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Forbes Sympathizes with Poor, Abused Fax.com
An anonymous reader writes "Forbes invites sympathy for Fax.com and other junk faxers who are apparently being victimized by 'a small army of plaintiffs, attorneys and self-appointed activists', and Forbes particularly takes aim at 'the high-tech ambulance chasers' whose offenses include providing 'step-by-step instructions on Internet sites, printable legal forms and names of attorneys who specialize in the trade' to individuals who've received illegal junk faxes and want to do something about it. Because of these nasties Fax.com is 'all but out of business' and Forbes seems to be worried that email spammers might share the same fate. Help, I think I've fallen into a parallel universe."
You know I hate spam more than just about anything. But here is my prediction: Tougher anti-spam legislation will be used as a power-grab by the US feds. I can't wait to see what privacy sucking, corporate loving "provisions" will be added. Everyone hates spam so much that I'm sure our government will try and use it to sneak in the most egregious legislation.
-_-
Forbes Sympathizes with Poor
I totally misread *that* title.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
on a regular basis, but aren't they generally, more up on things than this?
Or is someone paying them to be a mouthpiece?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
From the article:
"Fax.com's Katz called the practice "blackmail and extortion," among other choice words. On the other hand, Fax.com didn't exactly help its cause when it sent 1,634 junk faxes in one week in 2001 to the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling, resulting in yet another successful lawsuit against the company."
Wow, let's assume that each fax page takes about 6-seconds (because you want high quality) and that each fax consists of a cover page and one page of content. Further that each fax transmission requires a 3-second handshake - 15 seconds phone time per fax. That means that 15 * 1634 = 24510 seconds or 7.8 hours of tied up phone lines. Yeah, if someone, over the course of the wee decided to tie up one of my phone lines for an entire workday, I'd be upset too.
If it were actually legal, there would be at least six other companies doing the same thing. With all that traffic, it would be hard for anyone to get a legitimate fax through.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Yeah, real sophisticated. Call every damn number you can, sequentially, and listen for the whistle. Didn't mention the many millions more of non-fax numbers it called and hung up on.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
What an ass. slubove@forbes.com if you want to send this guy comments - a shame there isn't a easy to use fax number to send your thoughts - but e-mail can do. You can see his pic here: http://www.mayocommunications.com/1016mcq_lubove.j pg
It just shows how out of touch Forbes is with technology and what people think.
----
Pity the lawbreaking travel agent or car dealer whose fax advertisement happens to appear on a fax machine belonging to one Ben Livingston of Seattle, Wash.
"What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money..."
And spammers/junk faxers don't?
Whose fault is it that faxing results in waste of paper/ink? The recipients. Would we suddenly have a case to sue spammers if we automatically printed ALL e-mail? What about e-mail>fax services? Can spammers to those addresses be sued for fax spamming? (well, "2195551212@mail2fax.com" was obviously a fax machine...) -- Don't you just love NiMH batteries?
Someone really needs to post a list of Forbes fax numbers at their different offices so we can all start trying to sell them penis enlargement pills.
64,583 faxes later they'll start to appreciate what we mean.
I regularly get faxes at 2 AM on my home number, on a line that hasn't been used for faxes for 5 years!!! So I hooked up a fax machine to see who was sending them, but the remove requests don't work and there are to many to try and stop them...
still looking for a fax number.
How are they going to retract this? Are they going to follow this up with an "It was just satire" announcement, or an announcement that the responsible parties have been sacked? Any bets?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I RTFA - it was a news piece that showed both sides of the issue. If anyhting, it had an anti-blast-faxer slant: all the quotes and stats from the anti-faxers were reasonable, and the quotes from the blast-faxers made the out to look stupid.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
These spamming companies, whether it be via faxing, telemarketing, or e-mail spamming, will never go away unless we the concerned people of the world take it upon ourselves to act out against these vultures of communication!
We need to be spamming the spammers, flooding the telemarketers, and faxing the faxers.
I mean, I don't want to sound too harsh, but really, if we the affected people do not speak out against this, who will?
Your beloved politicians? Please.
So in your universe does Forbes usually champion the folks who are sick of intrusive marketing, instead of catering to the mindset that capitalists and business owners should be free to do anything they want to try to make money?
It's different here.
Hey, did you guys check out the "Sponsored links" box on the right side of that page?
Paralell Universe, indeed!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Yeah I'd say those are the most likely scenarios...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The FTC should be all over this and create a Do Not Fax registry.
Since signing the Do Not Call registry I get almost 0 telemarketing calls. The difference has been night and day.
Anybody home at the FTC???
Help, I think I've fallen into a parallel universe.
HELP!? Take me WITH YOU!
This is so ridiculous I thought it was a farce.
That people's brains are able to misfire this seriously bodes ill.
Perhaps Kevin should get John to write a simpering, knee-jerk monologue about how the athletic lawyers are oppressing the junk-faxers because they are "different".
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
People should just stop suing junk faxers and start putting them in jail. Advertising should pay for the media it comes in through, not steal from it. Junk faxing, and spam, is theft, which is a crime, and should be dealt with as a criminal case (which in many jurisdictions can be brought to court even by average citizens).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
...by a cadre of trial lawyers
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Link to this spam trap and wait for the fun to start!
Hate me!
The guy they listed made $6000 in 3 years. That would be a salary of $2000 a year...hmm...sure doesn't sound like a lucrative buisness for the ambulance chasers they claim. Really, how many laywers would spend the amount of time it takes to settle one of these claims for a *portion* of a $500 settlement.
If I read the article correctly, they are not saying they like efax.com. Rather they are saying that the rules are so broad that if you dial a wrong number, you could be sued too. That's why they mention, towards the end, about the FCC rule that you have to have written permission to fax someone (and how do you get the written permission? Hey fax it... oh wait) Maybe I'm being too soft of them though.
which somehow has ended up with 2.5 million less jobs then when it started, Forbes, which supports W despite it's knowledge that the economy grows faster, generates more incomes and profits, a lower unemployment rate and a higher stock market with any Democrat as President, wants to make sure that all those poor, unfortunate spammers/junk faxers still have jobs so that they can pay for further tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and contracts for Halliburton. Is that so wrong? Oh, wait, yes it is.
Someone want to provide the spammers with the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of all the Forbes staff and see what they say after a few days?
I honestly cannot see how you could defend something like this. These people that are suing are doing so under the law, since these companies are doing something illegal.
Its kinda like the talk almost everyone had with their parents: "Keep calling someone a name/pushing them/making fun of them/..., and if they punch you in the face, its YOUR fault."
Blake
You have WAY too much time on your hands. Or something else IN your hands way too much, and the real thing in your hands not enough...
I'd say get a life, but get a wife may be more appropriat.
I mean, really, they're feeling sorry because a company that makes money by doing something illegal is going out of business?
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
On-Demand world just doesnt work. Business really needs to re-group its advertizing (which is basically providing the public with free information) and focus on that fact, getting people free information (however biased) without pissing them off.
Error: Id10t detected
is that this situation is caused by FAX.COM breaking the law.
Let me repeat that.
FAX.COM is breaking the law.
The people who have been on the receiving end of this lawlessness have been given a direct route by which to punish the lawbreaker. Eminently sensible in my opinion.
To me it seems that this is the ideal application of sensible real-world law. Forbes sees it as an attack on a legitimate business. Bollocks.
Home of the Enderle Troll, isn't it? What did you expect?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
It would be dirt easy to setup a PC with Fax software in your area, connect it to an unlimited-use local phone line, and feed it a list of fax numbers. Or, alternatively, have it call ***-**** until it receives a tone, and send the spam.
.1% return rate, and make $5 per hit, you're still making money. If junk faxing is like junk mail, your return rate will be closer to 2%, and the money will add up quickly when expanded to a data center.
