to random email adresses picked up by web sniffin bots. Yeah I think thats a great idea.
-- Steels
Idea: Lets call it Spamster... a P2P trading system set up not for warez, but explicitly for spam exchange. I know, hold on, hold on. Hear me out:
The instant you come across a piece of spam in your inbox, you can flag that piece of spam to be shared. Within a few minutes, a copy of that spam (and perhaps an MD5 fingerprint taken from random but non-specific strings extracted from the spam as well) is made available to everyone via P2P.
Meanwhile, someone on the other side of the globe a few hours later fires up his email client. As part of checking his mail, his client links up with a P2P spam hub and compares suspect contents against the list of globally known spam archetypes.
Or even more fun, have that process handled at the mailserver level. Constantly parse the spool, generaring MD5 checksums, and using those checksums as search criteria in Spamster.
Net result: The instant a piece of spam in sent, the clock starts ticking. Within a matter of minutes, that piece of spam is now indexed, and known to mail clients worldwide.
Benefits: In order to defeat the process, spam would need to be sufficiently random in it's content to overcome multiple fingerprint runs.. Something that would next to impossible (or one hell of a headache) for any would-be spammer to attempt.
Downsides: Net congestion.
Hmmmm..
Bowie J. Poag
On April 14, 2003, EMarketersAmerica.Org, Inc. filed suit against SPEWS, The Spamhaus Project, Joker.com, and the individuals that hide behind these organizations as they endeavor to destroy our right to market via the Internet. To date they've been much louder then our industry.
The spam industry has a *Chief Counsel* who doesn't know the difference between then and than.
We continually invest in equipment, inventory and technology. And, most importantly we create jobs!
Yeah, all those people writing spam filters and helping customers to install them are a huge boost to the economy. He's got us there. :)
Only in America can businesses violate privacy, conduct "business" with little or no regard for the consumer, and still be considered legit by a select few.
- The truth is a virus. -
It would be nice if they actually had legitimate email marketing but they use so many misleading tactics: fake return email, selling email addresses, spybots, etc. The 90%+ bad marketers give the "decent" email marketers a bad reputation but that's the lot they fall into now. One bad apple may ruin the whole bunch but MANY bad apples is...well...bad business.
you can just imagine how fast Eddy stopped Foolstein's coke supply and you can imagine the yell of "Get us out of this _fast_ you a**hole". -- from the article.
BAD LAWYER, no drugs! Between that, the 'near death experience' and 'literally ran for their lives' comments, this article paints a very amusing picture of coked out lawyers being chased and shot at by the Spam Mafia. I'm sure it didn't happen quite that way, but I can dream, can't I?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It does NOT mean that the judge rejected the basis for EMarketersAmerica's case, and it definately does not (as Steve Linford from Spamhaus claims) set a precedent in their favour. If some other (better funded) spammer decided to sue them tomorrow for the same causes of action, the dismissal of this lawsuit would have zero effect on that case.
RTFA, the anti-spam folks didn't "win" the case. The case was dismissed at the spammer's request when they realized that they would have to submit to discovery and disclose little things like their real names, addresses, financial records, etc. The judge granted the dismissal "with prejudice", meaning the spammers can not refile the suit at a later date.
This does not prevent someone else from filing a similar lawsuit nor does it create any legal precedent. So while the anti-spammers are saved from spending time on money on a trial, there was no legal decision rendered on the claims of interference with business and libel. Until one of these cases goes to conclusion, both the spammers and anti-spammers will continue to run amok.
Spamm^H^H^H^H^Hemarketers sell products that either don't work or that no one wants, and they sell it by using other people's computers (either by legal or illegal means) to do it for them without paying for it. So, people without consciences sell products without merit while people who actually provide useful products or services pay for them to do it.
By this reasoning, criminals provide jobs as well - stores would go out of business if criminals didn't have ill-gotten gains to spend. The minor flaw in the reasoning is that the person whose resources are used by spammers could have used those resources more efficiently, both in providing services that people actually want and in spending the money returned from those services in a more efficient manner. Criminals, after all, have no incentive to be fiscally responsible - if they run out of money, they'll just steal more. If spammers don't use their bandwidth efficiently, it doesn't matter - they aren't paying anyway, and they'll just send some more or write another virus to take over some other computers.
It is safe to say spammers "create" jobs - but it is also likely that more and better jobs would be created if spammers didn't exist. Spammers don't create jobs - spam and its deployment probably result in a net loss of jobs.
Spammers rely on their status as free riders to make money. Once they make up a significant portion of the cost of operation of the internet, they become a burden which arouses directed and righteous anger. If some of them are stupid enough to get together to publicly defend themselves, they provide an opportunity for those who pay for the leeches to shut them down. Free ridership only works when no one knows who the free riders are; once they're out in the open, they are a target. The Mafia dons who live public lives of wealth and largesse are the ones targeted by the gov't - they are the obvious targets. EMA provides a similar role for spammers, which is good for everyone else.
