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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!).
...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!
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
I come at this from an economics perspective. First, it would cost a fair bit in time to actually track down a spammer, but this really secondary. For the law to actually have a deterent effect, which is presumably what they are going for, there has to be a real economic consequence for breaking the law. Because the probability of an individual actually finding, suing and collecting from a spammer is so low, the fine has to be high to make the per spam cost high enough to be a deterent. The low probability of having to pay dilutes the actual monetary fine. The action of the RIAA (bastards) is similar. They don't want to spend the money to go after every shared file, so the damages they seek are high per song for that individual, but spread out over everyone they are just trying to make the risk of filesharing just high enough that most people won't do it. It screws some individuals, but makes the risk just high enough that I would rather use iTunes or buy a CD.
The basis for these comments is an emerging study called behavioral economics. Steven Levitt at the U of Chicago has a number of fascinating papers that show how economics principles describe people's behavior even when $ is not directly involved. Definately worth a Google.
espo
What all other laws with statutory penalties?
Cut down a tree in your own yard in many jurisdictions and you'll be paying out thousands in fines. Who is the victim there. Shouldn't you be allowed to cut down your own 200 year old oak tree if you want?
Littering on the highway is victimless...right? That will get you a $500 minimum fine in some states.
Junk faxes my only cost you a few pennies, but you can collect $500 from a company that sends it. The law prohibiting it has been around for over a decade. Every SINGLE federal court district that has hear issues of 'free speech' and junk faxing have denied the complaints. Commercial speech does NOT have the same protections nor should it.
That fact is that such activity is not victimless. Admins have to constantly adjust and upgrade mail servers to try to stop the flow or manage the load. That costs time and money, and those costs are passed on to you and me.
The only way to stop this kind of behavior is to make it no longer viable for them to do this. The Government doesn't have the resources, so a private right of action is the key. If it wasn't for those of use that take on telemarketers and junk faxers, I guarantee that it would be a much larger problem.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.