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."

Comments

Considering the current economic "recovery" ...

[burgburgburg]

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.

Re:I was a faxer

[SoSueMe]

I hope your first fax after the court appearance included some details of the case, like the name of the lawyer and the judge (it sounds like you were in a fairly small area).

Re:Sent him information

[cpt kangarooski]

Junk faxes are theft. If a company forces someone else to use time, energy and resources for its own profit, then that parasitic company /should/ be sued.

It's not theft, and there is no force employed.

If you were stupid enough to get a fax machine that recieves all faxes sent to it, it's your own fault when it does precisely that. If you don't blindly accept every stupid thing that arrives, your resources will not be used.

It is exactly like, say, door-to-door soliciting. If someone comes to your door to try to sell you something, you can save a lot of time and effort by not answering, by immediately kicking them out, and so forth. If you listen to their entire spiel, that's fine, but it was your decision. Don't blame others for your failure to conserve your own resources if they're so precious to you.

how is it ethical or legal for one company to offload expenses (paper, toner, electricity, phone usage, and most importantly man-hours) on another for advertising its products.

Those are _your_ expenses, not theirs. The medium is structured such that that's how things work. You knew that when you got a fax, so don't act so surprised.

And as with the example above, the same is true with all forms of advertising; at the very least it uses up some of your time and effort even to ignore it or rid yourself of it as efficiently as possible.

Them's the breaks, though. It's not a serious burden, and it's overall safer and better for the recipient to have to actively reject ads rather than to have a tolitarian regime where ads cannot be sent in the first place. God knows, I'd love a world without unsolicited ads of any kind, including plain old logos on products, but I'd rather have important freedoms even if personally bothersome to me in their application.