Slashdot Mirror
Californian Court Fines Spammers $2 Million
afra242 writes "The BBC News has reported that a Californian court has fined a marketing firm $2m for spamming via email. This judgement was the first anti-spam ruling and the marketing firm were fines for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails telling people how to spam. We're getting closer..." Other readers point to coverage of the judgement from the Associated Press (via SFGate) and from Reuters (via Yahoo!).
Great! When do I get my share?
I would have thrown the death penalty at em.
I mean, hey, it's not ass-rape, but $2 million will do for starters.
evil adrian
Okay there are about 200 'big' spammer left.
End of 2004 till all are gone? Is this possible? Probably not some other will take their places but it's a good start.
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
...it wouldn't work. That fines wouldn't help.
If rulings like this become everyday experiences, I honestly think the amount of spam will decrease.
It will not solve the problem, however. There are ALOT of ideas for this, one of which is POP-Before-SMTP, which seems somewhat sane. But then again, they (more or less) all do. I find it highly unlikely that any of these n solutions will find wide acceptance and use, before at most a handful standardized ways are selected.
Oh yes, and all your money are belong to us!
With great numbers come great responsibility!
The injunction also forbids Willis and Griffin from owning or managing any business that advertises over the internet for 10 years.
After 1 January, the state's anti-spam laws will get tougher and will also allow private individuals to sue spammers and collect damages of up to $1,000 per e-mail.
That's a nice pair of little clauses there.
The problem is that these guys were a perfect case: a pair of California spammers spamming people inside California using California computers. Methinks jurisdiction is going to be much more interesting when they try to go after out-of-state/country people. If they do so.
However, it does send a nice message to the bastards. And if just one of 'em decides to not hit that 'send 50 million emails' button, that's a little win for the Internet. We gotta be happy with that, 'cause the government (as usual) is gonna keep the money to itself.
...to our American brethren, since they have more guns than us and most of my spam seems to originate from the States... you see where I'm going with this? :)
Post 9/11, folks were afraid to fly. When the infamous Washington Sniper was still at large, people would avoid the streets; they'd weave and dodge as they walked. With no disrespect to any of those involved, my point is that a couple of high-profile, well-publicised incidents generally scares people into modifying their behaviour if they feel they might be putting themselves at risk in light of those incidents.
So, if we murder a bunch of spammers - preferably in some hideous, ritualist fashion, and preferably live on national TV (or hey, pay-per-view - I'd pay to see that!) - you think it might scare the rest of 'em into behaving like civilised human beings for a while?
(posted anonymously 'cos the spammers probably have guns too...)
Wow! $2,000,000 is 1/10,000 of one penny for each spam email. That'll stop him!
Okay, that's an exaggeration. Maybe, because of this judgment, the spammer will become so poor he will have to stop having caviar flown in from Moscow.
We're getting closer...
Hmm... I like them being fined, and california needs the money, that's for sure.
However, I wouldn't jump too high right now. I think we are just changing the game, not winning it. Here's an example of what spammers are doing now.
I believe whitelisting is one of the only way to go about stopping spam, but it has obvious problems associated.
Ah well, atleast the government is doing something... 5 years too late.
Which is to sue not just the spammers, but the companies who hire them and ban their imports to the Unites States (or whatever country you are in) to punish those overseas who may be beyond the reach of a lawsuit. The latter may be harder to enforce as I am sure there are ways around it and not enough customs agents to check everything. But it might at least have some impact on domestic companies who hire spammers. The more countries that join in, the more impact it has overseas. Companies will soon learn that using spammers costs more than it makes. Dry up the demand for spammers and the problem goes away.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
According to the article, a law goes into effect in January stating that people can sue companies for $1000 per spam e-mail they get. As much as we all hate spam, isn't $1000 per e-mail a bit excessive?
Think about how we react when we hear about the record companies suing people for thousands of dollars per song that they share. The normal reaction is, "There's no way that these people caused that much damage to the RIAA! They should only be able to sue for how much damage they can prove they incurred over that person sharing the song."
