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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?
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
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.
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 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
You could argue that what they were really opposed to was the kind of legalized extortion that a lot of small businesses get exposed to. What they failed to mention was that most businesses exposed to that kind of situation have it happen through no fault of their own, whereas fax.com brought it on themselves.
Duh.
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.
"Both sides of the issue"... I know people today, most especially those who consider themseves journalists, think that presenting both "sides" of an issue results in a "balanced" article.
But it is not balanced. A real journalist doesn't mutely present both "sides". A journalist also has to judge, and present, the motivations and past behaviors of the people involved as well. All sides are NOT equal. A journalist is not a debate moderator.
Evolution theory is not the same as creationism. Creationism is not science, it is religion.
Corporate sponsored anti-environmentalist screed is NOT the same as a global scientific consensus. The motivations of each side are wildly different, and should not be given equal weight.
People who believe tax cuts are always beneficial are not as believable as pay-as-you-go fiscal conservatives: The tax cutters have twenty years of debt accumulation and other after-cut hangovers undercutting their position. Presenting them as equally believable as a pay-your-bills economist is misleading and does not serve the reader well.
Presenting pro-war neocons' arguments, long after they were proven farcical, as equivalent to those who have actual on-the-ground experience in political matters is not fair, nor is it balanced.
Life is not a football game! Everything is not an two-sided matchup of two noble teams!
Presenting the pro-Fax.com side as roughly believable as the anti-fax.com "side" is disingenous on any level. It is not journalism; at worst it is Machiavellan manipulation of perception. In this instance, it rehabilitates the fax.commers as underdog victims of liberal trial lawyering bloodsuckers in the eyes of the readership of Forbes.
A journalist has the responsiblity of weighing the credibility of the sources of arguments. And to inform the readership of the fact.
Sometimes there just isn't a balance! Sometimes one side is just wrong. And a journalist must say why.
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!
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