AOL to Give Away Spammer's Porsche

introverted writes "CNN is reporting that AOL is giving away a spammer's Porsche. As part of a settlement with a spammer, AOL took the spammer's Porsche Boxster S, and they're running a sweepstakes (already ended) to give the car away."

Comments

Late!

[awx]

Is this three or four weeks old now?

THE AOL PR FORCE IS STRONG LUKE

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL are getting their Porsche $ back 100 times over with all this free publicity, perhaps spam is a good thing they are thinking ?

Unusual punishment?

[GillBates0]

Okay, this isn't exactly a punishment meted out by law enforcement authorities, but even then, isn't it unusual for a corporation to "sieze" a person's (albeit a spammer's) car?

Maybe he got a better deal by giving away his car rather than an equivalent amount in money - but how'd they reach the settlement amount? Had the spammer's actions caused enough damage to AOL to justify the $1million settlement claim? My guess would be that the spammer's actions cost them bandwidth and diskspace - but are they justified in charging him the amount just because their users didn't delete the junk soon enough or their filters are lame?

Not I'm justifying spam or spammers...but if they reach an out of court settlement for a million dollars, on the grounds that they won't pursue a lawsuit against him - it sounds an awful lot like extortion to me. I would like to see the damages of $1million justified in public - otherwise every crook company (we have plenty of them - RIAA/SCO/etc) could go around threatening people with lawsuits (which the individuals couldn't afford) and demand out-of-court settlements and the people being sued would have no choice but to pay up unless they had resources to pursue their case in court.