You could probably send out those 1,634 faxes in a week the first time, and 1,634 more the following day. All for the cost (to you) of 20 dollars per month. Even if you only average 1,500 per week, get a
The ______ Agenda
what, am I supposed to apply at the bureau of activism before I can be a REAL activist??
teeker
At least from a techno-libertarian sort of perspective, isn't this what we're looking for? These stupid junk fax-ers are imposing a huge cost on buisnesses and therefore on everyone else indirectly. Instead of using government time and money to investigate, private citizens did the footwork, with the promise of a reward from the 'offenders.' And the whole thing went through small-claims type courts which kept legal costs down.
I'm not shedding any tears over Fax.com.
Look, disident, you can be replaced.
Fall in line.
Er... no, I'd say that was actually the point of the law. It's like the cockroches are shocked at the idea of having to scatter when the light comes on. "But-but-but... but the dark was so NICE!"
Fine by me. Speak up loudly, guys, it makes you easier to target and squish. Fax marketer, meet boot. Boot, fax marketer. I'm sure you'll get along famously.
Get your phone number removed here.
Does anyone know if this actually works?
Since they sympathize with fax.com, they must think that junk faxes are ok.
I think we need a DDOS fax campaign to point out how annoying junk faxes are.
I can get 212 206 5127 as a fax number from whois.
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
KLEIN, TOM (TXK857) forbesdomains@forbes.com
Forbes Inc.
60 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
US
212 620 5152 fax: 212 206 5127
If only we could litigate less and innovate more ;-).
Tell you what - come up with an innovative system-wide solution to spam, or I'll sue you. Then you can lead by example.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Are you guys dense?
Seriously, are you guys dense? The fact that these companies cost untold millions of dollars in cost to consumers across the country should be enough to warrant a stance that is in complete opposition to this article. But the fact that it is an industry whose entire business model is based on breaking the law for a profit is even more reason that any intelligent creature on this planet should clearly see that that this is about the densest position an organization can take, unless they had financial incentive to do so. So it appears that the only logical conclusion one can make from this article is that Forbes is somehow benefitting from criminal enterprises. Why am I not surprised?
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
So these are the obnoxious fuckers that leave empty messages, dead air, and fax tones on my voice mail?
Why isn't this considered electronic trespass or hacking?
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Reply to this guy. Go to the bottom of the article and Send Your Comments. When this shmuck sees how stupid he has been he may actually wake up to how ridiculous his argument is.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Forbes doesn't get their profits from journalistic credibility, they get them from advertising dollars, and the most basic thing they sell to advertisers is circulation numbers. In the long run perhaps articles like these will erode their readers' respect and hurt their income, but that's in the distant future. For now, they may have just discovered that putting geek flamebait on the internet is a great way to get a lot of page views in a hurry.
I think this is the kind of leading edge proof that spam is here to stay and that despite its ridiculous, fraudulent, and often illegal or pornographic content, that big business has figured out how to make money off of spam and spammers and yet keep enough distance from it to not sully their hands with it publicly.
The Star Tribune had an article in it a few months ago about how the email address you put on your product registration or other request to some otherwise legitimate company is getting bundled with your name and address and entering the direct mail list market where they ultimately filter down to the penis spammers and others.
And then there's the banking (don't all spam businesses take credit cards?) industry, the ISPs selling the connectivity that keeps spammers in business, and so on.
I'm kind of reminded of a scene from the end of some thriller movie where our naive but honest to the core hero finally has the horrifying realization that his superiors/hero/idol is behind the awful crime he's been trying to get to the bottom of all along.
Big business doesn't want spam to end, they've figured out how to stay clean and make money.
Can we put this one under "humor"?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
...than this Forbes articel to understand why we call them capitalist PIGS!!
Um, here's a clue: Forbes is a magazine focused on the interest of making a profit. That they would print an article favorable to fax.com and email spammers (businesses making a profit) comes as a surprise to no one, save those who for some reason expect ethical considerations to be involved in their editorial policy.
Pessimistic.. but unfortunately a rather correct assesment..
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
I've spent years fighting spam (postal, fax, email) and apart from the regular credit card fluff I cannot see how anyone can make money from it.
I worked for an insurer who would spam 10,000 existing customers with proposals and a 5% return was considered profitable. But they had existing customers who knew their products.
This random gibberish sent to random recipients cannot raise any revenue at all.
I'd appreciate someone explaining how these twats can make money.
Worst
A self-described "small-claims warrior," Livingston has made a side business out of suing these companies and many more for the sin of sending him unsolicited fax ads, better known as junk faxes.
because only big crimes should be punished...? gg forbes.
the court has effectively sanctioned an unintended consequence of the law that has ensnared many businesses in a legal web of fines, threats and a lot of aggravation
No, those were the intentions. Change sentence to "ensnared many businesses providing illegal services" and you'll see the reasoning.
The laws and stiff fines ranging from $500 to $1,500--applied to each fax rather than the mass
Ok, i was under the assumption that the people at Forbes had some understanding of money. I guess not. If the fine was $1,500 per mass, that would be paltry. The faxes would get out, and a even if 1% reached a human eye the benefits would be reaped. The $1,500 would be recovered a hundred fold in fees from the client paying for the bulk faxing. Make it a per transmission fine and you might not be able to recover the fines from fees.
Forbes makes it sound like a $1,500 per bulk would be more than adequate. So are they saying that they don't care if it is still illegal just as long as the fines aren't restrictive enough to stop someone from making money?
Like many other such outlet they have a definite buisness oriented stance. And see this on the buisness side : a law comes in and shut down the possibility to advertising other buisness, and cut down a whole market making it illegal (and thus cut the tap on a money making industry). Forbes CANNOT have another stance than regret it and insinuate the law is overreaching or have a slightly buisness biased slantes. This is not BSA-weekly journal, folks ! If for some reason flyer and other snail mail advertising were to be forbidden (like for example nature protection or whatever X reason) then Forbes would have the same stance. Forbes also probably support "legitimate" spammer^H^H^H^H Email Advertising. Or Outsourcing. Or the end of the minimum wages. Or definitly an anti-union stance. Whatever. We are speaking about a biased buisness voice here.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Pity Spammers ? WOW.
Please post all the email addresses of Forbes editors as replies to these post for the address harvesters.
Evidently they are not receiving enough spam.
If this works, look forward to the "Death to Spammers" article next issue.
1) To further humiliate the businesses, Livingston posts all the court documents and letters he sends, in which he typically demands a standard $500 fine, or $1,500 if the fax was sent knowingly. In all, he says he's collected about $6,000 in three years.
2)"What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money," says Wolfe & Wyman attorney Stuart Wolfe, whose Irvine, Calif., firm is defending several clients accused of sending junk faxes.
Given the limited $500/fax fines, and the admitted total of $6000 over three years of work earned by Livingston, just what business (even legal) would attempt to exploit such tiny earnings potential? I mean, who is Wolfe (and the reporter) kidding? You want to argue free speech rights for fax and email spammers, fine - fight it out in the Supreme Court and let the chips fall. But that argument is so ridiculous that I can't believe the reporter included it with a straight face. Never mind the fact enforcing financial penalties against civil wrongdoing is how tort law is supposed to work.
(shakes head in astonishment at the absurdity of it all)
--Maynard
Anyone have their fax number?
:)
I just couldn't help it
Don't everyone go faxing them your opinon on this subject all at once now.
Life is too short to proofread.
Don't you guys know what happens without advertizing?
Nothing.
That's right. If it weren't for advertizing nothing would ever get done. Fax.com is providing a valuable service to humanity.
mbbac
We shall make no distinction between those who spam...and those who harbor or provide support & sympathy FOR those who spam. I call on all Americans to report anyone you suspect of spamming, or of harboring or providing sympathy TO spammers. Please call 1-800-FOR-BSUX to report such activities.
