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New York Spam Ring Lawsuits
Iphtashu Fitz writes "Microsoft and the Attorney General of New York have announced multiple lawsuits against what they term as a spam ring operating throughout New York and responsible for sending billions of illegal junk e-mail. According to articles at ABCNews.com, CNet News.com and elsewhere the state of New York has filed 6 lawsuits against alleged notoriuous spammer Scotty Richter and accomplices. Richter is well known among the anti-spam community, holding the dubious distinction of being ranked number 3 on the Spamhaus Registry of Known Spam Offenders. Microsoft has seperately filed 5 other lawsuits."
Politicians and moral crusaders learn nothing from history. Prohibition does not work.
The War on Spam will be what drives spammers for once and for all into the arms of organized international crime.
Not a good idea.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Because after years of inaction against blatant fraud and trillions of spams, we're finally seeing Attorneys General from several States actually nailing some of these pigfuckers to the wall before the Statewide antispam laws all get overturned by the DMA's spam legalization initiative two weeks from now.
(My apologies to any of you who actually do fuck pigs for insulting you with a comparison to to Snotty Richter.)
This is nothing but a PR move for Microsoft. It makes them look they are the good guys fighting against spam. Give me a break. Are they donating the $ for NY lawyers to prosecute these guys?
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
I just hope that they're really going for scorched earth here. It's too bad that the "YOU CAN SPAM" act doesn't have any provisions for Mitnick-style sentencing ("no computer use for X years") because I'm not entirely sure that monetary damages are going to cut it when you're dealing with assmasters like Richter.
Probably not, but that's no reason not to be pleased that they are going after a big time spammer. As a large email provider, Microsoft has to spend a lot of money on storage, processing and bandwidth for spam. It also has to deal with all the customer complaints that spam generates. So it is certainly in Microsoft's corporate interest to reduce the flow of spam. That also happens to be in everyone else's interest as well, so Microsoft does deserve some appreciation in this case.
That's only true of products/services where customers are willing to pay a large enough premium to mitigate the risk of criminal penalty for the supplier. Eg, alcohol, drugs, prostitution have a market who will pay a lot - enough that the supplier feels it's worth the risk.
Once the cost/risk of criminal penalty accrues to spam suppliers, will there be many customers who will pay the consequent much higher rates for spam? I doubt it. Spam has been highly profitable up until now because the costs to those who provide it are very low. That won't be true any more.
Prohibition does not work.
Prohibition doesn't work when the prohibited activity is popular among a large segment of the population. Spam does NOT fit this description. Drugs are popular among a fairly large segment of the population - maybe 20% or so (why drugs are popular, I don't know). Spam is only popular among the people who make money from it; about 0.0001% of the population. The rest of the population hates spam. Prohibition should work against spam, if there's a way to find out who the spammers are, and if the government is willing to enforce the law.
The War on Spam will be what drives spammers for once and for all into the arms of organized international crime.
Many kinds of spam already are organized international crime already. "Viagra", herbal remedies, etc. spam alreay use illegal deceptive marketing. Taking over machines to use as spambots also is an organized crime by spammers.
But by "organized international crime", I assume you're referring to organized international crime such as the Italian Mafia, Russian Mafia, etc. Will we see these groups take over spamming? Maybe. But I don't see how it would make much of a difference. They might be slightly better organized than existing spammers, but not much. I don't see how they'll be able to integrate into existing businesses like they do with garbage collection, construction, etc. They might be better at buying themselves political protection; that would be worrisome.
Because technically it's not "illegal" to ask someone to advertise your wares. If you're a company and you want to reach an internet audience, you go to "Direct Marketing" Company B and say "I want advertising for my product!" Company B says "Sure, that'll be $xxxx". At that point, Company A is not concerned about how Company B runs its business, it's not the one breaking the law. I foresee a time when Company A will get Company B to do the marketing, and Company B will turn around and "outsource" the job to an offshore company (while taking their share of the profit) who can do it cheaply and without fear of legislation shutting them down.
Now, my knowledge of contract law is limited, but it's this same kind of mentality that also allows Nike to contract the manufacture of its shoes to some contractor in Asia, who does not have any sweatshops, but then it subcontracts out to other contractors who may not be as "ethical". Nike has plausible deniability. So does the Spam "customer". We could "boycott" the advertisers, but look at the Nike boycotts. Just how effective are they? Or the Walmart boycotters.. Walmart just posted record numbers.. see what I'm getting at?
It sucks. Maybe resistance is futile after all.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
With trojaned machines doing most of the spamming, about the only effective block is to pull the wire connecting you to the net.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
These guys are breaking the law and their whereabouts are known.
