Accused Spammer to Debate SpamCop Founder

Weezle writes "Wired News is reporting that OptInRealBig's Scott Richter is going to debate SpamCop's Julian Haight in public next month. Richter had the nerve to file a lawsuit against SpamCop recently claiming that the blacklist keeps his company from sending out 'marketing messages.' (in lay terms, spam) Not surprisingly, Richter himself is being sued for $20 million by NY Att. General Eliot Spitzer. Sounds like it's going to be a real nasty fight."

Comments

Watch what you say...

[LostCluster]

Lawyers for both sides said they have agreed to allow the debate because they believe it will not focus on the lawsuit.

Uhm... two guys suing each other in public and they're not going to talk about the legal alligations either has leveled about the other? Sounds like some lawyers won't be members of the Bar Association much longer.

Proof of Opt-In

[fembots]

I believe it is still legal to send marketing spams as long as the recepients have given consent, no?

How can we, the spam victims, prove that we NEVER gave consent to such-and-such website?

Re:Proof of Opt-In

[cbreaker]

You can't prove that you didn't opt in like that.

I think the burdon should be on the spammer to prove that you DID opt-in, upon request.

The thing is, even if this guy's business was 100% legit, which everyone know's isn't anyways, it's a moot point for the vast majority of us. We get so much spam, how are we supposed to know that one is opt-outable and other one will put you to the top of the spammer's list?

Lemmee lone!!

[malia8888]

"Spammers say they are protected by the right to free speech, but people also have the right to be free of speech," said Haight. "I think it's pretty clear that people have the right to be left alone."

IMHO the debate between these two should end right there. This is like a "do not call" list. People are bombarded with advertising at every turn. We should have a right to be left alone.

Regulation of Blacklists?

[vyrus128]

Blacklist operators like to say they just provide a service to the sysadmins; it's the owners of the recipient servers who do the blocking. But by the same logic, credit reporting agencies just provide a service to merchants and lenders; it's those lenders who refuse your application. Yet Congress has seen fit to pass the Fair Credit Reporting Act to stop abuses by the credit bureaus; despite the fact that they don't actually deny you a loan, it is obvious the power they have over individuals and the ways they can abuse it, EVEN IF that power is granted to them indirectly by lenders. I would argue that the same could be said of blacklists; arguably, they could (and perhaps should) be regulated for the same reasons that credit bureaus are.

Re:Regulation of Blacklists?

[LostCluster]

Credit Reporting services don't have any opinion about you. They don't judge you, they just keep track about facts about you which are reported by other credit-based companies you do business with. Basically, as an industry, credit-givers use this as a conversation point to share their experiences with colleagues so that they can know who is more likely to pay back loans and who is not.

What the various federal and state laws about such companies do is require them to provide individuals with reports about themselves upon request, and follow a specific despute resolution process should you ever claim that something they are reporting about you is inaccurate.

OK Fine

[nate nice]

As a marketer you have the right to send out ad's. As a consumer, I have the right to block your shit. Fuck off, excuse the language.

Re:OK Fine

[LostCluster]

You most defnitely have the right to block what they're sending.

The problem is with over SpamCOP's public claim that Richter sends e-mails to people who have never opted-in.

Richter claims that any recipient claiming that they never opted-in is wrong. He'd refute SpamCOP's claim, but SpamCOP refuses to turn over the e-mail addresses of the people complaining to them, so he can't check his records to find out how the address got there.

You most definitely have a right to publish an opinion, but when you accuse somebody of something, it turns into a matter of fact. If you're publishing facts that aren't true, that's where libel starts...

Re:OK Fine

[ca1v1n]

Indeed. The problem we run into is when spammers try to circumvent our filters, and then have the gall to claim first amendment protection. It's like poking every inch of a mile long fence to find a hole big enough to slip through, and then claiming it wasn't trespassing because you didn't climb over. This is exactly why "trespass to chattels" is a commonly-used and often successful claim in spam litigation.

Free Speech

[Tony]

Just as people have a right to speak, others have a right to not listen.