Note: Haliburton, Inc, and all related employees, businesses, subsidiaries, and 'partners' are not subject to U.S. spamming laws.
What, self-appointed "activists" again? This annoys me to no end. The world is flooded with people who think they can become activists just by calling themselves by that name and weaving a few flags, blocking entrances to nuclear power plants and military facilities, &c. Repeat after me: Only activists appointed by the United Nations Board of Activism and Disease Control (UNBADGE) are real activists! Only activists appointed by the United Nations Board of Activism and Desease Control (UNBADGE) are real activists!
If I sell crack cocaine and somebody decided to sue me would Forbes write an article in my defense? That would own. I better start selling rocks.
I guess this article deserves some good /. action.
Let us all submit comments to Forbes.com.
No nasty words, well-written comments.
Once they get several hundreds of them - maybe they will catch it.
That's a new one - a denial of service attack against a fax machine!
Forbes seems to be worried that email spammers might share the same fate. Help, I think I've fallen into a parallel universe.
It's called the Republican universe. Wake up and vote before Diebold counts all the votes.
No, we're fine. It's Forbes that fell into our continuum from alternate Universe.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Looks like Attorney Bites Lawyer to me. What irony !
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Forbes might be right, frivolous lawsuits are shutting down small "companies" like these as well as tearing our fragile society apart. That's why we should simply hang 'em.
As reported here Jim Michaels, a long time editor and at the time a vice president for Forbes, is quoted in late 2001 as having said,
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
"In all, he says he's collected about $6,000 in three years. "
Now there's a thought. A self-financing spambait honey trap.
wooooooooooooooooooooord. underrated!!
Remember when Forbes called the Slashdot crowd "Linux loving crunchies". Making the open source movement out to be a bunch of extremist hippies?
h tml
I remember articles like this one:
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.
You have to remember, Forbes in run by Steve Forbes, a guy even other right wingers think is an out of touch Adam Smith extremist himself. The editors and writers of Forbes have a barely concealed contempt for the open source movement, seething at every opportunity to call it anti-capitalist and anything else they can think of.
Like it or not, big money, banking interests and institutional investors are lining up and taking sides. Some are going with IBM and now Intel, who have big reasons to support open source. Others are taking the side of Microsoft, who is funding the SCO FUD lawsuit, and once that fails - will try other methods to partner with hardware vendors and lock Linux out.
After reading this... I thought "how might one go and prove that X is spam?" How do you prove that you haven't given permission, or that another company (through something you agreed to online) didn't give permission on your behalf? It's really hard to prove a negative.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
it was a news piece that showed both sides of the issue
Now hold on there a minute, big fella. What do you mean both sides of the story?
There *is* only one side.
The side The Law is on.
What they're doing is equally as legal as selling heroin. (just to be clear not even slightly, not even for an instant, not even once)
You don't see Forbes.COM publishing articles saying "pity the poor crack-dealers" now do you?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Maybe if you can live with all the junk mail you could get cheaper fax machines/ink? At least fax machine adds get to the point. No gangsta rappers rambling on and taking out undercover cops or anything.
Hello Cruel World
The article is not necessarily defending fax.com or the other junkers, but condemning everyone who is so quick to file frivolous lawsuits that just end up costing the taxpayers.
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
no apparently this just proves some mod is an asshole :D
WTF first they accuse lunix people of being hippy loser types and now they defend junk faxers? Who the hell are these people?
This assembly line type of legal attack on a corporation or government will only do bad in the long run because each and every corporation/government entity with an insurance policy will be driven out of business by a continuous parade of frivioulous lawsuits.
A scary second scenario is a cordinated legal attack against a corporation by filing a seperate lawsuit in each and every jurisdication and in each and every court the company does business in AT THE SAME TIME!
This is the internet. You are allowed to say "ass."
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I was never a spammer, but I used to run a advertising supported newsletter of humor and inspirational stories that was faxed to local business five days a week. Each newsletter was one page long, and faxed in the dead of the night.
Everyone we faxed the newsletter too subscribed by placing their business card in one of our card bowls placed at restaurants around town. We didn't offer a prize or anything else with the subscription, so we weren't tricking anyone into anything.
At the bottom on the newsletter were unsubscribe instructions: write unsubscribe on this newsletter and fax it back.
Everyday we'd get unsubscribe requests, and everyday we'd process them. Many times someone would call from a business and unsubscribe one day, and then a couple days later a receptionist or something who sat near the fax machine and depended upon us for her daily chuckle would call wondering what happened to us, and we'd resubscribe them. Then, a week or two later someone from the business call and unsubscribe again, ad nasuem.
One day, without any notice, I was sued in small claims court by a local attorney who claimed that I was sending him unsolicited faxes, and as such owed him $500 for each of three faxes that he'd received unsolicited from me. The faxes weren't unsolicitied, and I had recorded in my files that someone from his office had called in to request the fax. Also in the files were notes detailing that someone had canceled, then restarted, then canceled the subscription of the course of a week and a half.
I took this information with me to court, but the judge explained that unfortunately his hands were tied and he was bound by the statute that required that I pay $500 for each of the three faxes -- no matter what the opinion of the court might have been about the excessiveness of the award.
That night, I removed every attorney and legal aide off the list, and within a year I totally ceased operation.
danec. http://www.carlsoncarlson.com/dane/
They must have a competent IT department that prevents much email spam getting to the writers. Otherwise I suspect the the writers would have less sympathy for spammers of all sorts.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I agree with the submitter, Forbes standing up for a junk fax company seems quite contradictory to their usual position. Forbes is decidedly against the "nanny state," preferring to believe that people ought to be able to educate themselves and make informed consumer choices. Forbes is generally not in favor of outright fraud or theft (which is what junk faxes are).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
My brother who works for a hedge fund tells me how they have bought articles, not ads, articles in forbes. So perhaps fax.com gave forbes some money to show both sides of the argument. Not that it should help them. Fax.com broke the law, the case was so obvious the higher courts refuse to hear it, fax.com keeps getting sued for breaking the law.
Its terrible that fax.com is all but broke. "At its peak, the company boasted of a database containing 16 million fax numbers and 30 million "untouched" fax numbers, and that it could blast out as many as 3 million faxes a day on behalf of Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), Mail Boxes Etc. (now a unit of United Parcel Service (nyse: UPS - news - people )) and other customers. To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers."
What a sleezy business.
I take the original fax and tape it to a few blank sheets of paper. On the blank sheets I write something like "remove me from your list". Anyways, insert the first page, hit paper feed and tape it to the last page so it forms a loop. Dial the offending number and let it run all night. Kills their ink, paper and phone line all in one. It may not be effective but it makes me feel better.
Stranded.org
Right now Forbes.com is being bombarded by unsolicited requests for that article by us. :) Who knows, maybe they have to pay for their bandwidth. Let's see how they like it when they get cost money by people they have no interest in.
see subject line
It's funny how every article posted by michael - no matter who it is attributed to - has the same blithe anti-capitalist anti-american slant. I am so sick of seeing slashdot turned into leftdot, why can't michael take his TROLLING behavior somewhere it's appreciated - like kuro5hin?
Yeah, it's a huge pity that they can't exploit their business model and wound up out-of-business. Tito, hand me a tissue.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I'm somewhat confused as to why people still fax at all anymore. Why pay for dedicated phone line(s)? You can't print an Email?
Eats Shoots & Leaves is a hysterical read BTW. Doesn't seem to be available in the US yet, but here's the amazon page where you can order it from.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
People die from crack. I don't think anyone ever died because of a junk fax. I could see it now - a fax kicks up, prints out, then launches a sheet of paper across the office and beheads the mail boy across the room... yea, not likely.
