OptInRealBig Wins Restraining Order On SpamCop

arikb writes "Some online newspapers are reporting that the infamous Scott Richter and his company OptInRealBig won a temporary restraining order against SpamCop. The TRO prevents SpamCop from sending complaints about OIRB to their provider or removing email addresses from the complaints it receives which regard OIRB. I think we will rue this day for years to come." Update: 05/12 16:43 GMT by T : The Ultimate Fartkno writes "HillsCap, a fed-up SpamCop user, is now organizing a class-action lawsuit to be brought against Richter and Opt-In. At least 1,000 signatures are needed, so tell your friends!"

Comments

Chicken Little

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we will rue this day for years to come.

Spare us the drama. No, we won't rue this day for years to come. It's a temporary restraining order that expires on May 20th. That's next week. If you blink, you'll miss it. Also, note this from TFA:

IronPort did not file an opposition to OptIn's motion for a TRO, which OptIn filed May 4. The court reviewed the papers and issued its ruling on OptIn's motion May 10 without a hearing. IronPort has not yet filed an answer to OptIn's original complaint.

Ironport owns Spamcop, for those who don't know. So where's the problem? The sky is not falling. Someone show the judge the Daily Show clip of Richter, his "high volume email deployment", and how he was made a fool. I'll reply if I find the link.

Re:Chicken Little

[Liselle]

scottrichter422@yahoo.com

I would say he's probably changed it or it was fake to begin with (Yahoo? He could run his own email server), but you asked. :P

Re:Chicken Little

[merlin_jim]

Just a thought; would this then require OIRB to positively identify which mass e-mail campaigns are theirs, so that SpamCop can comply with the injunction?

I mean in order to comply, OIRB would have to provide identifying characteristics of their e-mails, right? Isn't that just what all the spam filter guys have been looking for? Identifying characteristics... yeah I know, easy to change next week, but in the meantime they'll have a definitive list, giving them a clue into this week's state of the art in spam obfuscation...

Re:Chicken Little

[thewldisntenuff]

http://dnsbl.net.au/files/show.wmv
http://www.ian ai.net/jokes/DailyShow.ScottRichter. wmv
http://www.badmonkey.ca/files/show.wmv

Links to the Scott Richter clip!

Maybe this will fix my crappy karma....May the Slashdot Effect Begin!!!!

-thewldisntenuff

Re:Chicken Little

[Short Circuit]

Great point. And if they put a "signifying" characteristic in their messages, many other spammers will want to duplicate it so they fall under the same protection. That is, they'll claim to be OIRB.

But OIRB would get pissed, and might sue. Both companies will go down in a boiling lake of legal bills.

Or maybe that's just my optimism kicking in.

Re:Chicken Little

[Liselle]

I mean in order to comply, OIRB would have to provide identifying characteristics of their e-mails, right? Isn't that just what all the spam filter guys have been looking for?

You only have to look as far as your inbox. True to its name, if you sign up (heh) for OptInRealBig spam, you can be assured you'll get lots more spam from OIRB's "partners".

I think you answered yourself. Sure, it would help for a week, but then the method would become ineffective, and we'd be stuck with it. Useless, and with more overhead to boot. No, Scott Richter just needs to be shut down, period. You can't kill all of the cockroaches, but you can kill the big ones that can't run fast, and like to give TV interviews.

Re:Chicken Little

[grahamm]

And if they did that, the ISPs (and others wishing to block spam) could use that 'signifying' characteristic to block the spam and would not need to refer to spamcop (or other blocking lists).

Re:Chicken Little

[Short Circuit]

Exactly. And OIRB would have to file a whole bunch of papers to get at all the individual "censors" from blocking their mail. More legal bills.

Darn it, there's my optimism acting up again.

DOWN boy! *crack*

Re:Chicken Little

[bencc99]

another mirror

Re:Chicken Little

[johnnyb]

First, I know nothing of OIRB specifically. However, please don't assume that all email marketing companies are spammers. It just isn't true. I work for a company that does email marketing, and our server has had the same IP address for over a year, and all of our emails come from the same domain, with clear opt-out instructions (in addition, you had to have opted in directly to have received it to begin with).

There are some of us companies who actually do send legitimate email where the recipients are trying _to_ receive the message rather than trying to block us. I have personally walked many people through turning down their anti-spam software to make sure our messages get through to their system.

Anyway, I think it would be wise to be sure that we remember that not all commercial marketing email is bad, or else I'll wake up one day and half.com will no longer be sending me email updates about which books I want have come in at the price I specified (which is in fact the most effective form of email marketing).

Re:Chicken Little

[merlin_jim]

The problem is that OIRB is in fact junk mail; basically it's an association of a lot of different mass email marketers, and when you opt in for one, the fine print is that you opt in for all of them.

This is not effective email marketing nor is it ethical, IMHO...

I also do email marketing campaigns. Any campaign I design complies with the following criteria:

• Users explicitly permit email to be sent to them
  
• Users have the option to not receive email marketing items
  
• User email addresses will never be sold or shared with other organizations
  
• The email is sent from a non obfuscated mail server owned by the company sending the email (or their ASP), and the mail header information is valid
  
• The email is a tasteful, well-formed message using no obfuscation techniques
  
• The email is sent from a valid email address to a single recipient
  

As long as you follow these criteria there's no reason any spam filtering software should filter you out...

Re:Chicken Little

[VdG]

I'm increasingly unsure of the point of SPAM - at least, the sort of stuff I see.

Plenty of people discard the stuff immediately, and SPAM companies have responded by putting more and more bizarre subjects, weird headers and anything else they can think of, just so that their mail threads its way through my filters and makes its way to my inbox.

Where I spot it as SPAM and delete it unread.

Just what is the fucking point?

They'd be better off putting a clearly recognisable flag in the subject or headers. Anyone who doesn't want it can discard it, those strange individuals who like the stuff can leave it alone.

Sure: there'd still be the bandwidth issue but I bet most people wouldn't care a great deal if there was a simple way of filtering it out.

Re:Chicken Little

[UnrepentantHarlequin]

"Clear opt-out instructions." Now why in the Multiverse would you even need those if you were running confirmed opt-IN to begin with?

The other day, I decided that I was never likely to buy any more plane tickets from a particular booking service I'd signed up with, so I didn't need their (several times a week) special rates announcements. So, I opted back out again. I found their email useful when I first signed up for it, but my needs have changed and now I don't.

Or to use my example of Omaha Steaks again ... if I suddenly went vegetarian I wouldn't be likely to order from them again, so I'd opt out of the list that, once again, I knowingly and voluntarily opted into a year ago.

If I had a really bad experience with a Border's brick-and-mortar store and swore never to buy a book from their company again, I'd want to drop their newsletter and regular supply of Border's 20% off coupons. If I found a place that did a better and cheaper job of cutting my hair than Supercuts, I'd cancel their haircut reminder and discount coupon service. Etc. Etc. There are a zillion reasons why someone would opt in for a list, then later decide to leave it when their needs changed.

Re:Chicken Little

[johnnyb]

"That, in a nutshell, is confirmed opt-in. It is the ONLY legitimate method of bulk E-mail advertising."

BS.

First of all, confirmed opt-in opens itself up to just as much spam as non-confirmed opt-in. You just wind up with a bunch of spam that starts "We have received a submission from someone claiming to be you to join our mailing list, 'Vicodin available at example.com'. In order to verify your email address for the opt-in list 'Vicodin available at example.com', you have to reply to this message.

Second of all, the only practical problem with unconfirmed opt-in is that it's your word against theirs whether or not you really opted in. Oh wait, that's true anyway. The only thing confirmed opt-in gives you is that people who don't know how confirmed opt-in works wind up not being able to get useful emails, and only get crappy spam rather than the emails they want. We've tried confirmed opt-in and the only results are that we have a bunch of people emailing us why they weren't added to our list.

With regular opt-in, we have gone for over a year without a single complaint. I think the redhat-list has more problems.

"If your company is not doing those exact steps, in that exact sequence, you're spamming. Period."

Yes. Period. Because _you_ say so. Obviously, I should always consult you on definitions of any words I use, because you are the only one with correct answers.

"If you are spamming, please tell me which marketing firm you're with so I can place your IP address range(s) into my domain's 'Deny' list for the mail servers."

If you or your users ever receive email that they didn't want, and the issue is not resolved completely to your satisfaction, I encourage you to do this.

Think of it this way. Let's say someone signs you up for a list that you didn't want them to. In the case of confirmed opt-in, they will get one useless extra email. In the case of unconfirmed opt-in, they will get one potentially useful extra email that they only have to reply or click on to get removed. In the case of confirmed opt-in you're wasting bandwidth sending junk (and the spammers are going to spam with the "verification" messages anyway), and in unconfirmed you actually get content. Either way is open to abuse by bad parties, but confirmed opt-in causes problems for some of the computer-challenged.

Anyway, as long as you believe that you and only the people you agree with get to set all standards for definitions, I guess you'll just have to consider me a spammer.

Re:Chicken Little

[sfjoe]

There are some of us companies who actually do send legitimate email where the recipients are trying _to_ receive the message rather than trying to block us.

If I had a nickel for every spammer who claimed to be a legit marketer, I could retire to a place that didn't have email.
My ideal world is one where, in order to receive marketing fluff, one had to walk into the corporate offices, find the director of marketing and slap them in the face. Twice.

Re:Chicken Little

[Skynyrd]

First, I know nothing of OIRB specifically. However, please don't assume that all email marketing companies are spammers. It just isn't true. I work for a company that does email marketing, and our server has had the same IP address for over a year, and all of our emails come from the same domain, with clear opt-out instructions (in addition, you had to have opted in directly to have received it to begin with).