Well, the antispammers have won a major battle against EMarketersAmerica.org (now offline, but mirror here). The judge involved with the case has dismissed the case with prejudice, which means that all of the spammers arguments were denied. The win is a big one for the antispam community."
First off, let me begin with a disclaimer - that article is not even the slightest bit clear, so the following is based on what I think happened.
It's not necessarily true that all the spammers arguments were denied. If the plaintiff/spammers decided to prematurely end their case and ask the court for dismissal, the court can dismiss with or without prejudice. Usually if the plaintiff has already dismissed once they will need the court's permission and the second dismissal will be with prejudice (and thus they cannot refile). However, if the case was dismissed by the defendants motion to dismiss, this decision has more significance. Essentially it would mean that the plaintiff failed to state a claim that they could recover on. This would indicate that the court felt that the spammer/plaintiff did not demonstrate sufficiently any injury that they could recover on. More likely (again, from my reading of the press release) it seems that the court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants. This would hold much more significance, since the court would have determined that as a matter of law the plaintiff/spammers argument did not hold water.
While not precedent setting (since it is at the trial court level), the decision could be guiding for other courts, at least in that state. Additionally, if summary judgment were granted for the defendants, the argument they put forth could be adopted by others facing similar suits.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does Florida have an anti-SLAPP statute? This case seems to cry out for an anti-SLAPP countersuit.
This may be a victory for the anti-spammers, but at what cost (to use a cliche)? Why does the spam problem require government intervention? Almost every problem that has come up in recent history, particularly technical challenges, have been or can be solved with technical solutions or non-government practical solutions (like standards, etc). Natural language processing is getting better and better, and there are already spam-filtering solutions out there that do a pretty decent job. I use procmail, and I hardly ever lose a real email to the spam folder while only about 5% of the spam I get ever reaches my inbox, and that's only because I don't know how to write a regular expression to match "P'E.N^l'.S"E',N'.L,A-'.R%G`M~'E.N.,T" (I suppose I could try to use something like tr to get rid of non alpha-numerics, but...). There are much better systems out there than procmail.
This is definitely not a win for the first amendment or civil liberties. This is definitely not a win that is going to help keep the internet a free place.
I propose that there is a better way to direct all this vehement, foaming-at-the-mouth anger for spammers. Instead of trying to de-legalize spam, why couldn't ISP's each keep a do-not-spam list? If end users could authorize their ISP's to catch spam at the water's edge, so to speak, wouldn't that be a better solution for people who are so concerned with spam and still keep our freedoms intact?
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/ A good service, and pretty effective, until they became a pay service. Started by the guys behind the original Napster, IIRC.
Felstein (spammer's attorney) shut down the emarketersamerica site when they folded.
Is there a sarcasm escape character in English?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Better still, a lawsuit based on the DMCA will force the court to examine the law itself. The defendants will face a US$500,000 fine and (more importantly) five years in the pokey. With the paper trail so clearly documented (server logs, et cetera), the best legal manuever would be to argue that the DMCA itself is invalid/unconstitutional. We win either way.
Someone get spamhaus on the phone, I think we've got something here.
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
This was hardly the victory the anti-spammers (including myself) were hoping for.
I believe even cursory review of the court documents reveal that since the outset, this lawsuit was designed not to achieve victory in court but to harass the defendants and cause them to have to expend time and funds to fight it. There was absolutely 0 chance that they could have successfully argued that people maintaining lists of ip addresses of any sort could be held liable for jack squat.
Here are the facts: The judge granted the plaintiff motion to dismiss the case. Felchstein and the EMA desperately wanted to end this lawsuit before it went to discovery -- that could lead to the exposure of the members of the EMA, people who have very good reasons for staying hidden. The defendants did not obtain a judgement granting them legal fees, and now owe tens of thousands of dollars.
All of this means the lawsuit succeeded in every regard -- the antispammers time and money has been wasted, and the spammers are no worse off since Felchstein is in their pocket.
"So the judge ruled that life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all present." -Douglas Adams.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Thanks slashdot guys for butchering my article. Here is what was cut out:
The antispammers need serious help, their legal bills are huge. The legal funds are running dry at SpamCon. If you've wanted to donate some money to a good cause but haven't, now's your chance to help out!
http://www.spamcon.org/legalfund/
Please donate!
Brielle
Other favorites that change meaning to the opposite depending on context:
"Fast" - can mean that something is moving rapidly, OR that is it secured to the ground and thus immobile
"Anxious" - seeking to avoid (anxious about the nearby gunfire) OR actively seeking out (anxious to see her)
"Sanctioned", as in "sanctioned action" - An explicitly permitted action, OR an explicitly forbidden and punished action
"Quite" - completely OR not completely
"Apparent" - uncertain but possible OR completely certain
This comes with phrases, as well. One of my favorites is "I could care less", which actually communicates "I could NOT care less" (this is not interesting to me).
I'm such a procrastinator; I always say I'll "get around to it eventually," and many times I never do and the opportunity passes.