There *is* only one side. The side The Law is on.
Does that apply when we bitch about assholes waving the DMCA at people who want to use the tech they bought however they see fit? What about when DirecTV is sending extortion letters all willy nilly without checking to see who they're sending them to?
I have a hard time believing there's any situation with only one side. Of course, the junk faxers are on the WRONG side and the LOSING side and the DARK side... but that's different.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
see Carville's book (yes, I know he's biased - a Democratic strategist) - he cites a table (source? since I don't have the book, I don't know where the numbers came from) that lists the last 14 presidents in order of rate of increase of jobs/year over their terms. The top eight are Democrats, the bottom six (including Reagan) are Republicans.
Since it's statistics, I don't know if any massaging was done, but if the numbers are accurate, than Carter did have a higher rate of job creation than any Republican President. GWB's rate is thirteenth (ahead of only Hoover, by a large margin), and only the second President from the last 14 with a negative rate of job growth.
You don't see Forbes.COM publishing articles saying "pity the poor crack-dealers" now do you?
Actually you do
Forbs ran a "pitty the poor bud-growers" article a few months ago: link here
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
As for:
Nope. Nor did I seem them requesting pity for poor fax.com either. That was misleading spin supplied by the story submitter. Maybe you should attack that person instead of someone else's strawman?I can still fire a barrage of complaints against spam-friendly ISPs through both email and phone correspondence until they take action. I'm also certain that it's only a matter of time before someone puts a bullet in Alan Ralsky's head and does the world a favour.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Now hold on there a minute, big fella. What do you mean both sides of the story?
Let me preface this by saying Fax.com is full of shit with they advance this argument, But the restraint on communcations that the the anti-fax law does raise some 1st amendment issues.
I think the law if fine - it's just regulating commercial speach (not polical speach.)
The interesting thing is when a polical campaign "Blast-Faxes" for donations: it that political, or comercial speach.
Or when a charity "blast-faxes" for donations?
Where's the line?
The line is so far from Fax.com, it doesen't matter in this case, but there is a line somewhere where the diference between comercial and politcal speech is hard to diferentate.
Kind of like the border between art and porn.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I get fax calls in the middle of the night on numbers never used for a fax machine. No fun when you have ill parents to have the phone ring at 1:30 AM.
The worst part is that the calling number is completely hidden, both to caller ID and even to the phone company! The call CANNOT be reported as an annoyance call because it is UNTRACEABLE!
I hold the telephone company (Verizon locally) responsible for allowing this.
Why is everyone so surprised Forbes sides with a business over consumers? This is purely about money and the desire to get as much as possible regardless of morals and ethics and the strategy of using government to achieve those ends.
To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers.
To find machines, the company use a sophisticated automated "port scaning program" that randomly called and recorded millions of computer ports
I just got a threating call from my ISP for doing the later, yet if i do the above forbs.com will give me a cookie, awsome!
Don't you mean 65,535 faxes?
:)
Sorry, couldn't resist
MOD THE CHILD UP!
The law is frequently wrong. Reporting about questionable results from laws and arguing for repeal of laws are entirely legitimate and important activities of the press.
Furthermore, even if a law is good, there is still a story to be told about those breaking it.
I cannot believe i am advocating for positive moderation of a link to the goatse guy....
Pleased to meet you
Hope you caught my return address...
... who no doubt has more "pressing issues" (read: perceived terrorists) than chasing some low life spammers.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Isn't this a little early for an Aprils Fools posting?
1) It does not mention ANYWHERE in the article anything about "being worried email spammers might share the same fate"
2) The article's main point is that companies who are foolish enough to do business with a company with a bad reputation (ie fax.com) have been hurt collaterally by the actions of the "vigilantes".
The article makes both fax.com and the vigilate activistis who directly or indirectly hurt the 3rd parties look bad.
It also serves to warns any companies to be careful how to advertise in the future; that you open yourself up to small claims suits and worse by individuals who dislike your messenger.
Evaluate the messenger; for they will shoot him, then come after those who sent him! Woe betide thee, etc. etc.
GET IT? That's what the article is about you raving psychopaths.
I wish you people would get a clue.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Screw it, I'd ban political junk faxes too. I don't see that it violates free speech (in the proper sense of the phrase, anyway). The right to free speech should not necessarily imply the right to unlimited delivery of that speech: if I were to stand up in the cinema in the middle of Return of the King, with a megaphone, and start ranting about how great Dubya is, or how the end of the world is coming and we need to make sure Elvis gets his alien friends to come and repair the Sun, I would expect (a) to be given a good kicking and (b) to be arrested afterwards for behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace (or whatever your equivalent is). If I made the same comments in an advert that was displayed in that cinema in a proper manner before the film started, I would be outraged if I was arrested.
"With great freedom comes great responsibility." In this case, although free speech gives you the right to express any view you like, it also gives you the responsibility to express that view in an appropriate manner. That doesn't bring limitations (regardless of what the extremist nuts will tell you): rather, by shouldering the responsibility of choosing an appropriate delivery for your free speech you are more likely to be successful in what you are saying.
It's like spam: if you utterly piss off your intended audience in the process of trying to get your message across, you're very unlikely to sell much of anything. I don't know whether there should be some kind of Bill of Responsibilities to go with the Bill of Rights: it's not my country and it's certainly not my place to say. Sadly, if there was such a bill it would probably only be used to repress. It's just a pity there are always a few assholes that make it worth considering.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
At the bottom of the article, they give you an opportunity to comment on the article. I say we all go and comment there!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Yeh. Until you happen to be the unlucky bastard that gets a junk fax, maybe even on your voice line, just the one moment in your life you need to dial 911.
How many seconds long does it have to be, to kill you?
The side The Law is on.
So you place your utmost, unwavering faith in The Law?
The Law gets it wrong sometimes, as evidenced by both vehement opposition to legislation like the DMCA and PATRIOT Act here on slashdot as well as the concept of judicial review.
I hate fax spam as much as anyone, but there are two sides to every issue, even those involving The Law. I too think fax.com is wrong on this issue, but i recognize their right to disagree with me/you/lawyers/the government.
What they're doing is equally as legal as selling heroin
except that nobody will put you in jail for sending junk faxes. and, in moral terms, if those mean anything anymore, heroin is a lot worse than sending faxes.
stating that junk fax == selling heroin gets an insightful mod?
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
Actually they did do an article on marijuana trade in canada and how people where making money on it.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Who do I dislike more than spammers and junk faxers? Suits. Forbes' readership.
Amy
this is just about the WORST article ever written on junk faxing. forbes and mr. seth lubove hsould be ashamed to publish such a misleading and uninformed article. unless you have lived on mars the last 10 years or just started 7th grade the REAL story would have explored the follow items:
-how war dialing is illeagal yet fax.com actively practices this technique and also hides their phone numbers and fax headers on the faxes they send out (also illeagal)
-no matter how many times you enter your number on a remove list it never gets removed
-how many millions of people get dialed at 3am by a fax.com wardialer
-the vast majority of content fax.com sends out deals with viagra, get rich rips offs, worthless trips to disneyland, and other assorted crap that adds NOTHING to our society
-fax.com breaks the law, knows they break the law, yet they continue to break the law because THEY don't like the law
-fax.com uses MY power, MY paper, MY toner, MY time when it contacts me WITHOUT my permission.
-how much business is lost or interrupted while fax.com ties up millions of phone lines each day with unsolicated and unwanted faxes.
forbes once again shows it's true colors and acts as the apologist for the worst level of parasites in our society.
Whoa -- great article, thanks for the link. But just for the record (in context): crack != bud. Not even close.
everything in moderation
There *is* only one side. The side The Law is on.