Why doesn't that apply here? Just because we don't like spam? One spam e-mail doesn't cause $1000 worth of damages just like one shared song doesn't cause $10000 worth of damages. Isn't there a bit of a double standard here? The people in the story got punished in a different way as well - they can't advertise anything over the internet for the next 10 years, not even their own marketing company.
Now, I'm all for spammers getting shut down and punished, but $1000 per e-mail seems a bit excessive when the actual damage to your time/bandwidth is nowhere near that.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Perhaps the greatest asset that anti-spamming forces have going for them is that spammers don't have the foggiest idea where each of their spams are going to. Who knows whether joeblow@hotmail.com is an account based in California or Timbuktu? And that, I believe, will pose spammers with an insurmountable problem. They are going to have to make all their spams California-legal, because there's probably not a single spam list out there that doesn't target at least a few dozen people in California.
Now clearly there will be some people who will say, "This law is unenforceable against offshore spammers." That's fine. The question is, do you want spams coming from both domestic and offshore spamhauses? Getting rid of spam sent within the United States will wipe out a large part of the problem; and not just in terms of numbers of spams sent. It will also disproportionately harm spammers with the greatest financial resources and the greatest technical expertise to overcome spam filters.
On a side note, I've noticed that for the first time in memory, my daily spam load over the past couple of months hasn't gone up. There's blood in the water.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Who cares about money this early in the game? What we should be caring about is presidence. If this runs though the court system, we can get a presidence that can later be used against other spammers. Thats the name of the game these days. Look at the DMCA. The only presidence it has now is that people settle before it gets challanged.
Only draw back that I see comming from this an any other spam law is the eventual case of the gov/state/megacorp vs non-spammers. How soon will we be reading a story here about one of those entities suing John Doe user for sending an unsolistied e-mail because he had a gripe? Lets just hope that when presidence does come its specific and not as far reaching and badly worded like the current digital laws.
care to offer an explantion or just trollin' ?
The money does get put into the state coffers. This is not like the RIAA who keeps the money for themselfs.
Fight Spammers!
Try READING the article before you post. LOOK! I've made it easy for you! I also highlighted the parts you apparently missed...
California has won a landmark judgement with its first anti-spam ruling after a court fined a marketing firm $2m for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails telling people how to spam.
The state's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, brought the case against PW Marketing of Los Angeles County and its owners, Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin in 2002, under a 1998 state anti-spam law.
The law was strengthened last month to make it easier to sue spammers.
PW Marketing, Willis and Griffin were charged with sending out millions of e-mails, including advertising $39 guides on how to spam, along with long lists of e-mail addresses of California residents.
Prosecutors said PW Marketing violated the 1998 anti-spam law because these unsolicited e-mails were sent without a free call number for recipients to phone to stop additional mailings.
They also failed to follow state requirements to include a valid return address.
The state attorney, Bill Lockyer, also said the owners illegally tapped into computer users' network connections so the company could send e-mails that could not be traced back to its source.
The judgement, which Mr Lockyer said will be the model for future spam injunctions, forbids PW Marketing from sending unsolicited commercial e-mails, accessing computers that belong to other people without their permission and disguising its identity by sending messages that appear to originate from a different address.
The injunction also forbids Willis and Griffin from owning or managing any business that advertises over the internet for 10 years.
After 1 January, the state's anti-spam laws will get tougher and will also allow private individuals to sue spammers and collect damages of up to $1,000 per e-mail.
I'm all for free speech, even in cases were I don't agree with the person's view point. The stormwatch neo-nazi group is one example of bozos and foofoo heads while I strongly disagree with them, I feel it's their right to make total asses out of them selves.
At the same time, I reserve the right to censer what i'm exposed to, as a consumer I have every right to do this. To allow adverts of viagra and penis enlargements on the net should be considered free speech and protected under the law. However, spam in my inbox is steping over personal boundries. I accept advertisments as a way to pay for content I view, however spam is getting a free ride and providing income to people who are not associated with providing me e-mail.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I feel like I just won the lottery, except it might be better since tax code on compensation is different I believe.
the spam cash cow has finally come MY way.
