Slashdot Mirror
The Family That Spams Together Stays Together
Anonymous Coward writes "The Globe & Mail has a story about an Ontario, Canada man who is being sued, along with his father and brother, by Yahoo under the CAN-SPAM Act. The Yahoo suit claims that Eric Head, along with his father and brother, were sending out millions of spam emails per month, as well as compiling lists of email addresses to sell to other spammers. Eric's company, Gold Disk Canada Inc., gathered lists of email addresses and sold them for $29.99 for 100,000 email addresses on up to $1,599.99 for 10 million addresses."
...I mean, we are talking Canadian dollars aren't we? :p
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/12/172622 1&mode=thread&tid=111&tid=126
Christ, its from yesterday even.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Please let one of them be called 'Richard'...
CAN-SPAM is not going to make a difference in the light that 40% of global e-mail is spam.. and a lot of it comes off American shores..
Every little helps i guess..
Simon.
Ontario is in Canada. CAN-SPAM is a US act. This is Yahoo suing a spammer, the CAN-SPAM act is completely and utterly irrelevant.
In fact, IIRC, the CAN-SPAM act specifically prohibits individuals / companies from taking legal action against alleged spammers.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
because this is one set of genes I'm sure we all don't want in our genepool..
"ewww.. Spammer DNA... Gross!"
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
wow... i never realized how cheap the addresses were. i had always hoped my address would be like worth $1. I guess I should have hoped for a penny for my address. I feel so used.
10 million addresses for 1500 bucks... why not just sell harvesting tools and avoid prosecution? I can't imagine a world where I'd see a CD with 10 million e-mails on it and think, "wow, what a great buy!" and not think "wow, 10 million illegal violations of privacy!" They should make unauthorized email address distribution fineable at $1000 per offense.
stuff |
The spammers are in Ontario you say? The spammers are SELLING personally identifiable information (e-mail addresses) you say? I'm not an expert...oh wait, I am...without the consent of the address owners, this guy is in clear violation of PIPEDA (the new, federal privacy act). Patrick
NEARLY UNLIMITED EMAIL ADRESSES FOR FREE!
Here's a small sample of our list!
Order now! No satisfaction, NO REFUND!
Hate me!
I'm kinda wondering whether my email addresses came in the cheapo $29.99 version, or if I qualified for the $1599.99 Deluxe package...
The people you have to fight are the big bosses. In the case of Spam, the IDIOTS who try to sell their products and services through spamming. If more action is taken to prosecute these [deleted expletives], we will be able to combat spam better.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Euh, what do you want to say with that figure? You are multiplying the price of 10 million addresses with the total spam e-mail per year. That would give you:
$/address * SPAM/Year
Which resolves to something like dollarspam per addressyear. What the hell is THAT?
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
Believe it or not, Canada and the US have a variety of agreements on cross-boarder enforcement. IANAL, but this is a civil matter, not a criminal one, so extradition isn't relevant.
As I am sure all Americans know, you don't have to break a law to be sued. US businesses sue Canadian businesses all the time. I am from the Kitchener area myself, and the CBC legal analyst being interviewd said that Yahoo will have some legal hurdles, but will at the very least get them into court.
Wow, that's a lot.
That's equivalent to every single person on the planet receiving over 3 trillion spams per second.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
CAN-SPAM applies, and of course US law has extraterritorial effect.
As for our end of things, laws extend as far as the counstitution (due process) allows. On the foreign end, they may be *practical* problems such as getting physical custody (extradition), seizing assets, collecting evidence, but the US and Canada are on very good terms and have one of the most significant economic relationships in the world -- we can work it out. Also, if the defendants have violated the act and we can't reach them, they may still have reason to regret it -- and US assets might be forfeited and they might not want to visit. They can also be subject to suit in absentia -- if they refuse to show up on proper notice and jurdiction, they may lose their defenses.
Jurisdiction derives from the domestic effects, you can't just hide on the other side of the border. The classic example is that if you shoot someone across the border, you are subject to the jurisdiction; yes this applies to fraud and other intangible offenses like the Nigerian scams. Again, the problems are practical. About CAN-SPAM. The practical problems in enforcing it are HUGE, but clearly the theoretical jurisdiction exists. Also -- it seems a bit implausible to suppose that Yahoo's lawyers missed so many first-year law classes that they didn't catch any of this.
As for who may sue -- the law in enforceable by the FTC, civil action by the states, and not individuals but ISP's (here, Yahoo):
(f) ACTION BY PROVIDER OF INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE.--
(1) ACTION AUTHORIZED.--A provider of Internet access service adversely affected by a violation of section 5 may bring a civil action in any district court of the United States with jurisdiction over the defendant, or in any other court of competent jurisdiction, to--
(A) enjoin further violation by the defendant; or
(B) recover damages in an amount equal to the greater of--
(i) actual monetary loss incurred by the provider of Internet access service as a result of such violation; or
(ii) the amount determined under paragraph (2).
(2) STATUTORY DAMAGES.--
(A) IN GENERAL.--For purposes of paragraph (1)(B)(ii), the amount determined under this paragraph is the amount calculated by multiplying the number of willful, knowing, or negligent violations by an amount, in the discretion of the court, of up to $10 (with each separately addressed unlawful message carried over the facilities of the provider of Internet access service or sent to an electronic mail address obtained from the provider of Internet access service in violation of section 5(b) treated as a separate violation). In determining the per-violation penalty under this subparagraph, the court shall take into account the degree of culpability, any history of prior such conduct, ability to pay, the extent of economic gain resulting from the violation, and such other matters as justice may require.
(B) LIMITATION.--For any violation of section 5 (other than section 5(a)(1)), the amount determined under subparagraph (A) may not exceed $500,000, except that if the court finds that the defendant committed the violation willfully and knowingly, the court may increase the limitation established by this paragraph from $500,000 to an amount not to exceed $1,500,000.
(3) ATTORNEY FEES.--In any action brought pursuant to paragraph (1), the court may, in its discretion, require an undertaking for the payment of the costs of such action, and assess reasonable costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, against any party.
So you're telling me there are 6*10^29 spam messages sent out every year? The average year has 365.2425 days IIRC, which assuming no leap seconds means 31556952 seconds in a year. That works out to approximately 1.9*10^22 spam messages per second. The IPv4 address space has (far) fewer than 4294967296 available addresses. That means that each second, the average Internet-connected computer is sending out more than 4426865629872 spam messages. That's 4.4 trillion spam messages per second from every node on the network, including the billions that don't even exist.
Which leaves me three questions:
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.