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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.)
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.
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
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
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
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.