(now I can buy solid gold pitchforks and flaming torches)
Not to mention the fact that often spammers are resellers of no-name crap products which could easily be relabelled and sold under a different name. Banning products only works if your product name has some value.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
They didn't get find for sending spam per se, they got fined for sending spam with specific characteristics - specifically spam with forged headers, no opt-out, and routed through a bunch of hacked computers.
Maybe this really doesn't make a difference, since most spam has those characteristics. While legitmate email addresses and not routing it through a ton of open relays would be nice, the opt-out part is useless, since almost everyone knows not to respond to op-out on spam, since it usually just results in more spam because they know it's an active address.
I have blog like everyone else
Not to mention that they have been prevented from doing managing an internet advertising business, as many people have brought up.
Y'know, I don't mean to whine, but posts like your parent just make me sad, not because someone posts a knee-jerk reaction (no, I'm not new here), or because they obviously haven't read the article (there were *two* spammers involved, not just a "him"), it's because the *moderators* don't even take their points seriously enough to read the articles themselves.
I mean, the ol' "moderators on crack" is nothing new, but geez people, you should be ashamed of yourself for modding that post up. I saw it at +3 and thought, "okay, there's one or two people out there dumb enough to get suckered into a lame post," - but +5? Whatever, I should go on my way and not let it bother me...
I still think it's better to cut off their cojones with a wooden spoon.
They hacked other mail-servers to send mail for them so it couldnt be traced back to them... Ah... wait a minute... I thought they were selling a physical object... a book on spamming.. which means they would have to have some place to be billed, and also a way to actually mail the book... Hmmm... guess we cant trace credit card purchases, balance transfers.. or US mail anymore.. wow. Musta been real hard to track down?
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
Then instead of hiring spammers to advertise their own products, companies will just hire'em to advertise their competitors' products
You're not giving enough credit to Law Enforcement agencies. That possibility would be studied very closely, and attempting to frame your competitors for commiting a felony is the sort of thing that's likely to make heads roll as high as the CEO level. Additionally the number of people that probably have to be involved would probably elevate it to some level of conspiracy charge.
LA Times reported this this morning. Basicly, the pair have nothing in their name and are residing in Mexico. It is a Civil judgement so we can't extradite them:
2 5, 1,582808.story
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spam25oct
> They didn't get find for sending spam per
> se, they got fined for sending spam with
> specific characteristics - specifically
> spam with forged headers, no opt-out, and
> routed through a bunch of hacked computers.
Yeah, kinda like that guy from "Laberia, Africa"? Heh. I get 2 emails a day trying to get me to help some guy smuggle money out of africa because of some coup in some freaky government.
And why? Because I forgot to take my regular email addy out of my recently setup email account reply to. It just takes one slip and yer screwed.
Oh well. **Polishing my brand new email filters**
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
If it were not for those forged headers (in particular the "from") filtering would be much easier for end users.
So there.
The use of forged headers, or hijacking computers with which to route their e-mail ought to be made a felony.
Clearly, Company-A had to pay Spammer to spamvertise Company-B.
Payment would be what must be traced.
Spammers who do not want to be liable themselves, or at least completely liable, will have records of, and be able to identify exactly who paid them.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
There's no doubt it would be considered as fraud, but how can you possibly know *who* authorized the spam, if the company being advertised says they had nothing to do with it? Even if the company had only one known major competitor, that wouldn't necessarily mean that the other company was necessarily responsible either.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
-
Business and Professions Code 17529.2.
The important part is in the details.Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person or entity may not do any of the following:
(a) Initiate or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement from California or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement sent from California.
(b) Initiate or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement to a California electronic mail address, or advertise in an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement sent to a California electronic mail address.
The key here is that you can go after the advertiser, not the spammer. You can find the advertiser by following the money. If you put in a credit card number, where does the transaction come out?
Using an "internet billing service" like iBill won't help. They're actually the "merchant" in such cases. iBill is going to be involved in many spam lawsuits.
The Direct Marketing Association is frantically lobbying Congress to override this before it goes into effect. S.877, which just passed the Senate, would kill the California law and replace it with a weaker one. But the House hasn't acted. Watch for any last-minute action at the end of the session.
Parking fines? Does everyone that got hindered by the wrongly parked car get a cut?
