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!).

Comments

It is in this case.

[www.sorehands.com]

This takes out one spammer and shows some of the people who spam or thinking about spamming that they may get hit with fines and penalties.

The money does get put into the state coffers. This is not like the RIAA who keeps the money for themselfs.

free speech my ass

[zakezuke]

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.

California open season on spammers starts Jan. 1

[Animats]

Unless Congress passes a pro-spam law that overrides it, open season on spammers starts January 1. This win was under the old law. The new law simply makes spam illegal:

• Business and Professions Code 17529.2.
  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 important part is in the details.

• Anybody in California can sue for $1000 per spam, up to $1,000,000 per incident. (Current law has a $50 limit. The new law makes it worthwhile to go to small claims court for a single spam.)
• You can sue in small claims court for up to $10,000.
• You can sue the advertiser, the "beneficiary" of the spam. So you find out where the money goes, and go after them.
• If the spammer, the advertiser, or the recipient is in Californa, you can sue.
• ISPs can sue.
• Class actions are allowed.
• There's a general provision in California law that anyone can "act as the attorney general" to enforce consumer laws in court, and that applies here.

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.

Re:From the article...

[Stephen Samuel]

Methinks jurisdiction is going to be much more interesting when they try to go after out-of-state/country people. If they do so.

Not likely to be a problem here. Jurisdiction requires a presence of some sort in California (in this case). Doing business (or attempting to do business) in california is enough to trigger local jurisdiction.

If you can prove that somebody (anybody Consider this: If I pay somebody to go down to your house and rip up all the trees in the yard, you still have jurisdiction against me even though I live in Canada. You might have a hard time collecting on the decision against me, but that's a different issue.

You can almost guarantee that these people accept payment by Visa/MasterCard, so I'm thinking it should, at least, be possible to collect by attaching to their Visa/MC merchant accounts.