Well, that's just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard on Slashdot. Are you saying that a publication shouldn't defend the actions of an individual or corporation when they are acting outside the law? I think many people here at Slashdot might have opinions about, for instance, file sharing that would run contrary to the law. And Forbes has as much right to express their viewpoints (however contrary to the law that they might be) as does a slashdot user. In fact, sometimes laws are unjust, and then it it a citizen's (or corporation's) responsibility to engage people on the matter and try to rethink the law. Now, I'm not saying that the laws which convict fax.com are unjust (most people seem to think they are just, if not soft), but I think Forbes should speak out on any law that they think is unjust (or at least show both sides as they have), no matter what the public opinion. That takes a lot of guts.
Last year I got over a dozen junk faxes (about 1 every 2 weeks or so) from a bank that is reputed to be one of fax.com's customers.
I kept them all, and 2 weeks ago copies of them went to an attorney, who recently sent off a letter to said bank's legal department, demanding 3/4 of what they'll have to cough up if it goes to trial. I hope to receive a reply from them in the next week or two, and if they don't pay up, then it's war.
The law is the law. Sending unsolicited faxes is illegal. They have no right to whine when people take them to task for it.
I find it hard to take sides on this. A coat of slime with a coat of slime on it is still just... slime.
wow, I bet you haven't been laid in six years
In case you or the bots missed it,
slubove@forbes.com
slubove@forbes.com
slubove@forbes.com
slubove@forbes.com
slubove@forbes.com
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
slubove@forbes.net
Where's Ralsky when you need him?
The problem with your article defending junk faxers and spammers is this: Their business is illegal. They are not allowed to do what they do. Is it so wrong that people are taking measures to protect themselves from a glut of advertising in an already saturated market; to save their time and money for things more productive or fufilling than sorting through marketing tripe? I think not. Making legal recourse easy and affordable for people without access to million dollar lawyers is commendable. If Fax.com and other junk companies were following the laws governing their business, they'd have nothing to worry about.
What Future?
I'd be careful not to use an important email account. These guys are scummy faxers, so I wouldn't be surprised if any complaint email addresses also end up being sent to "online soliciting" partners...
Relax, those are Google adwords. It's showing those ads based on the word "Fax" all over that page.
Only on
From past experience, it helps to send it not just to the author, but hit all the editors they list on their contact page (or masthead/whatever), and it doesn't hurt to hit some VPs or other supervisors in a position to start asking questions.
Probably won't help in forbes case since they are such whores when you look at their pro SCO and pro Microsoft articles, their anti-Linux articles, and their general pro-large corporate anti-consumer articles. But it may cause a question or two to be asked by someone within their own organization victimized by Fax.com.
Now hold on there a minute, big fella. What do you mean both sides of the story? There *is* only one side. The side The Law is on.
That's either naive or oversimplified. It implies that there is no arguing about whether or not the law is correct.
Can anybody say Patriot Act? The law might be the law but it is not--shouldn't be!--the end of debate on an issue and it doesn't mean the law is correct. (In fact, since laws can be declared unconstitutional it doesn't really even mean that the law is legal.) There is nothing wrong with publishing a piece that says, essentially, "the law is wrong" or "the law did not intend what it is being used for." You can argue whether or not the conclusion is correct, but let's not dismiss the idea.
Forbes may be wrong, Fax.com might be liable. The latter, at least, will play out in court. But Forbes made its position fairly clear on an issue. Right or wrong, that has to be worth something.
... sufficiently so that when they sent me an issue, then an invoice (both unsolicited), I wrote "CANCEL" on the bill and sent it in. I've gotten 7 issues so far, and written "CANCEL" on two invoices. And yes, I mailed them in.
I wouldn't count on Forbes getting a clue any time soon.
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
quick, let's spam all the email accounts at forbes and see if they like spammers then.
Wouldn't it be nice for them to know where all those Valentines came from?
/Fax.com
Forbes.com
Dept. Slashdot/ slubove@forbes.com
slubove@forbes.net
28 West 23rd Street
11th Floor
New York, NY 10010
Phone (212) 366-8900
Fax (212) 366-8804
Stuart B. Wolfe
5 Park Plaza
Suite 1100
Irvine, CA 92614-5979
Tel: 949-475-9200
Fax: 949-475-9203
sbw@wolfewyman.com
I feel for them, I really do.... NOT!
People fighting back are winning this one.. keep it up!!
Once one junk fax company goes out of business, maybe others will realise that it's a bad idea...
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
I only hope that these guyes are next:
Award Center
5405 Alton Pkwy
Ste. 5a #447
Irvine CA
800-658-8133
They have latched onto my number and refuse to stop sending all sorts of junk faxes. I get faxes from them selling Morgages, Insurance, Quickbooks training???, and lots more. I've called the toll free removal number above and I get a line of bullsh*t that my number has been removed and that someone else must be sending the faxes. Sure I could have the line monitored and prove it was them but, that costs money that I don't care to spend because they choose to be pricks.
I hope that fax.com burns at the stake and that these guys are next inline.
Cunt.
who else here thinks he'll be sympathizing with sco next? andt hen telemarketers.
gotta remember forbs is a business man, and all businessmen use sneaky tactics, so he sees nothing wrong with spammers or companies like sco pulling crap to get what they want.
----------
Junk faxing is an illegal business. Junk faxers are in violation of the law. They are being paid by a third party to present me with advertisements using my paper, my toner, my electricity, and my phone service-- basically, they're making money at my expense. Since that's the case, I have absolutely no problem with making some money at their expense, and in fact I am currently pursuing a civil action against one of Fax.com's customers, who sent me one junk fax about every two weeks for almost all of 2003.
The very thought that you are attempting to coax sympathy from your readers for people engaged in an illegal business is laughable, and so is the sense of indignation over consumers getting fed up and using the legal system to fight back.
Drug dealing is another illegal business where some people are trying to make money in violation of the law and at the expense of other people. Are you sympathetic toward drug dealers? Are you indignant when they are penalized in accordance with the law?
----------
~Philly
Crack is not equal to marijuana. Weed grows in most every climate, even a closet with a lamp. It's also cheaper, less addictive than caffiene and the worst thing it's users are prone to do is get up, walk to Plaid Pantry, and buy some munchies (I live across the street from a Plaid, I see it all the time. Granted, I live in Portland where it seems everybody just gets high and goes to bed at 9PM the way everything just shuts down at night. You can walk down the middle of Burnside Street (the main drag through town) at midnight on most weeknights and not get hit). If anything, marijuana supports the service economy. You will never get mugged in a back alley for marijuana money.
Help us build a better map!
like if you didn't know already, forbes no longer reports. all they do is spew out junk in the hopes idiot MBA's will think they are clued in to reality. Forbes should be next to go out of business for the absolute crap they spew out. It shouldn't be considered reporting by any meter stick.
Are you sure you don't mean "arse"?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Forbes also loves Bush Junior's political puppeteer, Karl Rove, whose "business" career was at the top of the junkmail industry.
--
make install -not war
how much money spammers and junk faxers made. Enough to get in good with Forbes. Perhaps Bush will step in if these guys have enough money.
- I am made of meat.
God, don't encourage him, or you'll create yet another anti-spam kook.
h tm l
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.
The fake antispam laws will probably be used more to justify non-terrorism fascism under the Patriot Act(s). Just like divorce cases are used to justify unrestrained publishing "private" E-ZPass travel data, so we can be tracked more easily now that the infrastructure is built.
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make install -not war
amen, and it is now +5 as it should be. fucking stupid moderators. props to whomever brought it back up to +5.
Ashcroft's priorities:
1> Supressing threats to Republican hegemony
2> Raising money
3> Distracting Fatherland Security from Saudis in favor of Liberals
4> Could you repeat the question?