Littering fines? Do the people who had to walk that littered street get their cut?
Speeding fines? Do the other people on the road that were endangered by the speeder get their cut?
Those fines usually do two things. One, they help cover the costs of enforcing it (in this case, suing the spammer) and it acts as a public deterrant. I wouldn't compare that to the RIAA at all.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How do you figure a fine of $1,000 per e-mail is a nice clause? One of the biggest complaints I have with the american justice system these days is a broad divsion between crimes and consequences (and in punishing responsibility for harm.) There is no way a single e-mail could cause $1,000 worth of damage.
Say, mail your preschool pupils very graphic bestiality porn using fake headers impersonating an innocent third party which suffers great harm? Very unlikely? Yes. But could it, under the most extreme of circumstances, be reasonable to fine them $1000/mail? Maybe. And so, I don't have a problem with it as an upper bound. But if that's the blanket fee for a text-only SPAM offering you a cheap mortgage, then it is completely wacko.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I still think it's better to cut off their cojones with a wooden spoon.
...!
Now that's what I call hacking
-kgj
-kgj
The Federal Junk Fax Law provides for penalties of $500 for sending a junk fax. This punishment can be increased to as much as $1500, if the violation of the law was willful or knowing.
I know that there's more of a problem with externalizing costs with a single junk fax than there is with a single spam e-mail, but in both cases, the punishment is orders of magnitude above the actual damages. That's because you're encouraging the public to take action on this themselves, and there's a significant amount of time and work involved.
The penalty for violating a law should be much larger than the cost of following the law. Otherwise, people just break the law for free, and only pay if they get caught.
It's a separate argument whether a law is a good law in the first place. But if you believe, as I do, that spam should be illegal, then it's okay for the penalties to be a lot larger than actual damages.
For example, go down to the grocery store and shoplift some bread, and then try to get out of the criminal penalties by offering to pay the $2 damages after you get caught.
Duh! Claudia is a technically knowledgeable person who writes all the software? No. She is probably his wife who helps him, probably with clerical work.
I said I was exaggerating! Duh, again.
Slashdot is becoming an hysterically angry place. Say anything that has minor imperfections, and some commenters say Idiot! Why I've known that since I was 10 years old! How can you be so stupid! Weapons of Mass Destruction! Let's invade Iraq! Hysterical anger is the climate in the U.S. now.
Think about what I said for a minute. There is NOTHING, nothing, nothing, to prevent Paul from leaving Claudia, going to Russia, getting himself a mail-order Russian bride (Don't scream; I know he won't need the mail if he is already there.), and using the SAME technology to do the SAME thing.
If Paul has made more than $2,000,000 already, for example, if he has made $10,000,000, the $2,000,000 won't look as large to him as it does to us.
Also, he hasn't paid anything yet!!! Duh #3!!! It will be at least 6 years before he pays anything, even if he loses all the appeals.
That's a standard thing on (good) mail servers. Mercury Mail uses it. EZMts uses it. You log in with your POP account which validates your IP. You then have a window to send e-mail from that IP address using the account e-mail address you logged into the pop3 account as. You can't log in to POP as BOB and then send mail as STEVE. Or log in to POP on IP 192.168.0.2 and then send e-mail on 192.168.0.3.
It's the standard method to prevent unauthorized relaying, implemented and on by default in legitimate mail servers. If you need a seperate daemon to handle POP before SMTP, your mail server is garbage. It's such a trivial thing to implement.
POP3 writes username and IP to file upon successful login (you can even encrypt it if you care) with start time.
SMTP checks the file when an e-mail attempt comes in to see if the IP, username combo is in the file and if the timeout hasn't occured. If it has, it clears the entry.
That's it.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
>Speeding fines? Do the other people on the road that were endangered by the speeder get their cut?
I rear-ended another car not so long ago. Nothing serious, the "victim" just needed a new bumper. I paid them $500 CDN for it, they were very happy to forget about the whole thing. Unfortunately, it was a taxi, and by law here, service vehicles have to call the police for any accident, no matter how small.
