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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."
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
You mean like this one?
Forbes.com
28 West 23rd Street
11th Floor
New York, NY 10010
Phone (212) 366-8900
Fax (212) 366-8804
There is a Do Not Fax.
If you have a fax machine, you're on it. EVERY fax number is on it.
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
Try reading "Eats, shoots and leaves", currently a top ten seller in the UK and due in the US sometime the colonials learn not to make tea with salt water.
Forbes magazine is a pale shadow of what it was under the senior Forbes. Steve Forbes the son was the clueless google eyed loonie who ran against GW Bush for the GOP presidential nomination claiming GW would not do enough for the ultra-rich (like himself).
It is somewhat rich to be given lectures in entepreneurship from a person who inherited every penny he owns. Come to that it was a bit much hearing the loonie prate on about 'familly values' and doing the standard GOP pander to the anti-gay bigots when Steve inherited his fortune from his gay father.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
Why do people read Forbes? There are good financial publications out there who actually have a clue - the Financial Times, The Ecomomist, Janes Defense Weekly, all tell it like it really is. Any business who takes what Forbes writes seriously is going to find itself in the position of Boeing. As the FT said last week:
Boeing's 737, with almost 4,000 planes in the air, is the most successful commercial airliner in history. But the company's largest and riskiest project was the development of the 747 jumbo jet. When a non-executive director asked about the expected return on investment, he was brushed off: there had been some studies, he was told, but the manager concerned couldn't remember the results.
It took only 10 years for Boeing to prove me wrong in asserting that its market position in civil aviation was impregnable. The decisive shift in corporate culture followed the acquisition of its principal US rival, McDonnell Douglas, in 1997. The transformation was exemplified by the CEO, Phil Condit. The company's previous preoccupation with meeting "technological challenges of supreme magnitude" would, he told Business Week, now have to change. "We are going into a value-based environment where unit cost, return on investment and shareholder return are the measures by which you'll be judged. That's a big shift."
The company's senior executives agreed to move from Seattle, where the main production facilities were located, to Chicago. More importantly, the more focused business reviewed risky investments in new civil projects with much greater scepticism. The strategic decision was to redirect resources towards projects for the US military that involved low financial risk. Chicago had the advantage of being nearer to Washington, where government funds were dispensed.
So Boeing's civil orderbook today lags that of Airbus, the European consortium whose aims were not initially commercial but which has, almost by chance, become a profitable business. And the strategy of getting close to the Pentagon proved counter- productive: the company got too close to the Pentagon, and faced allegations of corruption. And what was the market's verdict on the company's performance in terms of unit cost, return on investment and shareholder return? Boeing stock, $48 when Condit took over, rose to $70 as he affirmed the commitment to shareholder value; by the time of his enforced resignation in December 2003 it had fallen to $38.
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
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.
Not to belittle your argument, but this is often misquoted. Perhaps you meant . . .
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.
Whoa -- great article, thanks for the link. But just for the record (in context): crack != bud. Not even close.
everything in moderation
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
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
It's the profit motive of the spammers that needs to be attacked, and additional laws are unlikely to help a lot. The more we make their businesses unprofitable, the less we might see of them.
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
Quoth the poster:
Too late. The spammers "CAN-SPAM" act has already taken away our individual rights to redress grievances through courts of law. Individual recipients of spam cannot sue spammers. The power is left in the hands of attorney generals.
(sigh) Yet another legal illiterate /. er. The sky is not falling, Chicken Little.
The "CAN-SPAM" act, while a shitty law, specifically exempts laws like Washington's that prohibit falsifying headers and subject lines. For those too lazy to RTFA, here's the relevant section:
What this means is, law's like Washington's are untouched by CAN-SPAM. So take off the tinfoil hat and join the real world.
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.