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make install -not war
The right to free speech should not necessarily imply the right to unlimited delivery of that speech
It doesn't. You don't _have_ to have a fax machine, and you don't _have_ to accept incoming faxes from any dickhead with a fax machine. No one is forcing you to listen to everything in the world.
The problem is that fax recipients don't want to be troubled to discriminate. They want to receive everything AND for only things they want to be sent in the first place. Fax recipients are being as foolish as people who attentively listen to every ad they come across, read all their junk mail, listen to every door to door solicitor, pay attention to the sob stories of all the panhandlers in the world, and so forth.
Would it kill them to show a little backbone and make decisions for themselves -- permitting those who are interested in recieving unsolicited ads to do so, permitting those who are not to reject them?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The government is not a person. Government actions don't have a "purpose", although the people who execute them might. But who cares what their intangible "purpose" is? Government actions have *effects*. And the effects of reducing privacy, and threatening other rights, are unacceptable. If government laws always included metrics by which to judge their results, we might have some kind of meaning for their institutional "purpose". But few do, those that do have metrics don't feed back to revisions to the law, and many don't even have budgets to back them, let alone accountability for their results.
--
make install -not war
We don't have to choose between freedom and security. Our freedom is the basis for our security. When we trade freedom for security, we lose both. When we add security without giving up freedom, we get more of both.
--
make install -not war
Here's a copy of my letter to Forbes after reading that outrageous article:
For you to mourn Fax.com or even imply there was *anything* unfair about their demise is completely outrageous. To even suggest they have a 1st Amendment right to send junk faxes is preposterous.
Let's talk about the First Amendment. If the cops come by your party on a Saturday night and tell you to turn it down or they'll cite you for disturbing the peace, I'll bet you a billion dollars that no judge will accept your argument that the First Amendment allows you to play your music as loud as you want late at night in a residential area. And you're just being loud. You're not doing doughnuts on your neighbor's lawn or puking in his bushes. But it's well established that a city can make and enforce a law that says your free speech rights stop at a certain decibel level in the evening hours.
But what fax.com was doing was like not only playing their music too loud, but puking in the bushes too.
They claimed to have 46 million fax numbers (16 million in general use and 30 million "untouched"). If they sent each of those numbers just one junk fax, and we can agree that paper and toner costs per fax were 1.5 cents (half penny a sheet for paper, 1 cent a page for ink/toner), the cumulative paper and ink/toner cost of that one junk fax per machine would be $690,000.
Now imagine there wasn't a TCPA to outlaw junk faxes. Imagine there were no activists who could sue, no fines the FCC could impose, no class action causes to attract the sleazy lawyers.
Do you think you'd just get one junk fax? You'd get 5 a day, even on weekends and holidays. Cumulatively across 46 million fax machines, that 5 a day would eat up $3.45 million *DAILY* in paper and ink/toner... over $1.25 BILLION a year.
That's $1.25 ***billion*** (you know, with a B) in printing costs that the fax marketers wouldn't have to pay. Instead everyone they were faxing would have to pay a share of it. That's 83.9 billion pieces of junk mail being delivered postage due every year and the recipients have NO choice about paying.
For Forbes to do anything but celebrate the demise of Fax.com or support the TCPA shows a complete departure from any semblance of logic or morality.
You can consider me an ex-subscriber when it comes time for me to renew this year.
Start a happiness pandemic
My freedom to swing my fists ends just short of your nose.
--
make install -not war
If a defendant can prove that the plaintiff's case is frivolous, not only are they protected, but the plaintiff is liable for damages.
--
make install -not war
I dont have a fax machine, but I have an idea.
Create a fake postmaster delivery failure print out that looks like a bounced email. Set up caller ID or *69 and fax back to them the failure and the fax they sent you.
It would put a puzzled look on their face and would waste their ink and toner.
or you could fax 100 black pages back to them
or put your modem on autodial and call any 800 numbers you find all day while you are at work
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Forbes doesn't realize how much resources are wasted with junk faxes. Maybe they haven't experienced on their own fax machines (one of which happens to be at 212-206-5118).
"Forbes: Capitalist Tool" was their smug double-entendre motto. Copyrighting laws is good for the capitalist copyrighter, and bad for all the other capitalists, so Forbes was against it. This is not to say that Forbes always represents "capitalist majority" interests against minority special interests, but there's always a capitalist justification. In cases where there the meal is being made out of plain humans, as in the current thread about their defense of fax.com, Forbes is happy to promote lunch.
--
make install -not war
And how exactly is a fax machine owner supposed to filter?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
and my "MOD parent UP" post (that i posted logged in to prove i wasnt the original poster, because i really thought he or she deserved it), was modded down as redundant, reducing my karma. ironic, given the actual meaning of karma, but ahhwell fuck a score on a message board, it's all fun :D
Better fax machines. Do-not-junk-fax lists. Telling off individual junk faxers.
There doesn't necessarily have to be _much_ effort by recipients, but there should be a little so as to protect the junk faxers who not only comply with the rules, who respect people telling them to go away, but who otherwise should have a right to speak; this also protects the recipients who _want_ to receive such faxes.
N.B. that since they're unsolicited, the system needs to be opt-out. You can't opt-in to ads you've never heard of, because you've never heard of them. It might not even occur to someone to do so.
And of course, on the whole, more communication is better, and safer, than less. I don't mind individuals refusing inbound communication, or failing to respond to it, but it should be their choice whether or not to do that, and not the government's.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"Self-appointed activists"
Like that's a bad thing. People who feel strongly enough to get off their but and try to make something happen, without even being paid to do it.
What other kind of activist is there? Democratically Elected Lobbyists?
I got a gaming magazine for 2 years at no cost. I got subscribed orignally as a result of a beta-testing gig. Apparently the company, having realised their game sucked ass and was the worthless, buggy POS that the testers told them it was, decided to make money by selling our info.
So the magazine shows up. Not a bad thing and I read it. It continues to show up, with cards asking me to subscribe. This goes on for nearly a year then I start getting notices that my subscription is going to end. Like I care, I'll read it for free but like hell I'm paying for it. Then the notices go away and it continues for another year.
Then I moved. For all I know they are still sending it ot my old address (the got my name wrong so it wouldn't get forwarded).
Forbes kinda strikes me as a capatalist extremist magazine, as in they literaly think capatalism should be taken to the extreme. In a real, pure, unrestricted capatalism, there'd be no regulations. You could basically do or sell whatever you wanted and let the buyer beware. Do wahtever you like to make money.
Of course your average 5 year old could point out a million problems with that idea, hence in the real world we have limits. But there are those that think we shouldn't.
"People die from crack."
People die from (in no particular order):
Eating too much
Cars
Riding in Airplanes
Listening to death metal
Life
Yet all of these are legal.
But somebody has the guts to point out the illegal parallels between drugs and fax.com and you go all weepy... "waaah! Drugs kill people"
No, he meant "ass", which in some parts of the world does mean the region of the body where the gluteus maximus muscles are located. The possible fact that in your own region it may not mean that, does not provide you with license to assume someone has misused a word.
I don't feel superior when non-American people occasionally write "lift" where I would have written "elevator". Nor should you consider me to be obscene when I talk about Fannie Mae, the popular name for the US agency that provides housing loans to many people.
People speak (and write) differently in different parts of the world. Tolerance of differing speech patterns is a desirable quality.
(All Americanisms in this English text are deliberate. Deal with it.)
The above post is overrated. If they knew anything about fax.com, they'd know that fax.com recently (within the past two years) wardialed the university of washington medical center, tying up their phone lines.
I'd call tying up a hospital's phone lines to be VERY life threatening.