So, the cop comes by, and decides to write me a ticket for "following too close" (which I wasn't, I was passing improperly, but whatever, I take all tickets to court, even $10 parking fines). On the ticket there's a $25 "victim's surcharge". Does the person I hit receive that? No. But he's the obvious "victim", right? Wrong. Somehow the government feels itself a victim when I rear-end someone elses car. I suppose the police are a victim, considering they had to do the job they're paid to do.
I propose we change the definition of "victim" to mean "Anyone who has to do any work".
Fortunately, I highly doubt I'll have to pay up, as it'll be almost a year before my case goes to trial (must be a lot of officers writing silly tickets). But it's still stupid.
That's all? No death penalty? They got off easy.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
> What happens if a competitor sends spam on your "behalf"?
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Getting closer to what? A police state? Gee, I'm so excited.
Mod parent UP!!!!
Excellent analysis.
As much as you people criticize this, it is a step in the right direction. Like it or not, the spam problem isn't going away overnight - we need persistent, and relentless legal action.
~Knautilus
...when the headline reads, "Spammer sent to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison."
They didn't get find for sending spam per se, they got fined for sending spam with specific characteristics - specifically spam with forged headers, no opt-out, and routed through a bunch of hacked computers.
What really irks me is that they were nailed on the most innocuous of charges: mail labelling, when they broke into third-party computers, which is a much more serious transgression, and according to the USA Patriot Act, a potential capital crime.
However, I wouldn't jump too high right now. I think we are just changing the game, not winning it. Here's an example [link to Symantec info on a new trojan] of what spammers are doing now.
No, that's great. It's wonderful that spammers are resorting to writing worms and trojans.
Why?
Because instead of civil action and various legal gray areas with sending spam, these bastards will have the FBI kick in their door one night and arrest them. No cute little civil proceedings attempting to discover whether or not they have a "free speech" right to fill *my* mailbox with *their* crap.
Personally, I hope they get pistol-whipped at the same time.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
With tele-marketers, we expect the same level of accountability. There should be a firm we can call. Tele-marketers in general do not give out the telephone number of the next door neighbor who left dog poop on the lawn that morning, nor do they, as a matter of course, reroute their phone lines, though they might send out phony caller id info. Of course tele-marketers are in the same kind of trouble as spammers as they tend to be extremely deceptive and consume a limited resource.
Which is to say that spam would be much less of a problem if it did have correct headers. Users could filter it if they so chose to, and exceedingly deceptive firm would face consequences. We would be at the uncomfortable equilibrium we accept.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If spamming is legal and honorable, why don't spammers include their real information all the spam?>
just follow the money. Nail the company that hired the spammer, regardless of what the spam advertises.
cpeterso
Ass-rape. Insightful? Please!
It's not always possible to find who sent the spam. My point is a competitor can set someone up using the logic of the money trail with little to no evidence of their involvement.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Hasta la vista, spam!
http://www.club977.com/ - The 80's Channel!
Your source for commercial free 80's music!
If a person can't make money simply because the means of communications he has chosen is politically unpopular, the issue of equal protection (14th Amendment) becomes an issue. Just because right now the latest thing to hate is people who advertise through email, what happens when legislatures pass laws saying rap music, since it is offensive or an unacceptable form of expression?
I can tell you what happens: every slashdot leftist starts jerking off about how the 'man' is trying to kill their rights. This is popular speech but it is not entitled to more protection than commercial speech is. Commercial speech is about 1st Admentment rights.
Commercial speech is just as vital and critical a matter as political speech and should enjoy all the protections that political and artistic speech enjoy.
You don't kill the messenger just because you don't like the means of delivery or the content.
I am afraid this is what slashdot Marxists and liberals want you be believe: that because somone is making money at it, their speech becomes less vital than an artist or a politicians.
Dawn of the Dead
Jesus, you could have just "Just trolling", instead of wasting your time with that bullshit.
Read the text of the bill (SB 186). The law has $1000 per email plus 'Actual damages' (claim that your CEO's valuable time has been wasted by spam) plus 'reasonable attorney's fees and costs' (claim all your time and costs of tracking down the spammer). The new bill is nothing but a massive gift to trial lawyers and is an attack on any California business involved in any sort of email marketing. Spam is annoying but it is not an excuse to pass job-killing legislation. The existing bill is quite adequate and I would rather not have the marketing industry and their jobs and tax revenue fleeing the state.