Why don't we either throw them in jail or form a nice lynch mob and feed them to the aligators?
After all, who's gonna care?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
A lot of open relays are running *nix. How will fixing problems in MS Exchange solve this?
What?
Try running Unsolicited Commando from http://www.astrobastards.net/uc/
It makes mortgage spammers life hell!
So what we need is legislation making the seller responsible for their online marketing, subcontracted or not?
Microsoft isn't suing them as Microsoft, provider of operating systems and applications. They are suing because of the effect of spam on MSN (which is specifically mentioned in the cnet article) and Hotmail. Both recieve huge amounts of spam to user accounts, and cost MS a ton of money to fight, and tick off their users.
Is MS doing this because they are warm fuzzy people who want to save the world from spam? No. They are doing it because spam costs them a ton of money as a company, cutting into their profits, and they want to stop that. Sometimes, what is good for a company is also good for the people who purchase it's products (and in this case even for people who don't)
I have blog like everyone else
Well, they're certainly not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. We'll just get the positive side effect of them protecting their own self-interests. Spam accounts for about 80% of all email traffic and Microsoft has both Hotmail and MSN hosting email. It's in their own best interests to nail these jack asses since handling and storing spam emails costs them real $$$.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Open relays are becoming less important to spammers all of the time. Now I love a good MS bash same as any good Slashdotter but we really can't blame this on them. More and more spam is coming from trojaned machines both 'nix and Windows. You would do better to save your barbs for non-diligent sysadmins.
Seriously. Between spammers and stock market flim-flammers, Spitzer is the only politician I see that is punishing real criminals.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Do we really want corporations going around charging people of committing illegal acts?
They aren't charging anyone with anything. They are suing them. They don't have to prove that they did anything illegal, just that they did something that caused damages to them.
As far as the RIAA lawsuits vs. these, there is a huge difference. People dislike the RIAA suits because they are claiming huge amounts of damages that are inacurate, and because they are done under a law that eliminates many of the legal protections of most lawsuits. Most people see spam as having huge costs to individuals and businesses, so there is a difference.
As far as not basing a society on litigation, litigation, not laws, was the common way of resolving many issues until recently. I prefer litigation to laws, because when companies do things wrong, they can answer to the government, but it's harder to get the government to answer to anything.
I have blog like everyone else
Remember, the point of anti-spam measures is not to stop all spam completely. The point is to make spam as expensive as other means of marketing such as direct-mail, telemarketing, and fax blasting. Lawsuits can go a long way towards this.
That's a bit like blaming the rape victim for being assaulted. Let us remember that first and foremost, the spammer is at fault here. For what it's worth, you SHOULD be able to put a totally insecure machine on the Internet and not worry about someone abusing it just like a woman SHOULD be able to walk down the street without worrying about being assaulted. The problem is that there are too many immoral assholes fscking it up for the good people in this world so we need to make sure our doors are locked at night, our women carry concealed weapons, and our computers are set to auto-update.
I gave some thought to these kinds of systems and I decided that they are far more dangerous than good. Soon you will find the spammers using them to damage the competition.
The best way is to get in touch with merchants. I'm even willing to risk a few dollars to place orders for Viagra to try to find who these people are and talk to someone. At this time, the credit card companies are unwittingly aiding and abetting. Guess what happens when you have people like me ordering products on-line and then calling customer the credit card customer support to cancel the payment and then asking them for the contact details of the merchants. It won't be long before the CC companies close these merchant accounts. There is still a danger using these techniques that they could be abused by spammers but I think that with people in the loop, the course corrections could happen more quickly.
The vigilante approach will also make it so that law enforcement gets their butt into gear. Do you know how frieghtening a community group like this would be to the politicians ? Guess how quickly the marketing associations will pull their head in. Unfortunatly, it does take some effort on our part, but we can choose how.
The alternative to patronizing the international trafficking in women is to develop some personality and looks that will persuade women to boff you voluntarily. (If it's being dominant that you get off on, then you need to find women who willingly cater to that sort of thing.)
The alternative to patronizing the trade in arms is to abandon your political goals or to figure out a way to obtain them non-violently.
The alternative to patronizing the trade in near-extinct animals is to quit believing that having such artifacts makes a neat status symbol.
The alternative to spamming is to advertise via paper mail, billboards, broadcasts, etc.
Now, you will note that one of these things is not like the others. The first three require a major change in personal outlook and behavior, which is difficult or impossible for most people. The last one merely requires you to scrape up a bit more money. Thus, the last one is price and risk sensitive in a way that the first three are not -- when the risk of punishment pushes the price of spamming above the price of other forms of advertising, spammers will go out of business.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.