Remember that the U in UCE stands for Unrequested. If all your mail really is requested, then you aren't sending Spam. I get mail from my bank, and although it's commercial, it certainly isn't Spam.

I bet I get Requested Commercial Email from at least 10 companies, and I'm sure than most slashdotters do to.

Re:Chicken Little

[pqdave]

"That, in a nutshell, is confirmed opt-in. It is the ONLY legitimate method of bulk E-mail advertising."

BS.

First of all, confirmed opt-in opens itself up to just as much spam as non-confirmed opt-in. You just wind up with a bunch of spam that starts "We have received a submission from someone claiming to be you to join our mailing list, 'Vicodin available at example.com'.

A genuine opt-in message shouldn't have advertising within the confirmation message, it should just say 'At 10:30am from IP signed up for the vicodin user's mailing list. Please click on this link or respond to this message to join the list"

In order to verify your email address for the opt-in list 'Vicodin available at example.com', you have to reply to this message.

Second of all, the only practical problem with unconfirmed opt-in is that it's your word against theirs whether or not you really opted in. Oh wait, that's true anyway. The only thing confirmed opt-in gives you is that people who don't know how confirmed opt-in works wind up not being able to get useful emails, and only get crappy spam rather than the emails they want.

The other thing you get is that if you DO get complaints, you can pull out their confirmation mail, complete with headers to show that they did sign up. You could forge the confirmation messages, but forging their ISP's headers will be more difficult.

We've tried confirmed opt-in and the only results are that we have a bunch of people emailing us why they weren't added to our list.

With regular opt-in, we have gone for over a year without a single complaint. I think the redhat-list has more problems.

"If your company is not doing those exact steps, in that exact sequence, you're spamming. Period."

Yes. Period. Because _you_ say so. Obviously, I should always consult you on definitions of any words I use, because you are the only one with correct answers.

Actually, I probably wouldn't have a problem with you, as long as the lack of complaints is legit. I've heard is that a vanishingly small percentage complain, and fewer still complain to the right place.

Even if you are legit, without confirmation I won't have sympathy if you get in trouble with your ISP for some moron forge-subscribing your mailing list to addresses harvested from news.admin.net-abuse.email

"If you are spamming, please tell me which marketing firm you're with so I can place your IP address range(s) into my domain's 'Deny' list for the mail servers."

If you or your users ever receive email that they didn't want, and the issue is not resolved completely to your satisfaction, I encourage you to do this.

Think of it this way. Let's say someone signs you up for a list that you didn't want them to. In the case of confirmed opt-in, they will get one useless extra email. In the case of unconfirmed opt-in, they will get one potentially useful extra email that they only have to reply or click on to get removed.

Here is a problem--Many of the "reply to remove" or "click to remove" instructions are actually "click to add". I've proved this to my satisfaction experimentally: Got a spam in one account, "replied" to the remove address from a new, otherwise unused and non-guessable account. Result? The new account started getting spam. I can't tell the difference between scammers and mistakes.

Some of the remove links are dead, some want a password, some have other hoops.

In the case of confirmed opt-in you're wasting bandwidth sending junk (and the spammers are going to spam with the "verification" messages anyway), and in unconfirmed you actually get content. Either way is open to abuse by bad parties, but confirmed opt-in causes problems for some of the computer-challenged.

Confirmed opt

Re:Chicken Little

[JuggleGeek]

The TRO has been dissolved and an expedited hearing has been scheduled.

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3352951

In the order dissolving the TRO, Judge Armstrong said, "The legal issues are more complicated than they originally appeared and the Court has a number of questions regarding the facts." For this reason, the TRO was dissolved and an expedited hearing set for May 18 in which both parties can set forth their arguments regarding the restraint.

Re:Chicken Little

[ChaosDiscord]

The only thing confirmed opt-in gives you is that people who don't know how confirmed opt-in works wind up not being able to get useful emails, and only get crappy spam rather than the emails they want.

If you're running any sort of list without confirmed opt-in you're allowing your list to be used for a variety of nuisance attacks. Don't like someone? Subscribe them to as many single opt-in lists as possible. It's the modern day equivalent of taking a bunch of subscription cards from magazines at the library and subscribing someone you don't like to them. This is worse because it's so easy. As someone who has suffered exactly this sort of attack, it's extremely frustrating.

Confirmed opt-in isn't some sort of crazy, rare idea. It's increasingly common. People will learn to deal with them. Modern mailing list packages provide very clear messages explaining what is going on and how to get onto the list. It's almost identical to email confirmed account creation which is effectively the standard for getting a free account on any web site these days.

Let's say someone signs you up for a list that you didn't want them to. In the case of confirmed opt-in, they will get one useless extra email. In the case of unconfirmed opt-in, they will get one potentially useful extra email that they only have to reply or click on to get removed.

Until you've faced 70 hostile sign up messages in a day, you don't really appreciate how frustrating this is. It's not potentially useful, it's a time wasting mess. I shouldn't need to read each message to determine how to unsubscribe from each list (this one require a response email, this one requires a specially formatted message to another address, this one requires visiting a web site, this one requires logging into a web site, this one doesn't provide any details on how to unsubscribe at all!). Worse, it's possible that the message is actually a test message from a spammer; anyone who tries to unsubscribe will be added to the known good list.

First of all, confirmed opt-in opens itself up to just as much spam as non-confirmed opt-in. You just wind up with a bunch of spam that starts "We have received a submission from someone claiming to be you to join our mailing list, 'Vicodin available at example.com'. In order to verify your email address for the opt-in list 'Vicodin available at example.com', you have to reply to this message.

What you describe isn't confirmed opt-in; it's just plain old forgery. Spammers already forge patterns for various tools already (as I look at the piles of faked eBay "Question for seller" and "WARNING: Cannot deliver to yahoo.com" messages in my mailbox). The response will be the same as always; mark it as spam (if you're using a trained system) and move on. This would change nothing for spammers. It will, however, make it much easier to distinguish the companies tries to do play fair.

Re:Chicken Little

[ChaosDiscord]

I don't see how that's any different from now. "Did I sign up for this list? No? Alright, they suck".

The biggest difference in how I react.

With an unexpected confirmation opt-in message I simply ignore it. It's unfortunate that I got it, but at least it's a one off irritation.

With an unexpected mailing list message things get more complicated. Is it spam? Definately don't reply, as it confirms the email address and earns you more spam. Is it a legit list? Well, read the message looking for the information on how to get off the list. Of course, it's not always clear which category a message is in. Either way I must take specific action (Basically blacklisting or unsubscribing), or I can expect further messages.

I don't agree with the earlier claim that unconfirm lists are spam. However, confirmed opt-in is a good way to show that your company or mailing list is interested in being a good citizen. It shows that you understand people's email boxes are full of unwelcome junk and you don't want to be another source. This won't end spam, but it can reduce the number of people complaining that you're a spam source. This will reduce the number of blacklists you end up on.

Follow-up

[Anonymous Coward]

Video. Wonder how long that poor schmuck's server will last, but it's not on the Comedy Central page for the Daily Show that I can see.

Re:Follow-up

[puppet10]

It is on Comedy Central its just hidden a bit (and in Real format)-- Daily Show: Corddry - Email Trouble

Re:Follow-up

[Eggplant62]

I have it mirrored here on a host with lots of bandwidth, go ahead, beat on it.

So?

[Black_Logic]

SpamCop can't make the complainers' information anonymous.

Why would that matter? Who could the complainer recieve backlash from that would matter? Could they maybe get a frivilous lawsuit from that slime Scott Richter?

Re:So?

[Zocalo]

Because clueless ISPs, or those working hand-in-hand with spammers, will simply forward the report to the spammer verbatim. As a result the spammer gets a known active email address to charge extra dollars for in any potential meta spamming activities. The fact that the email address *might* generate a spam report, that *might* get the service revoked is a lesser worry.

Re:So?

[AndroidCat]

Listwashing. Each single complaint represents thousands(?) of people that Just Hit Delete or filtered it to /dev/null. After a while, Snotty's mailing list has a lot of the people who will complain about spam tagged as "do not send" as well as "confirmed good email". Then he'll sell his lists to other spammers with the first tag stripped off...

How's this happening, again?

[matth]

Let me make sure I have this straight... who's got a gun to the mailserver administrator's head saying "You must use spamcop to filter your mail"? No one.. ok that's what I thought. So how exactly does OIRB even have a case here? Spamcop is running a service, which somtimes blocks OIRB, they are forcing everyone and their mother who runs a mail server to use them (spamcop)... so why did this even go through? It's not spamcop's fault.. it's the mailserver admin's fault the mail is being blocked. And, unless I'm wrong, mailservers are privately owned pieces of machinery and I have every right to say "Sorry, you can't come trampling on my equipment right now", to someone. So while OIRB might not like it, my mail server is private property.

Isn't this like hireing Diebold to secure your house, and then having someone (say Jehovah's Witnesses) complain and file a suit against Diebold because they can no longer come up to your house and just enter?

I know I know.. I'm stretching the example a bit... but JW can 'technically' come up to my house knock and I can talk to them if I wish. I can also turn them away.. it's MY house.. MY property. I install a third party system which does something or other to keep them away... how's this diebold's problem? or mine for that matter?

Re:How's this happening, again?

[Liselle]

Weird, I don't usually see analogies on Slashdot that make sense. /applause

But anyway, that's only one aspect of it. Richter is also going after them for forwarding complaints to OIRB's ISP instead of the company directly. It's not that people use their blacklists (although that's part of it), it's that SpamCop is actively trying to get ISPs to shut him down. Presumably for a violation of TOS or whatnot. Richter claims that it's unlawfully costing him business. I know, I know, he's full of #$@$, I am just stating the facts. :P

Re:How's this happening, again?

[matth]

Very true.. that would be descrimination based on colour. But where do you draw the line? Perhaps I want to use the female restroom at work. I can't? I'm being denied! Sexual descrimination!

Perhaps I want to counsel at an all girl's camp (I'm a guy). what I can't? Sexual descrimination!

My point is.. some things NEED to be descriminated against. Some don't.. and are wrong to descriminate against.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[mwood]

No, it's like someone of whatever color trying to bring his pogo stick onto the golf course and being denied. Play by the rules and you are welcome; damage the turf through selfish flouting of the rules and we throw you out.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[kemapa]

Very true.. that would be descrimination based on colour. But where do you draw the line? Perhaps I want to use the female restroom at work. I can't? I'm being denied! Sexual descrimination!

Actually, denying you the 'right' to use the women's restroom if you are a man is sexual discrimination, at least according to the The Undergraduate Council at Harvard University.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[WCMI92]

"Isn't this like hireing Diebold to secure your house, and then having someone (say Jehovah's Witnesses) complain and file a suit against Diebold because they can no longer come up to your house and just enter?

I know I know.. I'm stretching the example a bit... but JW can 'technically' come up to my house knock and I can talk to them if I wish. I can also turn them away.. it's MY house.. MY property. I install a third party system which does something or other to keep them away... how's this diebold's problem? or mine for that matter?"

Or the JW suing me because I'm Roman Catholic and they want to FLEE when they come to my door and find that out? ;)

Re:How's this happening, again?

[ScouseMouse]

Whether or not Spamming is legal is not actually the point. Any private individual has the right to hold opinions on the activities of another person or company.

The scummers, erm, spammers, are using the argument that blocking these emails is costing them business.

I would use the counter argument, that people (And this includes ISP's) choose *not* to recieve these emails because they are costing them time and money, and the spammers are not recompensing them.

You may have the right to show me advertising, but you dont have the right to make me pay for you to do it. One of the reasons i dumped my old Dial up account is the minute or so wait while i downloaded scum.. erm.. spam... erm... marketing emails during which time the clock was ticking, but i coudnt use my internet connection.

There are still quite a number of places in the world where people still pay for internet by the minute. (Not me any more fortunately)

So, if any of your spammers are out there reading this message, Feel free to try to sue me for accusing you of the following: you are BOTTOM SUCKING LEECHES who survive by MAKING EVERYONES INTERNET CONNECTIONS THAT MORE UNPLEASANT TO USE. I not only hoping you loose the case against SPAMCOP, AOS, MICROSOFT et al, i hope they NAIL YOUR SCUMMY LITTLE COMPANIES TO THE WALL, and prove to everyone just what MORONIC IDIOTS you are in practicing this BARELY LEGAL "marketing" activity that would be BANNED IN VIRTUALLY ANY OTHER MEDIA.

Hmm, theraputic, must do that more often :-)

Re:How's this happening, again?

[Steve B]

They're interfering with businesses, and they're blocking communications.

They are doing no such thing. They are informing the rest of the world "So-and-so is a spammer". The rest of the world rejects messages from so-and-so, or not, as it chooses.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[johnnyb]

"As for the bit about reporting to their ISP, there's no point in reporting misbehavior to the people who are misbehaving. They know they're breaking the law."

This is BS. I once worked for a company that sent 100,000 emails a month to customers who had requested it. However, there was one guy who was mad at us for sending him email that he requested. In addition, he had forgotten the email address he had signed up under, was too stupid to check the headers, and continued to complain because we wouldn't take him off of our list (because he wouldn't provide us with the email address). He made a big hullabaloo, but after a few weeks he finally figured out that it was to an email address that was three ISP's ago that was still forwarding email.

Imagine how difficult this situation would have been to resolve if he took the same position you do.

In addition, the complaint is not about SpamCop running blacklists. It's about them going to individual ISPs to get these guys cut off.

From what I've read about OIRB so far, I agree that these aren't nice guys, but I think you're painting with too broad a brush, and may make the situation worse.

If we get too many people saying "all commercial email is bad" and it comes down to being either we allow commercial email or we don't, then obviously the commercial side is going to win out, because without commerce the country will sink. If instead we can make it about "we don't like companies who make it difficult to resolve issues" or "we don't like companies who intentionally send unwanted email" then you have a much better case. However, when you start equating intentional and accidental cases of email being sent without permission and viewing them as the same thing, you wind up with problems.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[Steve B]

Imagine that you sold furniture, and I went to all of your wood suppliers and told them that you were operating illegally and they should stop providing you with wood, but never told you that they were unhappy with your nor give you a chance to fix the situation.

Irrelevant analogy. Richter already knows that he is a pariah, and knows exactly what he must do (stop spamming) to fix the situation. He simply needs to be sufficiently pressured to do so (which will probably require getting him kicked off ISP after ISP until he can no longer find a host).

Re:How's this happening, again?

[tgibbs]

But anyway, that's only one aspect of it. Richter is also going after them for forwarding complaints to OIRB's ISP instead of the company directly.

SpamCop does not choose who to forward complaints to. It does provide automated header analysis to determine reasonable spam complaint addresses associated with the origin of the spam. The SpamCop user then chooses where to direct his complaint. SpamCop merely provides a temporary address for that purpose. This prevents spammers from (a) learning that the user's address is "live" (which makes it more valuable on a mailing list), or (b) attempting to discourage complaints by increasing the volume or objectionable nature of the spam directed to that address.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[UnrepentantHarlequin]

I once worked for a company that sent 100,000 emails a month to customers who had requested it. However, there was one guy . . .

Exactly: there was this one guy.

And that one guy knew how to reach you.

If he'd sent that email and its headers to a spam-filtering service, they would have said "one complaint, clear and truthful headers, he's some wanker who signed up and is too stupid to un-sign himself." If that one complaint got forwarded to an ISP, the same thing would have happened. It's when they get 1,000 complaints about the same thing, and it takes a detective to figure out who it really came from, that it's an issue and they try to do something about it.

. . . without commerce the country will sink.

The country, and commerce, got by very nicely for hundreds of years without email, let alone spam. If worst came to worst, they could continue to get by without any email at all just like they did ten or fifteen years ago.

But, again, the issue is not commercial email. I just got done reading my opt-in email, and I'm about to place an order with Omaha Steaks. I read their print ad, went to their website, signed up for their email list, and I buy steaks from them. We're both happy. That's how commercial email should work.

The legitimate commercial emailers should be -- and some of them are -- in the forefront of the anti-spam fight. Take those folks with the tasty steaks: how much does it hurt their business because their customers have to sort through a hundred ads for penis enlarger pills to find this month's gourmet steak special? How much more do they have to pay for bandwidth because some hideous percentage of the available bandwidth is carrying spam? How much damage does it do to them when someone fakes their headers to get ads for fake Viagra through spam filters? They -- the businesses -- are getting hurt as much if not more than individual users.

Among other things, these "legitimate businesses" who just want their right of "free speech" are using networks of zombie computers recruited by various net worms to send out their spam for them. That's about as legitimate as a telemarketer tapping your phone line and making sales calls on it. I'd like to see how the "free commercial speech" argument would hold up if some company ever pulled that one. That alone should show you what kind of people are involved here.

Look at it this way: If the way you run a government requires you to move from safe house to safe house every night, have multiple decoys impersonating you, and wear body armor at all times, you're probably doing something wrong. If the way you run a business requires you to go to great lengths to disguise the identity of your business and the products you're selling . . . well, that should tell you something too.

Re:How's this happening, again?

[jmichaelb]

he had forgotten the email address he had signed up under, was too stupid to check the headers, and continued to complain because we wouldn't take him off of our list (because he wouldn't provide us with the email address).

Why would he need to know which email address the message was sent to? IMHO there should be a link in the message to click and opt-out (the link has the email address in it so the customer doesn't have to know anything). You would want to do this not solely for the recipeint's convenience, but also to save you from having to deal with dopes like him.

I once worked for a company that sent 100,000 emails a month to customers who had requested it.

In my experience, out of 100,000 people, there will be about 5,000 idiots for whom you have to make everything easy or you will run into problems like the one you recounted. I bet this happened more than once.

The Root of Spam

[ca23e]

These companies will continue to use whatever legal tactics they can so long as the response rate to their spam makes it profitable to run their business.

While I'm all for the further development of spam filters and blocking spammers, our inboxes will not be free of it till people stop BUYING from their advertisements.

Re:The Root of Spam

[smartin]

While I'm all for the further development of spam filters and blocking spammers, our inboxes will not be free of it till people stop BUYING from their advertisements.

People say this all the time, but obviously it is an unworkable solution. What really needs to be done is to penalize companies that use the services of spammers. Clearly in order for spam to be effective the company selling the product must be accessible. The law, (and/or those practicing vigilante justice) need to insure that those trying to use spam pay more than they make from it. Once it becomes impractical to use spammers, the spammers will go out of business, fall into deal depression and hopefully take their own lives.

Re:The Root of Spam

[FFFish]

And therein lies the problem: evolution simply isn't working on the dolts who purchase from spam advertisers.

We need to up the ante.

As I said before he is still going to win

[codepunk]

Eveyone can thank the can spam act for this but he is still going to win his suits. As long as he is fully following the federal can spam act rules he is on strong legal grounds. Yes it may suck but according to the law he may be doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Re:As I said before he is still going to win

[That's Unpossible!]

As long as he is fully following the federal can spam act rules he is on strong legal grounds.

To continue spamming, maybe. But how is he on strong legal grounds to force a company to stop classifying his email as "unwanted," when that is exactly what spamcop does. They take complaints, record them, munge them, and pass them on to service providers.

CAN-SPAM says "you can spam, if you do it this way, and you won't be sued or thrown in jail." But it doesn't say other people can't filter you, file complaints against you to your ISP, etc.

This is retarded.

Anti-Spammers? No

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't help by mention this part about Scott, after he complete defends himself from being considered a 'spammer', yet the people who go against him are.....

Scott: "Well, these anti-spammers-"

DailyShow: "Don't you mean anti-high-volume-email-deployment?"

Scott: "What?!??....that just sounds stupid, they're anti-spammers"

Wrong Approaches

[jenohn]

We are approaching this wrongly in so many ways.

There are legal methods which will fail because there is already precedence with SPAM grocery mailers, etc. There are also smart lawyers working (for high dollars) for the spammers who can get cluelesss judges to support the SPAM purveyors.

There are firewall/spam blocker methods that will continue to fail as spammers learn the tricks to route around them. This is the old hacker/security expert game. Build a better lock/block and it will soon be cracked/by-passed. The cycle is repeated ad nauseum.

The only real method of fixing this is to charge for e-mail. Once the spammers have to pay then their rate of return (ROI) will decrease so that it is no longer a viable business model.

Yes, this means we will pay for e-mail. I hate the idea as much as you, but I cannot see a working solution in any other method.

Re:Wrong Approaches

[Anonymous Coward]

>There are firewall/spam blocker methods that will continue to fail as spammers learn the tricks to route around them

You don't know what you're talking about. Firewalls have nothing to do with spam, and as far as spam filters go I find that a well trained Bayesian filter is good at blocking 99.8% of all the spam I receive.

I use PopFile at home, which is traight-forward Bayesian filtering but we use SpamAssassin at work, and that uses other methods to identify spam, such as IP blacklists and some of the methods spammers use to he/p the1r maIl $lip by the fil.ters. SpamAssassin is regularly updated too, so if ever the spammers find a way to circumvent the filter then the filter is simply updated.

>The only real method of fixing this is to charge for e-mail

STUPID STUPID STUPID.

First of all, what happens if a trojan is planted onto a machine (either by a drive-by browser hijack, or rogue email, or just plain user stupidity) and the user's computer is used to send spam (by the way, that's how a lot of spams are sent nowadays anyway). The user gets stiffed for a huge bill and the spammer gets away scot-free.

Secondly, what about mailing lists set up by newsletter admins, or cron jobs which send email to other sites saying "backup tape needs changing"?

How do you propose to set up an email charging scheme which cannot be evaded by hackers/spammers? And where does all the revenue go?

Re:Wrong Approaches

[Albanach]

Of course. Lets stop the international flow of email. Or are you suggesting governments should run the internet?

Charging for email is impossible and unnecessary. The big problem with spam is the inherent problems with SMTP - in other words people can make up an email addrss and send mail from it. Lots of people are already working to tackle that problem. As spam becomes more of a problem we can hope more sites will publish SPF records and start using them. Once they become the norm rather than the exception we have a new weapon in the toolbox.

If you have a domain and aren't yet publishing SPF records, do something about it. If your ISP doesn't publish SPF records, email them and ask why not.

Re:Wrong Approaches

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying for e-mail to stop spam? Nah. Check out the link below for a neat solution against spam.

http://www.paganini.net/ask/

Re:Wrong Approaches

[kunudo]

Well, currently I'm able to set up my own mail relays/servers etc, just like hotmail does. So if the big guys (hotmail, yahoo etc) decide to charge for mail, even charge for mail going into their servers, they will see a decline in people who use their servers. I would guess that >90% of all the accounts at the providers that would consider charging for mail services are personal accounts. Not business accounts. Most businesses have their own mail servers (well, maybe not the plumber down the street, but...). Why would they start paying? It wouldn't work, of course.

Re:Wrong Approaches

[Liselle]

This is the greatest checklist ever made. I owe the creator a donut and a big cup of coffee.
--

The parent post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(X) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been
shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.

Re:Wrong Approaches

[Steve B]

How does nonsense like this get modded up as "Insightful"?

There are two possible rules: "You must pay to send e-mail" or "You may not spam". If you can enforce the former, you can enforce the latter. If you cannot enforce the latter, you also cannot enforce the former. Thus, if you're going to make a rule, it ought to be the latter (which impacts only abusers) rather than the former (which impacts everybody).

This really is no big deal

[MrByte420]

These arguments Richter is bringing up have had their showing in courts before. Richter complains that spam cop is interferring with his business. Spam Cop is doing no such thing. Spam Cop is not forced upon anyone. Spam Cop has given out their negative opinion about something and the target is just trying to shut them up.

Suppose I create a website which rates hardware for PCs and I decide that such in such Video Card really fucking blows big chunks. This is akin to the manufacter trying to argue that I am interfering with his business because I'm telling everyone his product sucks - as long as I'm not being intentionaly libelous, I would think I'd be 1st amendment protected.

Remeber that lawsuit last year from that copany that magiccaly sprung in Flordia just to flie a suit and disappear? That blew over - Spamhaus is still around and this will too.

One problem is the Can Spam Act

[OhHellWithIt]

I hate to say it, but I actually feel some sympathy for the spammer. I understand the Can Spam Act requires spammers to stop sending if recipients tell them to stop, but how am I to know that a given spammer is under U.S. jurisdiction; therefore, I will not tell the spammer to stop, lest I confirm that my email address is valid.

The problem is that any law that allows people to send spam legitimizes the activity.

Re:One problem is the Can Spam Act

[d4rkmoon]

Now even though I don't sympathize with any spammer, here's the deal. We need to stop those stupid idiots that buy the things from spam. If they didn't waste their money on overinflated products and things that don't actually work, then we wouldn't have a problem. As far as the Can Spam Act goes, the U.S. has been trying to control the Internet for years. There's been plenty of bills that have been passed for control. How much do you want to bet that this has something to do with Big Brother watching us after Bush gets "broadband for the entire nation" in. What ever happened to privacy.

Re:Frivolous lawsuits

[Shimbo]

Or the judge who issued it?

It seems entirely reasonable to me, in the first instance, to rule in favour of the spammer.

Spammer: these guys are interfering with my business.
Spamcop: No, we're not.
Judge: Well, just lay off them a bit, while I think about it.

What you can do to help

[Mr. Darl McBride]

If you have any unwanted offers from "Opt In Real Big" (the most recent major campaign was the "Tail Wagging Offers" thing), save those and get ready to offer them up to Ironport as evidence.

Opt In Real Big claims to be an opt-in only company. However, they operate through third parties with no checks in place to ensure the third parties are using opt-in lists, paying those parties based on how many people click their links. Making it a <fingerquote> policy </fingerquote> gives them plausible deniability up until people start laying down evidence that they're full of shit.

Poor bastard.

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, 9.8 megs of video data becomes your doom when it's linked off the second post on the first /. article after 9:00am EST.

Most times I don't care about the /. effect, but this poor bastard could never have seen this coming.

Re:Poor bastard.

[mkettler]

Oh, I think Justin is used to floods now and again, so I doubt he'd "never have seen it coming".

For reference, taint.org is the weblog of Justin Mason, original author of SpamAssassin. Given SA's tendency to end up in the press, I'm sure taint.org has taken a couple beatings before.

Heck, taint.org has had a direct front-page listing on slashdot before., On July 12 spamassassin.taint.org was linked, which is at the same IP as taint.org.

Right now, the server seems to be handling the load just fine...

Rue? RUE?

[da3dAlus]

Inspector: "He vill rue zey day he vas born a Fraankenshtien!"
Townfolk: "What?"
Inspector: "I said 'he will rue the day he was born a Frankenstein!'"
Townfolk: "Ohhhh"

"Under the table" deal

[Woogiemonger]

I bet they bribed the judge with a penis enlargement pill.

the RIAA of the email world

[HuckleCom]

You can kill the ant, but you can't kill all of the ants

Just like the RIAA, opt in will have little success over elminiating all of the spam filters.
And unfortunately, this is likewise vice versa.

What I don't understand is- Caller ID is legal; It's not legal for telemarketers to call if you're on the no-call list. But in no way is it legal to have a 'caller-id' of the email clients installed?

It's a very rediculous control method, and I cant for the life of me understand. It's the equivelent of somone bossing me around on my own computer telling me I can't install a popup blocker;

Apparently the judge and jury love getting viagra emails....

Throttling

[Sly Mongoose]

The only way to eliminate SPAM is to make it unprofitable. Since the world is full of fools, we can't count on them to just not respond to SPAM so we need to reduce the numbers of SPAM messages sent by the spammers.

We need some sort of real-time, content-driven connection throttling on the mail servers of the world, so as to reduce the number of SPAM that can be sent in any given time. The inbound mail can be analysed on-the-fly and if the word pen1s or vi@gara is detected, throttle the connection so that mail takes 60 seconds to send.

Throttling will only affect mass mailings. Who cares if their legitimate mail about V.I.C.O.D.I.N is delayed by 60 seconds? And there will be no false-positive difficulties because all mail will eventually get delivered. But bulk-mailers will discover that they can send far fewer SPAM in a day, which drops their response rate and their profitability. Hopefully to the point where they can't sustain their business any more.

Re:Throttling

[Alranor]

Hmm.

You might be onto something here, although, where you advocate real time throttling of spam, i'd change that to real time throttling of spammers

There, that'd solve the problem ;)

Re:Throttling

[jdreed1024]

The only way to eliminate SPAM is to make it unprofitable. Since the world is full of fools, we can't count on them to just not respond to SPAM so we need to reduce the numbers of SPAM messages sent by the spammers.

While I agree that spam must be made unprofitable, I think some public awareness can happen. Personally, I'd like to see something like what the government (FTC?) did a while back - set up false pyramid scheme sites, and when people sign up, send them an e-mail explaining that they could have lost millions. Of course, that was a "pull" method. Doing that with spam would require sending out millions of spam mails to lure the idiots to get your message, and I'm not interested in discussing whether or not the ends justify the means.

I suppose they could do it through traditional mail. Or take out ads in newspapers. It's all about public awareness. And don't say the majority of people who buy this can't read. Remember, they have to have computers. Several articles showed that it was mostly white-collar workers getting suckered in by penis pills.

Regardless, people need to be informed that most offers are illegal and they'll end up being screwed. People need to undersand that chances are big software companies such as Micosoft and Network Associates have not endorsed resellers with the e-mail address "muffins@happyhangover.com" (I got that one yesterday, seriously)

Another solution I guess would be to make Viagra free and remove demand, but I bet that's a bad idea...

We need some sort of real-time, content-driven connection throttling on the mail servers of the world, so as to reduce the number of SPAM that can be sent in any given time. The inbound mail can be analysed on-the-fly and if the word pen1s or vi@gara is detected, throttle the connection so that mail takes 60 seconds to send.

Throttling is great, but basing it on words is a bad idea. It won't work. Spammers will keep finding ways around it. That article a while back that showed how people recognize shapes of words proves that there are near limitless ways to "spell" a given word. You can't check for every possibility without putting undue load on a mail server. (This isn't your personal mail server we're talking about - some mail servers get literally thousands of pieces a mail per minute, often more).

Throttling, however, is great. I can't think of a legitimate reason to send more than, say, one or two mails per minute. (All these numbers are guidelines, obviously we'd have to figure out someting that works for most people, but still annoys spammers - don't waste your time flaming me saying you send 3.5 mails per minute). If you violate that, you don't get to talk to the mail server for 5 minutes. Violate it again within 30 minutes, and you don't get to talk to the mail server for an hour. Violate it more than, say, N times per day, and you don't get to talk to the mail server for 24 hours. This would put a huge damper on spamming runs. And if something really needs to get through but you're banned from the mail server, you can use your ISP's webmail service (most offer one), or go get a yahoo account temporarily or something), or maybe you can call your ISP and explain what happened (assuming there was a legitimate reason) and get yourself re-activated.

That's how most colleges deal with bandwidth hogs. (It's a shared resource, not a right, deal with it.) If you go over the bandwidth cap (which is publicized, unlike Comcast, and is quite generous (on the order of several GB/week) once, you get a warning. The next time, once you use up your bandwidth for the week, it's gone. You're SOL until Sunday. Some colleges provide a "reserve", which you can activate to get your work done, but if you go over that, too bad. You get to go to the library and do your research the old-fashioned way, or you get to go to a public cluster. Does this inconvenience students? Not really. The primary use of most college networks is for academics (check the AUP you

Re:Throttling

[Johnny5000]

It's like saying: "The only way to eliminate murder is to make it unprofitable."

I'm sorry, but that's the most ridiculous analogy I've ever heard. Spammers spam because it makes them money. If you remove the incentive to spam (the profit) then why would a spammer continue to spam?

Most murder has nothing to do with making a profit for the murderer. And for the few that do involve a profit for the murderer, if you eliminated that profit, then yes, you would reduce the number of murders.

So?

[Eviscero]

As many of you have said, it expires on May 20th. That's just a week away. If it gets extended then we may have a problem.

According to www.spamfilterreview.com;

12.4 BILLION...not million...BILLION emails per day in spam crosses wires. Thats 40% of total email sent over the entire internet. That is completely insaine.

I say let's legalize spam, this way the spammers dont have to hide their addresses. Then, when we find out who they are; we'll duct tape them to chairs and make them watch teletubbies for months on end with no sleep and no food.

Read the Article

[hburch]

Heck, read the summary. The injuction and the suit involves sending e-mail to ISPs (presumably, OIRB's) and deleting e-mail addresses from complaints. This suit does not deal with listing OIRB as a domain that you may want to block.

"We're not going after IronPort because of their blocking. We're going after IronPort for the harassment," [OIRB's Scott Richter] said. "We're going to go after many antispam groups."

I think they are going after because of their blocking, but their suit does not complain about the blocking. They are going after anonymous e-mail complaints and sending e-mail to the ISP. Your argument does not address the issue at hand.

Messing with my mail

[carvalhao]

IANAL, but why the hell does anyone have the right to mess with qhat I choose to do with the email I get? If I put a filter that automatically filters all messages from Microsoft.com, can they sue me for not allowing them to carry on with their business? And that said, if instead of putting that filter myself, if I choose an ISP that uses such a filter, why should they be charged with anything? It was my choice, as a consumer, in the first place...

I wonder if everyone in /. started sending random trash by email to Opt In employees, using up their bandwith and rendering their business mail useless, if they would be so tolerant... Anyone's got a list of those addresses, by the qay? ;)

Paid Email

[mfh]

> The only real method of fixing this is to charge for e-mail.

I disagree. Spammers will simply screw customers *harder* to get more money to cover the operating costs. They won't care if email costs money, but it will make them much more vicious. They will likely have to do massive targeting research to ensure they get the maximum effect from each little email. New email addys would likely receive less spam in a paid system.

There has existed a business model very similar to the spammers' model, for quite some time; junk snail mail. The costs of sending junk snail has no effect to the countless bouts of the crap clogging up mailboxes everywhere. The only difference is that when it costs money to send, you would likely root out all the lame idiots who spam for dollars, but have no infrastructure for doing so... they would disappear, or become soaked up by corporations bent on spamming. My point is, the paid email model will result in tighter groups of spammers earning money together in an organized way.

I wonder how long any ISP wants to host OIRB

[jks]

I think this is a really bad move from OIRB, in the long run.

If you're an ISP that's providing connectivity to a spammer, you will get on a number of centralized blacklists, like SpamCop's list. Once this starts to affect your business, you kick the spammers out, and get off these lists. That's how the lists are supposed to work.

However, if the centralized lists are prohibited from blocking you, people will start adding you on their own blacklists. Eventually, you will be on thousands of different lists that are updated manually and that you don't know about... and no matter how hard you kick out the spammers, you will remain on these lists practically forever, since there is no central authority that you can ask to remove you.

Re:Yahoo Does alright with filtering spam

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't understand the issue. The problem as stated by the defendant is that SpamCop is hiding the identity of the complaining user and then complaining to the defendants ISP to get them disconnected. This leaves the no option to remeday the situation and they are not addressed directly.

What Yahoo or things like SpamAssassin do are passive filtering. Totally different thing.

I might have cared before IronPort bought SC

[Kris_J]

Now that Iron-(plays boths sides of the fence)-Port owns Spamcop, I don't care what happens to them. It's just a shame I renewed my account there only a couple of months before they were bought.

Very simple solution.

[user no. 590291]

Spamcop puts a list of IP ranges and abuse addresses on their front page, along with an annoncement that they are not allowed by court order to send complaints to these addresses about these ranges. They can also provide a cut and paste ability for people to send reports outside of SpamCop for these providers.

So now we non-Spamcop people should start calling!

[Anonymous Coward]

If Spamcop's been told to lay off for a week, what's to stop us individuals from all contacting them and their ISP seperately to fill the void?

I'll bet if enough people contacted both the judge, and their internet provider, they'll begin to see that it's not just a small group of malcontents harrassing a business. Instead it's a lot of pissed off people sick of them and their family's being bombarded with porn and male enhancement ads, so let's make it apparent who the judge is hurting by stupid ruling's such as this (Even if it is only for a week).

Charging for e-mail won't work

[AtariAmarok]

"The only real method of fixing this is to charge for e-mail"

Charging for e-mail won't work. First thing that would happen would be that most everyone (spammer and non-spammer) would stop using e-mail. I know I would. Charging for e-mail is nothing more than an incentive to stop using e-mail.

The users would migrate to other internet alternatives that would replace e-mail such as nstant messaging systems altered to do what e-mail does, or other Internet techniques to allow the exchange of messages.

Then, you'd have to charge a tax on each message in IM. Then we'd be forced to switch over to some sort of message-board based system to exchange messages. Then the tax would come to that. Next, it would be Kazaa or p2p where we'd be exchanging text messages instead of music files. The spammers would follow to this, and then it would be taxed too.

Basically, e-mail is no different from anything else on the internet: packets of bytes sent to/from IP addresses. What makes e-mail so different that it can be taxed without taxing other packets of bytes being sent to/from IP addresses?

Possible class-action suit against Scotty

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

FYI-

HillsCap (who I think is an admin at an ISP) has gone on the warpath against Scott Richter. See this thread in SpamCop's forums...

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showto pi c=1456

He's saved up a few *million* emails from Scotty and he has contacts with some interestingly acronymed agencies, if you get my drift. If the right people get on board with this, we just might be able to raze Opt-In and sow the ground with salt after it's gone.

Re:Possible class-action suit against Scotty

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

An update...

StopSnottyScotty@yahoo.com has now been created as a contact address, and a website will hopefully be along soon. HillsCap is hoping to get at least 1,000 people to sign on to the lawsuit since that's about the number of complaints it takes to get the FTC's attention.

Tell your friends, tell your neighbors! It's barbecued spammer for dinner tonight!

No, not necessarily

[Croaker]

according to the law he may be doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Right, but that does not automatically mean that SpamCop is doing anything wrong. The Can Spam act is essentially irrelevant here, because the issue isn't whether spamming is legal, but whether spamming was in breach of the contract with the spammer's ISP. The issue is that SpamCop is ratting out the spammer to his ISP for spamming, and that ISP pulls the spammer's plug. If the ISP has written into its contract with the spammer "no spamming" and he/she/it spams, then that is totally legal. The argument here that SpamCop is interfering with the spammer's business unjustly (which most of us think it isn't). The little razzle-dazzle about "we're complying with the can spam act!" whine by the spammer is irrelevant.

As an analogy: If we're neighbors in an apartment building that forbids pets, and I ratted you out to the landlord because you had a few cats, you won't be getting into trouble with thelandlord because owning cats is illegal... you'll be getting into trouble with the landlord because you've violated your lease.

What the spammer is trying to say here is that under the Can Spam Act, you cannot go directly to the ISP with complaints. You must complain to him first. IANAL, but that sounds like bullshit. If SpamCop was out of the picture and I complained to the ISP directly myself, would I get sued? I don't believe there's any way you could restrain my right of free speech to inform the ISP that his client is in breach of his contract. I also don;t think the ISP would be required to give up my identity to the spammer. As the article said, there isn't a legal requirement to be faced with your accusers in cases such as this.

How about Distributing Computer projects?

[parawing742]

I know someone suggested awhile back that e-mail users should have to execute a piece of complicated code for each e-mail they send (was this Billy Gates idea?). Anyway, why don't we allow people to send an e-mail for donating a small amount of time to a DC project? Just think, we could send free e-mail AND search for intelligent life at the same time!

How big are these guys?

[99bottles]

From the last 7,000 messages my server's handled, a grep of the maillog turns up exactly zero occurrances of 'optinbig'.
So, are these guys really that big, or are they really playing by the [albeit stupid and ineffective] rules?
Besides, who honestly gets much Spam originating from US sources anymore...?

Anonymous complaints

[nuggz]

One of the most valuable commodity to a spammer is known good email addresses. Why should we give him more.

The ISP should simply ignore the complaints, do a spot audit of his spamming, or just get rid of him because almost nobody wants spam anyway.

Charging $$$ for e-mail is a wrong approach too

[Teancum]

What are you indeed proposing?

A tarrif on raw data sent over the internet?

You can't possibly distinguish data sent over the internet in the form of an e-mail as opposed to some multi-player RPG or HTML. On the level that it passes from router to router from the original computer to its destination that is how it is treated (and should be too!) Indeed, firewalls and other cute things of that nature really end up perverting the internet by assuming (incorrectly) that only port 80 (typical HTTP port) is needed (or something similar).

A firewall is needed when computers on the other side of the firewall have poorly designed IP (internet protocol, not intellectual property) stacks and some very poorly implemented miscellaneous TCP services programs (like nettime, MOTD, or some other simple service) that has methods of attack through those programs. A clean well-designed IP stack with high-quality TCP applications do not need a firewall.

The solution is not charging $$$ for e-mail either. Who collects? How much per e-mail? Does the size of the e-mail matter? What about attachments? Is this above and beyond normal TCP/IP usage charges (in terms of normal bandwidth charges)? How do you stop spammers from "collecting" money from millions of people who "sent" e-mail to them (reverse spammers in this case... a variant not seen at the moment)? This last question is also about how spoofing can be used to undermine the toll collection system of any e-mail charges, which is something significant indeed.

You could certainly set up a totally new e-mail type protocol where you personally establish some sort of toll system, and let's also assume that every piece of e-mail that goes into a typical in-box will also pay you about 1/2 cent. Answer the above questions regarding this system if you think there is a viable solution here, but also let's assume that you will use E-gold, Paypal, or some other micropayment system here as well (maybe something you also come up with for this service). You had also better get a pretty good legal team together because you will also be the target of a whole bunch of lawsuits if it gains any popularity at all.

It simply won't work. What is needed more than trying to charge is to develop trust metrics between computers. Just making up an IP address here, but let's assume that 192.168.x.x has a bunch of e-mail servers that I trust. You can then assume that this is a good server. Let's assume that 10.54.x.x has a bunch of spammers. Don't trust anything coming from those servers.

BTW, this is essentially the approach that Spamhaus, SpamCop, and the IBHL and others are using to try and block spam.

The real trick here is that you also need to prevent spoofing. One nice thing about SpamCop is that the original author/developer of the site went through a whole bunch of work to try and find the actual owner of a given internet service that is sending you a given piece of e-mail based almost exclusively on IP address. The SpamCop site then tells you if it is an open relay, or a known spammer. This anti-spoofing is often hard to do and this is where the current e-mail protocol does indeed need to be strengthed, simply to identify clearly who sent the e-mail, and make sure that the computer sending the e-mail is who they claim they are.

As it is right now, I can claim to have the e-mail address president@whitehouse.gov and send you a message, and the current e-mail protocol won't be able to proof that I really am that person or not. There are ways (fairly easy as well) to not even get the IP address of my machine anywhere in any logs of any computer or in the e-mail header. Spammers take advantage of this simple fact, and e-mail servers should not accept e-mail if the IP addresses aren't correct.

This should also be illegal in itself. If you claim to have an IP address of 10.54.66.195 and that is not who you claim to be, it is false representation and should by itself be punishable under law independent of the conte

SpamCop.*net*

[mcbridematt]

The SpamCop we are talking about here is not spamcop.com (which this /. article links to), it is spamcop.net.

Hmm, what idiot provides this guys bandwidth?

OptIn's contact info

[raider_red]

From the optinrealbig.com web site:

Contact us via e-mail: info@optinbig.com
or phone: (303) 464-8164

OptInRealBig.com, LLC
1333 W 120th Ave Suite 101
Westminster, CO 80234

I think we should all give them a call or send them a friendly letter letting them know what we think of their "service".

Re:OptIn's contact info

[sirgoran]

Ummm...

They have a website (www.optinbig.com).

Are we forgetting the slashdot effect?

Shouldn't we all look to see if his servers can handle the load?

-Goran

Re:OptIn's contact info

[BiggerIsBetter]

I think I'm going to start sending them a brick a day. i'll call it the "brick-a-day" club.

That's pretty funny. I wonder if you could send it COD too?

personal mission

[curator_thew]

Outlook parks spam for me in a junk mail folder, and I can't deal with each individual item.

However, I have recently started a personal mission: every "419" type scam that I receive, I specifically forward (and full SMTP headers) to
(a) "abuse@" all the domains mentioned in the headers and message;
(b) all recipients specifically mentioned.

It doesn't take more a minute or two a day (no more than 5 419'ers or lottery scams a day), but it makes it clear to the senders that someone is taking a proactive approach to stopping them.

I suggest other people do this as well. Obviously it's infeasible to do it to all spam mail: but do it with the scams.

This is stupid

[Paulrothrock]

How is this different from OIRB suing me when I delete one of their spams? SpamCop is selling a service that deletes it for me so I don't have to deal with it.

Re:Yahoo Does alright with filtering spam

[Isofarro]

The problem as stated by the defendant is that SpamCop is hiding the identity of the complaining user and then complaining to the defendants ISP to get them disconnected. This leaves the no option to remeday the situation and they are not addressed directly.

And the problem is non-existant. Spamcop replaces the real email address with a randomly generated prefix - a temporary email address - thereby protecting the client. ISPs can reply to that email address which returns a response back to the original complainant. So what's stopping him from doing that - nothing! (Except the volume of complaints - but then that's his fault for not running a proper confirmed opt-in approach).

And it does work. I have replies from ISPs confirming removal of spammers / disinfection of mail relay trojans - they have no problem replying to the email address as created by Spamcop.

They have to be Responsible

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I'm no spam fan, but some of the spam blocking services out there are becoming overzealous. Ever heard the saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water"? It is better to get a few spam emails than to have an important email blocked.

Through a series of events that were no fault of my own, I was black listed in one of the spammer databases! I'm speaking specifically of SPEWS here, which in my opinion is the most reckless, least responsible one out there.

I went to their website to get my address cleared, and the faq basically says, "So sorry you're in our database. You're screwed, we'll never take you out."

I have countless emails returned to me every day from people who's email service checks SPEWS. I have to call each IT department to get whitelisted, which is a huge waste of my time.

My point here is that even though in this particular case the guy actually IS a spammer, there has to be some level of accountability for spam blocking services. If they go telling everyone you are a spammer and that no one should listen to you, they'd better be right, or they are committing a form of libel.

Re:They have to be Responsible

[evilviper]

My point here is that even though in this particular case the guy actually IS a spammer, there has to be some level of accountability for spam blocking services.

No, your point is that you were inconvienced by SPEWS, and you want somebody to squash them for you...

Sorry, no. SPEWS maintains a list within the terms that they set. They aren't explicitly claiming that "the guy at this IP is a spammer", just that an IP is blacklisted for one of various reasons.

You could just as well say that a store's security system is slandering you by calling you a theif, just because it beeps as you walk out the door... It's really a stretch to consider SPEWS as libel.

If you really hate SPEWS, then start asking postmasters not to use them. I have a similar problem with the SORBS DUL, but I'm not asking for them to be sued, shutdown, etc.

The URL is wrong!

[Phidoux]

The URL for SpamCop, as posted in the /. article, is incorrect. The correct URL is http://www.spamcop.net. I think we should all make an effort to donate something to the SpamCop Legal Defense Fund.

Restraining order?

[Felinoid]

The judge should have rejected this on the face of it.
Might as well issue a restraining order against a victom carrying mace to protect herself from a stalker.
Yes stalking is orders of magantude worse but restraining orders like this should not be permitted.

I have no doupt the judge didn't even understand the complaint. This has become the issue lately.
Judges who "don't get it" IE don't actually understand what is happening.
Impartal but not to the point of pure ignorence.

Search warents and restraining orders have been issued by judges who don't know what they are doing.

IANAL. I think you should be able to challange the lagitemacy of warents and orders (can you?) and if a judge has issued 3 such items that have proven fraudulent or inappropreate he shouldn't be permitted to issue anymore.

A search warent is bad enough. Remember Steve Jackson Games? Got a search warent over a card game and had everything taken. Never charged and got everything back after it long became obsolete.
In effect someone tried to shut down a game company becouse they didn't approve of a card game.
Now say if this were to happen to a small indupendent newspaper? Just cease the printing press (maybe just the computers printer) and the computers (maybe just 1 iMac).

Restraining orders are worse. Let's say Nintendo got a restraining order against Microsoft over the release of the X Box. Then Nintendo could force Microsoft to miss the critical Christmas shopping season.

Just use it to stall something when timming is critical.
Can't carry mace, Can't block spam, Can't defend yourself, Can't avoid harrasment.
Just get a restraining order from a judge who dosen't know better.

With computers being more and more part of socity maybe we should require judges take some sort of technology test just to see if they are at least know what is being requested when a spammer asks for a restraining order.

Re:Restraining order?

[Jon_Hanson]

The judge didn't reject the restraining order because Iron Port didn't bother to answer the complaint. With no rebuttal, the judge will rule for the complaintant.

The same thing works for a lawsuit. If a lawsuit is filed against you and you choose to ignore it, the judge will enter a default judgement against you.

It would be interesting to know why Iron Port didn't bother to answer the complaint. Even if Iron Port thought the spammer was completely off base they still should have shown up in court and said so!

Conflict of interest

[immortal]

I remember when Spamcop was purchased and the company that purchased them also makes the hardware sold to spammers. Its too much work to find it but I know it was in the news.

So the company was working both sides of the fence. Because of that, it sounds like the company is being sued by one of it own customers, IF anyone can confirm the spammer is a customer of Spamcop's parent company. This would almost sound like a conflict of interest in that your selling to the guy suing you.

So this really is not a surprise, as Spamcop's parent company likely knew that someday they would be in this legal position.

Re:Yahoo Does alright with filtering spam

[Theatetus]

And the problem is non-existant. Spamcop replaces the real email address with a randomly generated prefix - a temporary email address - thereby protecting the client. ISPs can reply to that email address which returns a response back to the original complainant. So what's stopping him from doing that - nothing!

Well, consider this scenario:

• Person A receives an allegedly unsolicited email from you.
• Person A complains to Spam Cop.
• Spamcop tells you "someone complained. we're getting you shut down."
• You say "What was his email address? I have the logs of the date, time, and IP address from which he asked to receive this newsletter. If through some never-before-seen miracle he got on my mailing list without signing up for it, I'll be more than happy to take him off."
• Spamcop says, "Sorry, that would make it too easy to prove that it's this idiot's fault for asking to receive special offers."
• You say "fine, I'll just remove him from the list. What's his email address?"
• spamcop says, "sorry, we'd much rather stop all bulk emailing than actually solve individual's problems. FOAD."

You weren't blocked

[JoeF]

You apparently haven't even read the SPEWS FAQ.
You weren't listed, your ISP was listed because they support spammers. Since you give your ISP money, you indirectly support spammers as well.

If you really cared, go to a different ISP.
Too many people like you are just complacent.

I reiterate

[FU_Fish]

I reiterate from the previous story. If OptInRealBig is a legitimate opt-in e-mail marketing service, then why don't they have a place anywhere on their website to opt-in?

I guess it's time for more education

[sabri]

We, as a community, should put more efforts in the education of our politicians. They are the only people who can create and accept legislation which in the end will force judges to stop listening to a spammers whining.

Until we succeed in that, our technical battle is quite hopeless. That hurts yes, but I'm sure most people will agree with me. A few years ago, a blacklist was very useful. Today you end up being sued by the same people who force you to buy bigger mailservers. Sad.

Richter is a liar, convicted felon and thief

[gorbachev]

You *are* a convicted felon, dear Snotty.

You've also made a career out of lying to your customers. You tell them your lists are opt-in only, targeted and all that. Yet your lists are full of harvested addresses, role accounts, spamtraps, and other junk.

I would love to discuss all this with you, but I doubt you have anything else to say to me than "bullshit, you anti-commerce net nazi fuck".

The day the parasites and sociopaths like you dissappear from the face of the earth is a good day.

Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers

Re:Yahoo Does alright with filtering spam

[tgibbs]

SpamCop does not have the power to "get anybody shut down." They generate temporary email addresses to users who want to complain about unsolicited email and provide automated header analysis to determine addresses to complain to. Anybody who receives such a message can respond to the complainant requesting the email address which received the spam. Note that while the CANSPAM act requires mass mailers to provide an address for removal requests, it does not prohibit spam recipients from complaining about spam if they don't want to divulge their email address to the spammer (thereby confirming it as a "live" spam target).

Re:Yahoo Does alright with filtering spam

[JuggleGeek]

No, you don't understand the situation. The problem as stated by the *spammer* is that lots of people are complaining about his spam, and the spammer isn't getting to list wash those people, or verify their addresses in order to sell them to other spammers.

The reason ISP's disconnect spammers is that spam is normally against the terms of service/acceptable use policy of the ISP.

Richter does have an option to remedy the situation - he can quit harvesting and buying addresses and sending spam to them. Then the complaints will stop.

That's bullshit.

[Medievalist]

No, the system works like this: you ask the complaintant (who SpamCop easily allows you to contact) what his email address is so you can remove it from the list. You do so, and SpamCop stops blacklisting you.

Except, in reality, you are probably a spammer (therefore by definition a criminal) so you just ignore complaints anyway.

I have an archive of over 10,000 spams that I personally have recieved despite never having signed up for any. I turn away around 400 daily using SpamAssassin Bayes and various blacklists. My address was harvested from InterNIC (along with all the other domain admins) by spammers without anyone's permission.

SpamCop provides a service that people like myself can CHOOSE to take advantage of. You can easily find an ISP who does not use it. SpamCop has absolutely NO ability to "stop all bulk emailing" as you claim (god, I wish they did, though!).

If you want to take away people's right to choose whether to use SpamCop or not, you are just another amoral spam whore. If you don't think SpamCop has a right to publish lists however they choose, well, you're tempting Godwin's law.

Problems with SPEWS

[David Jao]

The best advice is to change to an ISP that doesn't support spammers.

SPEWS (and you, and all others who support this kind of blacklisting) would do well to realize that this advice is not always practical.

I'm thinking specifically of geographical areas that have only one monopoly broadband provider, who happens to be insufficiently zealous against spam. Are you seriously suggesting that people who live in such areas uproot their jobs, their families, and move to another town, to get another ISP, just to send a message to the ISPs?

The depressing part is that from reading the SPEWS FAQ their answer is clearly "yes".

What's more, since there is no way to get off the SPEWS database, there is also no incentive at all for rogue ISPs to improve their policies. SPEWS needs to realize that vigilantly removing reformers is just as important as vigilantly adding infringers. So far it is completely obvious that they are much more interested in adding people than removing people.

I'm not pro-spam here (nobody is). I'm not telling SPEWS to chill out because I want more spam. I'm telling SPEWS to chill out because their extreme radical position is not in their own self interest. Every mail server administrator I know (including myself) avoids SPEWS like the plague because their database is so heedless of false positives as to be useless.

Re:Problems with SPEWS

[Schmucky The Cat]

What's more, since there is no way to get off the SPEWS database

Fact check:
SPEWS removes entries, sometimes within minutes or hours, of a truthful post to news.admin.net-abuse.blocklists (moderated) or NANAE (unmoderated). If you are unsuccessful in being removed, there are helpful people in those groups who can tell you what needs to be done to remove the listing.

Reminder:
Flames and rants aren't removal requests nor pleas for help.

Re:Mirrors (was Re:Follow-up)

[smack_attack]

FreeCache "Canada"

FreeCache "Australia"

Just testing FreeCache some more, other link was dead.

TRO Dissolved

[Caveman Og]

I have it on good authority that this TRO has been dissolved as of this morning. Dovuments from Pacer should be available shortly.

--Og

SpamCop needs to change tactics

[Ra5pu7in]

The big argument that OptIn is using (and apparently with success) is that they are never being given the email addresses of those people who wish to opt out. SpamCop has existed since long before laws like CAN-SPAM, and its methods were those needed at the time. Now we need to make sure the laws that are being put in place have enough teeth to make a difference.

SpamCop has the data on the largest and worst of the spammers. It has data on the thousands of email addresses that have reported these spammers. Voluntarily sharing this with federal investigators would be a great beginning. Based on CAN-SPAM, there will need to be evidence that spammers are not removing email addresses. SpamCop can be the intermediary who stores a copy of every request to be removed and ever subsequent email with tracking back to the originator. By working with the feds, SpamCop could wipe out several of the hard-core spammers.