I used to volunteer there. If you tied up the phone lines, there was no way a nurse was going to be able to page a doctor for an urgent patient situation. Again, very life threatening.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
There are Hot Linux chicks too! See 'em here:
Hot Linux chicks
These people are in business to make money, legally or otherwise. Here's what I've done to fax spammers to drive up costs:
:|| (vamp and fade)
:)
1. Receive fax? Use toll-free opt-out number immediately. If there are no more faxes, fine.
2. Second fax from same people (whether it's the same product or not)? Opt out twice, they obviously didn't notice the first time.
3. Third fax? Program autodialer to tie up their opt-out line for 20 minutes at a time by whatever option says "no i made a mistake entering the number, let me do it again". It enters a new number and waits. It tries again. Something like
18005555555,,, ||: 1,3,1,0,5,5,5,1,2,1,2,,,,2,,,,
Meanwhile use that newfangled Intarweb thingy to track down the spammers for a little show of love.
The most persistent fax spammer I've had to deal with was dialing in from near Vancouver (Coquitlam, IIRC) and I was unable to get their identities ("Info4U", maybe they spam you too) but I did figure out how to set the fax machine to cap its receive speed at 2400bps before I'd go home at night. Faxes coming in overnight were either relatively local and legit (they faxed us 10 times a day with pickup and delivery orders, they wouldn't notice they took 3 minutes instead of 40 seconds to send those two pages) or from spammers. This raised both the monetary and opportunity cost to the spammers, but probably not enough to matter. If EVERYONE did this though...
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
A good example of why poor grammar and misused punctuation are bad things:
"Forbes Sympathises With Poor, Abused Fax.com" means "Forbes Sympathises With Poor (people), AND ALSO Forbes Abused Fax.Com (at some time in the past)". Good on them for sympathising with the poor; so many big companies don't. What a shame they had to spoil it by abusing Fax.com, whoever they are.
If you remove the comma, this (presumably erroneous) reading is no longer the most correct one.
Grammar and punctuation have one purpose (two if you count the entertainment of pedants): to improve comprehension. The "laws", such as they are, of grammar are not there to make people's heads hurt; they're there to make people's communications work.
I have discovered a truly remarkable
I want to tell you a story about the last time i was in portland...
I was walking on the street about 10:30 at night. A lot of people go to bed around here at 10:30 at night, and well, I was walking along when suddenly these jocks in this bright blue pickup drove up. it had kc lights, tractor tires, everything but the cb. it was a life-size hot wheels car for some dumb rich kid, right? Well, they drove up to me and they yelled what dumb rich kids usually yell, "hey, faggot," and showered me with some water. So, I stood there thinking, what a bunch of fuckheads and picked up a rock.
I was taught that you very often, but not always, put commas between multiple adjectives that are all describing the same noun.
The subject of this post should get one. "Bite my shiny metal ass," on the other hand does not.
Comma rules
But in the case of "poor, abused Fax.com," the comma certainly does belong. There are lots of times that the rules of the English language will allow an ambiguous sentence, and that's when you have to fall back to your ability to reason, and examine the context of what is said.
Frankly, if you really read that as "Forbes Sympathises With Poor (people), AND ALSO Forbes Abused Fax.Com (at some time in the past)," then you're an idiot. It's very clear that abused is an adjective in this case.
Just who the fuck else is supposed to appoint an activist?
..is that all the sponsored links (to the right of the article) are all for fax marketing companies. Presumably these companies are in countries where it is legal to send spam fax.
I was going to complain but, I don't think that Seth would answer, so I thought that it would be best to contact some of his co-workers to have "that chat" about SPAM. Then I thought maybe Slashdot users would like to send mail to him, so here is the list: Seth Lubove .net Letters@forbes.net customerservice@forbes.net
Paul Maidment Editor, Forbes.com Executive Editor, Forbes
Charles Dubow Executive Editor, News
Who else appoints an activist? Queen Elizabeth? "I appoint thee an anti-fax activist" Stupid.
Yean, $6000 over three years is a good side-job, assfuckers.
What's particularly shocking about this is that Forbes is normally pro-business, and their stance on this amounts to one of the most virulently anti-business stances you could hold. To deny the plain intent of the junk fax law, to eliminate junk faxes, is to hold that businesses have no right to control of their own fax machines, or the use of their own toner. This is an incredibly stupid position, held by someone who is either an idiot or a scoundrel. I speak as charitably as I can without being dishonest.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Strangely, the people at forbes.com seem to have taken all of the contact information for Seth Lubove off the article's 'about the author' link. If any of you wanted to send Mr. Lubove an email to let him know how you feel, you can reach him at slubove@forbes.com.
Gentlemen:
After reading this article, am I to presume that Forbes' position on all issues of this sort is that "all business is Good business"? Did you honestly intend to assert that Fax.com has never been guilty of wrongdoing and deliberately disregarding Federal law?
This article has not succeeded in eliciting any empathy from me whatsoever for Fax.com's predicament. They made their own bed - soiled their own goodwill and business - and now they'll have to lie in it. The motives, greed, or zealousness of Fax.com's detractors in no way exonerates it of own alleged mis-deeds; the incidental wrongs of an accuser do not invalidate the accusations. [/quote]
By standing along side greedy spammers Forbes displays his contempt for the common person.
A sympathetic article on Forbes is meaningless. Everyone reading Forbes just wants anyother bunch of quick money. What this article actually does is calling the lawyers into looking at the current junk fax/spam issues, and see if they can exploit some profit from this mess.
What exactly is this "corporate council" you mentioned?
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make install -not war
I'd say it is worse. not many people get forcefed a large dose of heroin(yes it does happen. but not by dealers, and not for money), it's usually the choice of the buyer. the problem with junkfaxes (and junk email) is that the whole thing is purely the decision of the seller, i.e. the one who profits.
they make a profit of you without explicit permission with questionable actions. at least a coke-dealer has permission from the buyer to sell his stuff.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Ok, so I RTFA, but what I took from it was the fact that Forbes is pointing out that a whole load of people, a cottage industry no less, has sprung up around sueing spammers, junk faxers and the like.
In other words, they're not pro-spam or pro-junk fax, but anti leeching lawyers, which I have to agree with.
Hell, I don't like spam, but I dislike people who essentially are looking for a quick fast buck too. This stinks of compensation culture I think, where everyone seems to think it's their right to be compensated for every goddam thing that happens to them that they don't like....
just my 2pence.
What did they think that a law company wouldn't know the law. if i broke the law in someway i would expect to go to be punished. they have one simple option stop breaking the law stop sending unsolicited faxes.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Considering the time and effort it takes to trace down the source of the fax, file the lawsuit, attend the hearing, wait for the money (if it ever comes), etc, I hardly consider this an enterprising business idea.
The article highlights one person who has collected about $6,000 over the last 3 years. That, to me, is beer money, not a cottage industry.
Most of the time, these companies are being sued by individuals, not "leeching lawyers", and I think it is good that for once the consumer has a legal avenue to prusue companies wasting a persons time and resources sending them marketing propaganda for unwanted products.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Subject: You're kidding, right?
A company is being held responsible for BREAKING THE LAW, and this is somehow a bad thing in your opinion? You sympathize with a company that knowingly and with intent, breaks a very specific and targeted law?
The thing that you're overlooking is that there is a *reason* the TCPA exists, and that is that to receive a FAX costs money. Before the TCPA was enacted, I would come into the office every morning and replace the roll of fax paper because we had been receiving faxes WE DID NOT WANT all night long. None of these junk faxers would honor a request not to send us these faxes. The junk faxers made the TCPA a necessity by stealing resources from their victims.
I have the right not to be bothered by telephone calls, faxes, and emails that I do not want. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a violation of the 1st Amendment to tell someone they cannot contact me if I do not want them to. I can turn off the TV, and I can simply choose not to buy the newspaper, but I cannot prevent someone from picking up the phone and calling me, and that's the line between protected speech and harassment.