If the spammers were civil and provided a way to honestly opt-out, I don't think there'd be much debate. As it is, "opt-out" options are used to verify legitimate mail addresses to which more spam is sent.

The essence of fairness is respect. If spammers were to respect the wishes of email participants, these drastic blacklist measures would not be necessary.

Just as a person may not be allowed to speak at a public forum with no curtailment of free speech, so an ISP may filter spam with no curtailment of free speech. Plus, as SpamCop merely provides a service (the identification of spam black-hole lists), they are not themselves curtailing free speech. If I (as an individual) decide to pre-filter my email by using SpamCop, I have also not curtailed the free speech rights of spammers; I have merely invoked my right to not listen.

If SpamCop is inhibited in any way by first amendment arguments, justice has been subverted. Since SpamCop itself is opt-in, they are providing more free speech than the spammers themselves.

Granted, I am not a lawyer, one of the many things of which I am glad. (I don't see how many lawyers sleep at night, but then again, I fret when I realize I only left a 15% tip instead of a 20% tip.)

Unfortunately, SpamCop sucks

[realmolo]

They're not EVIL, but of all the big blacklists, SpamCop is the least regulated. The whole idea of letting people submit addresses/domains to a blacklist with little or no verification is crazy.

I'd be happier if Spamhaus was doing this debate. They run things the right way.

Re:OptInRealBig is not the problem

[gravyfaucet]

How the hell is it going to help to have even a legitimate "opt-out" link at the bottom of an email I refuse to open? Deleting it wastes enough time, eh?

free speech???

[dmitrygr]

Free speech is garanteed, correct. But where does the constitution say anything about garanteeing an audience?? If you do not like a public debate, you leave. It follows that if you do not like spam, you leave the list, but no! If they want to compare it to real life, they should make it a real comparaison - including a "leave" option. Obviously this is not going to happen, as that's whan they loose all their "customers" (ahem, victims). However the comparaison to speech is not valid if one cannot plug his ears.

Re:Opt-Out Real Quick

[heybo]

but CAN-SPAM requires a law-compliant spammer to honor that system, and Richter claims that's how his company works.

Yea he says he's so law compliant then why does his spam server come knocking at the door of my mail server about 300 times a day. Funny how some of the bounces back to his server are from addresses that haven't been active for over four years. Isn't a nasty reject mail message enough to opt-out??

I'll be happy to come with a dull knife to strip away his flesh 1 square inch at a time.

You know with all this suing left and right by everyone who thinks they are someone with some kind of power makes me think of what my Grandpa used to say "People become lawyers to make up for having little dicks. Makes them feel big." Doesn't anyone relize that only the lawyers make money in a suit. Everyone else loses.

Re:Like Manson debating Bugliosi, this is.

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Yes, spam is mass murder. Suppose that 100 million computer users receive 100 spams a day, and each one requires 5 seconds to display, categorize, and delete. That's 500 seconds of wasted time, times 100 million people.

50,000,000,000 seconds is
833333333 minutes is
13888888 hours is
578703 days is
1585 years

That's 1585 man-years of wasted time every single day.

Assuming a person lives to the age of 80 years, the total wasted time adds up to almost 20 people. The entire lives of 20 people, wasted EVERY day to spam. It's fucking mass murder.

Re:Spamcop is almost worse then the spammers...

[G0NOU]

I agree. It's a little annoying to spend 10 minutes writing a response from a user's technical help request, only to have that user bounce the message because their provider uses SpamCop, and SpamCop has blocked your entire ISP.
Since you only have the user's email address you have no way of contacting them, even to tell them that you can't contact them because of SpamCop!

So you contact SpamCop and they take this high-handed approach and won't help you. You contact the ISP, but they don't do anything either, so you are stuck. Also, they don't seem to check anything but just take any complaints at face value.

So in the case of self-appointed spam vigilantes like SpamCop, unfortunately the cure is worse then the disease. Likewise the spam filters that fill my inbox with "virus detected in message which contained your forged from address" alerts.

I prefer the system EarthLink uses where you have to confirm the message is genuine.