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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!).
Great! When do I get my share?
...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.
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
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?
The money does get put into the state coffers. This is not like the RIAA who keeps the money for themselfs.
Fight Spammers!
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.
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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.