At least I don't have a subscription to Forbes that I have to worry about cancelling...
And if you want to get around the $2.95 'premium archive' charge on that last article, simply add '_print' at the end of the URL, like this.
Parent is not Offtopic, but rather insightful. It draws an insightful parallel to the music industry that would appear to support the RIAA. That does not make it Offtopic... It is actually completely correct that junk faxers and music downloaders/uploaders belong in similar groups..
Founder's name is Kevin Katz, hmm this does tell something... All your fax are belong to him right?
Government appointed activists?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So now they fire back with 1000 calls a day to each individual business/person asking for a written letter signifying that its ok to send faxes to that business. The thing is to have the calls come from different sources so that you get around the law. Claim that you don't have the capacity to have a Do Not Call list and that they'll just have to put up with you.
Fax.com was incredibly stupid. Their business model relied on skirting the law. The lesson in this is that if you are going to build a business it must be legal. The law is a funny thing - if you bet that a law isn't going to be enforced, you might be right. More times, though, you get caught and when you do, you have a very long fall ahead of you.
-- $G
And would anyone please explain why heroin is worse than junk-faxes?
Heroin is a highly addictive barbiturate. Some people want to consume that. By themselves. Then they get addicted. My Bad. I'm smoking tobacco and got addicted too. So there.
Now please tell me how drugging yourself is worse than harrassing other people?
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"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Status Quo can be a good thing too. How many first year senators jump in and start drafting a law that is not well thought out, simply because they ran on a promise to do so. How often does one of those laws actually get to the sentate floor? (very rare)
Before a new law (such as CAN-SPAM or the Unsolicited FAX law) reaches the floor of the sentate, it has been touched and altered by 5 to 20 different points of view. Each one having a reason to "lessen the weight" of a law, or to "narrow the definition" of a governing structure act. Yet if this didn't happen, then some very poorly written laws would be passed through ... due to public pressure.
The last time a poorly conceived act was fast-tracked to a vote - we got the Department of Homeland Security. Again, a poorly thought out act that never went through the dietary process that most laws get. Which is why so much falls under the HUGE umbrella of homeland security. This was not deeply considered or debated. Sure there were vocal opponents - but little actual discussion.
Slow to respond? Yes, I fully agree, but too quick to respond makes for some very silly acts of congress.
The complexity of the government is specifically meant to hinder the creation of new laws. Yet, in times of panic, everyone feels that something 'must be done'. So from the reader to this writer, to everyone in between, these times we should be reflecting on the best course of action are often the times in which action is simply taken with little thought to the long-term consequences.
So, many of us whom are highly effected by Unsolicited Commerial Email (UCE), look at CAN-SPAM and say that it doesn't go far enough - but without the limits it has, there are eventual scenarios that could make things much worse.
Why?
... Because the elected officials whom collaborated to put the law up for a vote are sure that someone else will act in a conspiracy to over-ride the effectiveness of the law that was written. Because deep down even those whom are part of the power structure are still just individuals whom think that they are alone, standing up against the tide of "evil".
Now I'll get off my soap box, and put my tin-foil hat back on. And if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!
Lawyers who bring actions against people who have committed real violations of people's legally guaranteed rights are not "leeching lawyers" -- they are lawyers doing their job.
Hell, I don't like spam, but I dislike people who essentially are looking for a quick fast buck too.
There is no reason to dislike people who make a buck, quickly or otherwise, by providing a legitimate service. Seeing to it that thieves are punished in accordance with the law is a legitimate service.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
In the UK, it is illegal for anyone to send a fax to an individual {including sole traders} without the consent of the recipient. Illegal as in you go to jail, period.
...or the ones they've created^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlost here? Most people I know who have gotten jobs lately have gotten worse (lower-education and lower-paying) jobs now than previously, if they can get them. Considering that there is no place to go down from McD's, etc., the worsening of jobs during WJC (as opposed to GWB) is hard to support.
That's the (404) message I got when I clicked on the article author's name. Hehe. Here's what I submitted to Forbes using their comment on the article form:
I am utterly shocked that Forbes would publish such an article as "Fax and Friction", all but defending the practice of sending junk faxes. What were you thinking? The anti-junk fax laws aren't taking away freedom of speech, they're protecting businesses from people who would use other people's paper and toner (not to mention other more indirect costs) to send them unwanted advertisements. The article makes it sound like it's a bad thing that these lawyers and victims (yes victims) are driving the junk faxers out of business. If these companies stopped breaking the law, they wouldn't be getting sued, now would they? For a publication targeted to businesses, I find it odd that you would side with companies who are stealing our paper and toner, tying up our fax lines and putting wear and tear on our office equipment, all to give us unwanted stock picks and the like. Unbelievable.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I made the following editorial comment on the article:
I sent Forbes the following, under the subject "Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish" Begin quote-------------------
I don't understand Forbes sympathy for a business model that shifts its cost of doing business to an unwilling participant. Faxes cost money to receive. As such, you have no right to send someone an unsolicited fax solely for the benefit of YOUR business.
Given Forbes basic capitalist/libertarian viewpoint, I don't see how you can justify this type of business. The same is true for SPAM.
It is because the SENDER bears the cost of junk-mail and phone solicitations that those are, at least until you actively send a cease-and-desist of some kind, legal.
When the bulk of the cost (paper, ink, storage, processing and routing) is borne by the recipient, the sender should be REQUIRED to solicit and PROVE consent.
Fax.com and the rest of the junk faxers and spammers are parasitic scum who use the resources of unwilling recipients to fund their business. From a strictly economic viewpoint this is a bad thing, as it diverts the resources of businesses from the conduct of their business. From a moral standpoint it is equally vile. No-one should be allowed to take the resources of another for their own benefit without their consent. I would have thought that that principle would be basic to Forbes' editorial viewpoint.
The answer would be "no".
Well faggot, we're dying to know... did you throw the rock?!
ps. I've got a feeling "faggot" isn't really your name is it?
Come on now leave Portland alone!
It's not just a weed town, and everything does not shut down at night. Hell, I can go down the the Pearl district at 3am a score some fine black-tar "H" from some enterprising mehicanos down there!
I can also run up Sandy to Gresham at sun-up and get all the meth I'd need for a week from any one of the whores still working.
Just because the Trail Blazers all do weed, it don't mean us whiteboys do!
Any admins out there know of a good way to block spam faxes?? I can block by fax id on the fax server, but the majority of the fax ids of the spam faxes are blank. I also get legitimate faxes with a blank fax id, so I can't block them by fax id. I've contact the fax server vendor and they are no further help. Anyone know of any creative strategies for defending against this abuse?
Forbes uses the fax thing as an example, but they are correct in their efforts to point out how lawyers and other abusers of court resources and time cause a huge waste of time and money in the U.S.
It is ridiculous that we have not by now passed some realistic tort reform in this country.
Just try to tell me you've never done any of the following (in the USA):
(1) Driven 56 in a 55 zone.
(2) Had a beer when you were 20.
(3) Failed to obey each and every provision of the USA PATRIOT Act.
(4) Donated something (like an old car or furniture) to charity and claimed a tax write off larger than what you could have sold it for.
(5) Only slowed down to 1 mph at a stop sign.
(6) Stopped at a red light with your wheels in the crosswalk.
(7) Jaywalked.
(8) Started crossing at an intersection after the little red hand started flashing.
(9) Let your tire tread depth get below 2/16ths of an inch.
(10) Ordered something off the internet from another state without paying the appropriate sales tax due to your home state.
(11) Won money at a casino without reporting it to the IRS.
If you've done any of the above, you should either quit criticizing Forbes, or turn yourself in to the police.
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