I normally don't welcome the federal government interfering in state matters but the California Legislature is certifiable.
Looks like California has taken a potentially giant step in the right direction. Now in order to build momentum I suggest they pass a law requiring state proceeds from such judgememts to be used strictly for tracking and prosecuting cybercrime. I hope other states will follow California's lead and pass such laws of their own.
#7308769
I would like to see this become a routine penalty, and to survive as such into an era when it has the effect of relegating the target to menial scrub labor.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You may not read this, but I just noticed your reply on my page, so this is the best I can do.
Despite your repeated use of "Duh", I will say it again: there was nothing insightful about your original post. Oddly enough, there actually *were* a couple interesting points in your second - why didn't you post them?
It's strange that you rant about slashdot becoming hysterically angry, but then "Duh" "Duh" "Duh#3" away. Also strange that you seem to be decrying knee-jerk negative reactions, when that's exactly what your original post expressed - a complaint that a fine and a sanction was just a drop in the bucket (*you* might think about what you said for a minute as well).
Your justification for this is all based on completely unfounded conjecture - and you want me to glean all that conjecture from your post. First off, there is nothing to prevent *anyone* from going to russia, getting a mail-order bride (why he would want to do that is beyond me) and spamming... but outlawing someone from continuing (their current) business in a country is pretty severe, about as severe a non-violent sanction as a government can bring down upon a person. And sure, he may have made 10 million, or 10 billion, but how do we know, and how is pooh-poohing a fine in relation to what he might have made relevant? I might even argue that at least a lower fine is more likely to be enforced. And how do you know what his wife does or does not do?
Indeed, as you say, he hasn't paid anything yet, and may never will... perhaps *this* should have been the topic of your original post, because it is a tad bit more insightful than the primary point.
What stood out to me in your original post was that the detail you lacked was pretty key - unlike a spelling error, it hinted at the fact that you hadn't read the article. Even that would have been a big deal if it weren't for my perception (flawed as it may be) that your post was absolutely the most obvious reaction to the slashdot posting, and that it expressed a point that is comes up in every single article about spammer fines - something to the effect of "So what? It's a drop in the bucket".
So, to me, "most obvious reaction" coupled with "missing clearly stated details" made me think you hadn't bothered to read or truly think about what was going on... I apologize if this wasn't true.
The fact that my original post was quickly modded up showed that I was only expressing what was in the mind of many people.
Among them, there is restitution (making amends, usually paying back), but another purpose is deterrence, and well as punitive purposes.
These fines are intended to server as a punitive measure, as well as a deterrent from further such actions from the charged as well as others with similar ideas - which is what we want to help in stopping spam.
It's called a "Joe Job", and it's easy to do. Maybe a spammer doesn't like it when company XYZ calls to complain about the emails they've been getting. Therefore, next time around said spammer uses XYZ as the return address and also spams out "Buy product X from company XYZ" to the annoyance of thousands.
Now, XYZ was never involved in spam, but if they were charged we've got a bunch of emails with their business name on it, and maybe even a phone-record that they called the spamming "advertiser" (even though the call was actually to complain).
A fine under $1000 is painful to many normal individuals. But a fine of $1000 is meaningless to many large operators.
It's fine to say that spam is low-damage, but if it were $10/email you wouldn't get anywhere unless you collected together an awful lot of individuals in a class-action against the spammer.
If you could wrangle $300 worth of your time from a spammer easily, it might satisfy you, but it wouldn't help the problem.
Oh, and we're not just questioning the RIAA's action of suing people, the real root of it is whether the DCMA is a violation of people's rights, especially in reference to seizure of personal info without a court warrant.
But nonetheless, a blanket fine of $2,000,000 against a filesharer is stupid, and so is a $25 fine against a spammer for spamming.
Does this mean I can sue all those clueless admins who keep bouncing spams at me that I never sent? I own a domain name that is being forged in the "From:" line of many spams.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because the people who mind don't matter, and the people who matter don't mind.