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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.
-_-
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
It's almost the fax equivalent of a denial of service attack but in hardcopy.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
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.
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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.
"We need to be spamming the spammers, flooding the telemarketers, and faxing the faxers"
This is an extremely foolish thing to do. The spammers/faxers/etc can then play the victim. Even though they created the situation they can point to bad old hackers and avoid scrutiny.
Remember, cockroaches hate daylight. Just keep the light shining on them.
No we don't. Commercial faxing is already an opt-in system. You don't have to do anything to opt-out.
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.]
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.
I do, at least semi-regularly. You have to understand, these guys are Business Fundamentalists. If someone is making a buck off of it it is GOOD. Anything including laws, divine revelation or public opprobrium that interferes with this is BAD.
Consider their audience. The people who read Forbes are business people. They like it when they and people like them are praised and dislike the people who get in their way, just like the rest of us. So Forbes prints articles which damn anything that is "bad for Bidness" (any Bidness).
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
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?
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
Phone (212) 366-8900
Fax (212) 366-8804
To truly imitate fax.com, make sure you send the faxes to the top number.
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.
My point was that there would be a heck of a lot more than just 6 people doing this. I did not mean to imply that they are anything higher than the slime that eats away at the rust under the rain gutters of the house somebody built with their own hands.
The cost to the receiver are tremendous. The cost to the sender, not so much so by an order of magnitude. As such, and without any form of technological prevention, the legal arena is the proper forum for stopping a flood. The same thing happened with autodialers. If it wasn't for legal preventative measures, autodialers would have stopped the telephone from being a useful method of conducting business and managing your private life.
Exploring the potential economics of the situation does nothing to elevate these people's status above the kind of spore fungus clinging feverently, despite the efforts of a professional, to the back of a well-respected but elderly companion animal.
The ______ Agenda
Paper and in may cases email costs money. This isnt an issue of "free speach", you shouldnt be free to spend other peoples money to market your product (especially anonymously), At the very least door and phone salesmen, you can talk to and scream at. there is nothing worse than getting a junk mail/Fax knowing there is no way you can send a nastygram back, and the unsubscribe doesnt work, and whats worse, you know that idiots out there will read it, and buy the product which will encourage the spam.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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
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 company breaks the law by sending out junk faxes. Its entire business model is designed around violating federal law. Why shouldn't lawyers line up at their door? Slashdotting with lawyers instead of HTTP requests... a fitting end for a company that flagrantly disregards federal law and pisses people off.
I'm surprised they lasted this long. I wonder how they decided on this business model. Hey, I have a brilliant idea! I'll do a random search through the U.S. Code, pick a section, and build a business around disobeying that law!
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
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!
You were told YES, NO, and again YES. In those cases, just accept NO, tell the person who wanted the fax that someone else has requested you not send them. That way you can't get into trouble. As it is, you were asking for it. If, say, a receptionist wants a fax that the boss doesn't, too bad for the receptionist.
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!
The common factor being that they are British publications. One could ask why anyone reads any US publication given that they are mostly devoted to reporting 'character' and 'personality' stories completely ignoring any political issues of any substance.
If CNN were reporting in Iran today they would have reduced the power struggle there to a series of stories on who had the best looking turban.
The FTs comments on Boeing are right on point. Boeing was once a great company, then they stopped being in the business of making planes and started to be about squeezing contracts out of the US federal government. What is most astonishing about this change in direction is the time it took place - right at the end of the cold war when it was pretty obvious to anyone but the Boeing CEO that military spending would be winding down.
Sic transit gloria. If you read the decline and fall of the great powers what is astonishing is the fact that while eventual decline is inevitable there is no reason why the Roman empire could not with better management have survived a couple more centuries, the fall of the great powers was usually the result of hubris, of stopping the work of empire building and started waving flags, declaring empire days and generally lording it over everyone else.
I believe that the greatest threat to the pre-eminent position of the US today is the folk who have adopted the Condit strategy, forget how the US became great - by leading the alliance of the free world and instead start lording it over folk. Forbes is merely one of the organ grinders who are playing the tune here.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
Cry me a river. They run an 'assembly line' sending unsolicited faxes, which is (I believe) a civil offense. The appropriate remedy is for the victims to file civil or small claims suits.
If certain attorneys are making it easy to do that, then good! They need to find a business model that allows them to be profitable without breaking the law, and they won't have to worry about going out of business.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
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.
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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.
If they are basing their business on breaking the law, then don't you think they SHOULD be run into the ground?? Imagine if a company figures out how to make money by occasionally coming by peoples' homes and chopping into the house with an Axe. Should we cry foul when those people want to turn around and sue?
Junk faxing doesn't just piss people off.. it IS against the law.
They sent over a thousand faxes to a single company within a week. I'm more suprised that someone hasn't gone postal on them.
Hey, I have a brilliant idea! I'll do a random search through the U.S. Code, pick a section, and build a business around disobeying that law!
Don't forget, just breaking the law isn't enough. You have use breaking the law as a method of advertising. If you are not making money on the deal then Forbes will not write an article decrying the injustist of them actually enforcing the law when you are just trying to advertise.
How about spray painting advertisements on Junk Faxerss' homes? Or beat the crap out of them and then give them a flyer. Remember, you are a respectible businessman and as long as you are trying to make money you can do no wrong.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
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?"
And what about companies that receive faxed orders from customers? How are they supposed to block junk faxes? How is this any fundamentally different from a company selling it's services over the web receiving a DOS attack? How about telemarketers calling people on their cell phones and causing them extra service fees? Maybe I'll drive over to your house in the middle of the night to wash my car in your driveway with water from you spigot? Just because a system can be abused doesn't make it legal, fair, moral, or scrupulous to do so.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Still Yet... SMTP is Still Broken with no Real Viable Fix in the future... There have been a few attempts like Yahoo's and SPF and the.. But no Colabertive RFC with a solid foundation to Force Spammers to abandon most of their underhanded tactics...
Hotmail does seem to have finally gotten a Grip on.. My hotmail has gone down to 2 or less spams a day... whih used to be 80+ a few months ago.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
I made the following editorial comment on the article: