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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!"
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.
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?
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.
A radioactive cat has 18 half-lives.
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.
Got Code?
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"
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.
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.
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
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.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
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.
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.
I bet they bribed the judge with a penis enlargement pill.
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.
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.
It's not what you know; It's what you can find out.
"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.
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? ;)
> 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.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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?showt
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.
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.
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.
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?
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".
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
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.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
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.
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.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Well, consider this scenario:
All's true that is mistrusted
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?
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.
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.
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
Become an evil genius by eating gifted children!
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.