One fine day I'm going to wake up, decide it's time to upgrade my Schwanzstucker from Vienna Sausage to Bratwurst, and then realize that the channel to the product that will help me realize my dream is DRIED UP by these infernal meddlers, the anti-Spammers!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Only in America can businesses violate privacy, conduct "business" with little or no regard for the consumer, and still be considered legit by a select few.
Yes! In most places around the world, that's the government's job!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Edward Jenner's discovery of cowpox and its use to innoculate against smallpox saved generations from the embarassment of unsightly facial scars, a social problem. (The smallpox vaccine also saved those generations from many agonizing deaths, which is also a serious social problem. ;^)
Now that smallpox has been totally eradicated, I'd say that this is a social problem with a complete technological solution.
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
And, since IAL, my attorney's fees will be substantially lower.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
That's not a DMCA violation, because the security system isn't being circumvented for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to copyrighted material.
However, it is a form of computer cracking, because the security system is being circumvented for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to a computer system. If the existing cracking laws were applied and enforced against spammers when they circumvent spam-block filters, the problem would pretty well disappear -- spammers would either be easily filtered out at the ISP level (if they quit using these tricks) or would be in jail (if they didn't).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The US government's?
They don't make money off selling the products in the spam. They make money off selling their spamming services to lousy companies.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Are you implying that the government of the USA does not violate the privacy of its citizens?
... that does not make antispammers automatically right. I do not like spam anymore than anyone else: it is a nuisance: However it is not the spammers that lead to my outgoing email not being delivered. It took me a full day to realise because a lot was not being bounced back, simply disappearing leaving me under the impression it had been delivered. When Yahoo bounced back an email with an explanation as to why, then I discovered that my ISP had been blacklisted for having an open relay. The cure was worse than the disease. Email is vital to a lot of us and stopping spam in a way that also cuts of tens of thousands of innocent people each time is too drastic: OK, I just switched to web mail, but the average user would not know what to do (e.g. my father assumed his Yahoo web mail would have been blocked as well becaue it ultiamtely went through the same ISP: not everyone understands that http is not smtp). Blacklists also favour larger ISPs . Small ISPs are causally blacklsited, on the other hand very few people would dare block a major ISP (say AOL) whatever they did.
Life's been pretty good recently. I've been losing pounds of fat, erasing those annoying stretch marks, and growing a massive pair--all while asleep or showering, thanks to these great herbal HGH patches that Jenny Gorman wrote me about. I get to sleep a lot more now, too, thanks to the one-hunnert-percent American doctor who prescribed me this nifty hillbilly heroin via e-mail. Shipped it FedEx overnight and in complete confidence, too. Gracias, Luciano Lane!!
I do enjoy waking up sometimes, though, now that my husband has turned into a frisky devil thanks to the one-hunnert-percent genuine generic sildenafil citrate he bought online via the Internet. He says the pump gizmo has done him a world of good, too. And he's even friskier since he's improved the gas mileage of our car by 27%. Makes him real happy.
It's so nice not to worry about working, although I was just accorded a one-hunnert-percent genuine MBA by the non-accredited university of my choice! We're just sitting back and letting those dollars roll in from all the great investment tips and free U.S. grants you never have to pay back. If I ever need a little extra cash--say to order a few cheap toner cartridges or take a quick Florida vacation, I just call all those companies that are anxious to pay me for my opinions. I have a *lot* of opinions.
All of this has now been put in jeopardy due to the anti-spamming advocacy of this organization. You should all stop it before you ruin our ideal lifestyle.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go apply for a second mortgage on our house. I want to get it done before this lovely Vicodin makes me fall asle
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Mark E. Felstein was denied admission to the New York state board on the grounds of "misconduct in college, history of substance abuse, criminal record and lack of candor since college concerning such matters"
40000 $ to defend oneself against a fraudulant accusation, and the accusators don't even have to pay a penny for it ?
That's the same thing as saying anybody who's not wealthy has NO RIGHTS TO JUSTICE IN THE US !
I'm quite sure I'll never ever will go live to such a lawless country while things are like that.
Anybody notice the pause in the Sobig series of viruses? Maybe they paused to see how this would turn out. Now that it's gone badly, we may just see some more Sobig viruses released.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Edward Jenner's discovery of cowpox and its use to innoculate against smallpox saved generations from the embarassment of unsightly facial scars, a social problem.
No, that would be a medical problem, not a social one. Medicine is a science. The scars may impact people's social lives, but are a side-effect of the medical problem, not a social problem themselves (unless you're suggesting that the vaccine solved all forms of non congenital facial disfigurement.. which it didn't - and would still be a medical, not social, problem.)
Social problems are things like poverty and crime.
Now that smallpox has been totally eradicated, I'd say that this is a social problem with a complete technological solution.
Actually it would be a symptom of a medical problem with a scientific solution.
I wish you luck in SLAPPing the spammers out of existance and gettting rich in the process.