Re:SpamCop needs to change tactics

[mabu]

The big argument that OptIn is using (and apparently with success) is that they are never being given the email addresses of those people who wish to opt out.

It's not SpamCop's responsibility to facilitate opt-out services, the vast majority of which are irrelevant in the first place. As a SpamCop member, the last thing I want are these people getting my e-mail address. It's much more likely they'll use it to harass those who report them, than remove them from their lists.

As for SpamCop working with agencies to stop spammers, it's a nice idea, but you first have to find any agencies that are capable, much less motivated to take action against spammers. At this point, there aren't any on any level.

No, It's much more like if you were a mugger.....

[BattyMan]

Imagine that you sold furniture, and I went to all of your wood suppliers and told them that you were operating illegally and they should stop providing you with wood,...

No, that's not it at all. It's more like if you built torture racks for Iraqui despots, and I went to all your wood suppliers and simply told them the truth about what you were doing, because they _all_ have strict policies prohibiting the use of their wood to build instruments of torture for export to terrorist nations.

What if you were a mugger and, after a couple of tries at just giving you my wallet in the hope you will go away, I get sick of you and track you down and give your address to the police. They find my two stolen wallets in your posession and arrest you and convict you of felony assault. Now, as a convicted felon, it will be _much_ tougher (or at least much more expen$ive) for you to procure the guns and ammo you need to pursue your "career".

Could you then sue _me_? For defamation of your reputation? Interfering with your career?

This is what SpamCop is doing to Richter (among others). They've gotten zero relief from direct complaints (do NOT believe that they haven't tried _that_), and they're going to their suppliers and persuading them into enforcing their existing AUP policies prohibiting spammer scum. Of course the spammers hate this.

What if you had a pawnshop and I bought some stuff from you and then quickly found out that it was stolen. What if I went back to you about it and was flatly told "all sales are final". What if I then ran an ad for you publicizing you as a good "fence"? You'd see an initial surge of business, but this would include narcs, and you would soon be out of business.

Could you then sue _me_ for interfering with your "business"? I think you would be on shaky ground if I could bring stolen property into court and testify that I had bought it at yer pawnshop.

We _all_ have spam from Snotty Scotty, _all_ of it claiming we 'opted-in'. He can rot in hell.

A little lesson in hiding emails

[DaveJay]

Once upon a time, my wife and I started a bulletin board for people with a specific problem. Lots of people had been discussing this problem on another board, but huge TOS limitations and draconian, inconsistent enforcement of same made it an undesirable place to talk.

Within a few days of our board going online, the other board's "administrators" contacted us. It seems that OTHER people were telling each other on THEIR board about OUR board, and they wanted it to stop. They told us to shut our board down or they'd report us to our ISP as spammers. Extortion, essentially.*

Now here's the thing: when the other board contacted us (via the yahoo address my wife had used when setting up an account on the old board) I replied with a newly created email account on my domain. The only email I ever sent from that address, in fact the only time I ever used that address EVER, was during the email exchange between myself and the other board's folks.

The end result? Well, we didn't give in, so they complained to our ISP. As "proof" of our spamming, they submitted a huge pile of URLs linked to forums (most old and no longer actively administrated) filled with recent posts containing ONLY the email address I used with them, and links to other identical forum posts. You guessed it -- they took my email address and posted all of these forum links THEMSELVES to make it look like we did it. Even now, I can find tons of these posts on google -- they never seem to go away.

Oh, and my mail server gets hundreds of emails A DAY to that address, all of which is spam (I finally set the server to /dev/null 'em.) Thanks, fellas.

So yeah, I could see why the SpamCop folks hide the address, and even though I don't use their service, I think they're terrific for taking that approach.

*Note: we basically called our ISP, sent them the extortion letters, and were told "we'll look into it and let you know." They were supportive and professional, and did in fact investigate it just in case we WERE spamming -- which was the right thing to do -- eventually returning a verdict of "you did nothing wrong, their complain is not legitimate, and you did not violate our TOS". Best. ISP. Ever.

blink... missed it.

[Cavelier]

The TRO has already been dissolved.

From dissolution of ex parte TRO:

On May 10, 2004 the Court issued a temporary restraining order (the "TRO") against defendant
Ironport Systems, Inc. dba SPAMCOP.NET, Inc. ("Defendant") on behalf of OPTINREALBIG.COM,
LLC ("Plaintiff"). Defendant has objected to the TRO and sufficiently explained why its objection came
after the issuance of the Court's order. It was not through gamesmanship on the part of Defendant, but
rather issues of timing. The Court's order and Defendant's opposition crossed each other in the e-filing
system.
Having read and considered Defendant's opposition only for the purpose of determining whether or
not to maintain the TRO, the Court finds that the legal issues raised are more complicated than they
originally appeared and that the Court has a number of questions regarding the facts. Because of this, the
Court finds that the balance of hardships and the interests of justice favor dissolution of the TRO and
expediting the hearing on the preliminary injunction. This is to give both parties a full and fair opportunity to
be heard on the issues, to give the Court sufficient time to deliberate on these issues, and to issue a
judgment on the merits expeditiously so that the prevailing party shall obtain the relief necessary to prevent
irreparable harm.
United States District Court
For the Northern District of California

The Court wishes to clarify that the TRO was not a determination of the merits of this case. The
Supreme Court "has repeatedly held that the basis for injunctive relief in the federal courts has always been
irreparable injury and the inadequacy of legal remedies." Weinberger v. Romeo-Barcelo , 456 U.S. 305,
312 (1982). The limited record usually available on such motions renders a final decision on the merits
inappropriate. Brown v. Chote, 411 U.S. 452, 456 (1973); see also, Paragould Music Co. v. City of
Paragould , 738 F.2d 973, 975 (8th Cir.1984); Laurenzo v. Mississippi High School Activities Ass'n, 708
F.2d 1038, 1043 (5th Cir.1983) (student who challenged a rule which made him ineligible to play baseball
not a prevailing party because finding on the merits was not required for the issuance of an injunction
pending appeal); Bly v. McLeod, 605 F.2d 134, 137 (4th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 928, 100
S.Ct. 1315 (1980) (TRO allowed plaintiffs to vote on absentee ballots but was in no way a determination
on the merits); cf Nitz v. Otte, 87 F.3d 1321 (9th Cir. 1996) (unpublished) (noting that the issuance of a
TRO did not constitute a proceeding of substance on the merit).
In contrast, a federal proceeding may be deemed to have passed beyond the " embryonic stage" if
the federal court has conducted extensive hearings on a motion for a preliminary injunction. Adultworld
Bookstore v. City of Fresno, 758 F.2d 1348, 1350-51 (9th Cir.1985).
The Court is aware, however, that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b) provides that a TRO may
issue ex parte to preserve the status quo. Having reviewed Defendant's opposition and considered the
facts brought forward by it, the Court questions whether the terms of the TRO actually preserved the status
quo or altered it by requiring Defendant to take proactive steps to limit the recipients of the complaints and
to list the names of those complaining. Because in such situations, the Court must be "extremely cautious,"
Lockheed Missile & Space Co. v. Hughes Aircraft Co., 887 F.Supp. 1320, 1323 (N.D.Cal. 1995), the
Court dissolves the TRO and expedites the hearing on the preliminary injunction.
For the foregoing reasons,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT the Temporary Restraining Order of May 10, 2004 is
DISSOLVED. Plaintiff shall serve and file a motion for preliminary injunction no later than May 12, 2004.
Defendant shall serve its reply no later than May 13, 2004. Plaintiff shall serve and file a reply no later than
May 14, 2004. The parties shall appear before the Court on

Re:The T in TRO means temporary

[Eggplant62]

[Richter] *is* a convicted felon (fenced some stolen goods a decade or so ago), a habitual liar (high-volume email deployer, anyone?) and he steals every day by spamming.

Correction: It wasn't a decade ago. According to this, the conviction and probation for the stolen goods charges resulted from an investigation carried out by authorities during a period from 1999 to 2001, three to five years ago. That's pretty recent activity.

Now, look at guys like Alan Ralsky (insurance and securities fraud), Thomas Cowles (B&E, fraud and theft), Charles Childs (domestic violence & aggravated menacing), I think we have a pretty stereotypical description of spammers--people who don't give a fuck about the rules, laws, etc, and will do anything to make a buck, even screw their own families over, if it will earn a nickel.

Re:rueless

[elvey]

Who's the twit who rated the above insightful?

Its factually false information from someone who obviously has no experience receiving spamcop reports. As someone who does get 'em, I can say that this claim is utterly false.

Spamcop sends ISPs enough information that you can figure out which customer was spamming.

Credit reporting service is restraint of trade!

[ChaosDiscord]

So wherever I go, businesses refuse my checks, all because some stupid check clearing service got a few reports about me bouncing checks. And just because I defaulted on a few loans here and there no one will loan me any money. This is clearly restraint of trade! People shouldn't be allowed to make decisions about my trustworthiness based on my prior behavior. There certainly shouldn't be anyone tracking that information and sharing it! The information in those databases is just a bunch of random claims from various other people; there are probably errors and maybe a few malicious lies. I've got half a mind to sue these credit report services. I bet I can get an injunction against them reporting anything negative on my credit reports!

(I realize that in this particular case there are other claims, including harassment, and that credit reporting companies are scum for other reasons, but the analogy just came to me and seemed particularlly relavent.)