Spamford Wallace Draws A Restraining Order

Steve Rock writes "According to an article in the Associated Press, a temporary restraining order has been issued by a judge against Stanford Wallace and his companies. The case marks the first anti-spyware action taken by the Federal Trade Commission, and while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech it appears a tougher approach will be taken with alleged spyware distribution."

Comments

Spam is a social problem

[Pan T. Hose]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation. Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[AndreyF]

I cannot agree more. Prosecuting offenders one-by-one will never solve the problem as long as there is a supply of fools that spammers make money off of.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[raistphrk]

When statistics show that the great majority of spam comes from a select few spammers, legislation CAN help fix the problem. When you put the big dogs in jail and out of business, some smaller ones may take their spot, but there will be a big dent in spam distribution.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be so-called "fools" who buy products spammed, for the simple reason that, while unsolicited, spam is still advertising, and sometimes advertising hits the mark. That is to say, if I'm in the market for a product, and a spammer is advertising a good deal on said product, I'm going to buy it regardless of the method by which the advertising reaches me.

Trying to get people to -not- buy products advertised in spam would be as effective as trying to abolish all advertising altogether.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[stewby18]

Exactly. Same with things like muggings, too; so long as the social problem of poverty exists, there will be muggings, armed robbery, etc. Clearly they shouldn't be illegal either.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[RealProgrammer]

As soon as there is a method in the infrastructure to know who is spamming, we will be able to make spam go away.

Blacklists, etc, don't work now because of address forgery. Take away the forgery and you can implement blacklists, address blocking, punitive mail bombs based on blacklist history, or whatever method is decided.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[bcrowell]

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.
There are some of objections I'd make to your argument:

1. Junk paper mail will never end as long as there are fools who buy products advertised by paper mail. But that's not a problem, because postage costs limit the amount of junk paper mail I'll get.
2. A lot of spam is criminal: it's sent by zombie machines, or the spam itself is a trojan. No, you cannot fix social problems with legislation, but yes, you can discourage crimes against property with legislation.
3. I don't think most spammers actually have a product to sell. The Nigerian scammers don't have a product to sell. The people sending me trojans pretending to be from PayPal don't have a product to sell. The spammers who crapflood anti-spam activists' mailboxes don't have a product to sell.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[keraneuology]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

In other words, since robbery is a social problem we shouldn't have legislation against it?

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy

By the same measure burglary will never end as long as there are fools who buy stolen merchandise.

Hogwash.

Spam is a criminal activity that involves theft, harassment, intrusion, invasion of privacy and, usually, fraud. What is needed is a combination of legislation (written by somebody who understands spam and is not paid by the DMA) and technology. The CANSPAM act was written after people knew that unsubscribe links could be coded in such a way to introduce hacks onto one's system, yet the idiots in Washington made these dangerous links mandatory. Legislation promising effective fines against companies that knowingly host images used in spamvertising or otherwise collect responses to repeated spam is only a start.

As for the technology, I've been waiting for a spam-alert icon to be submitted for MSIE/Opera/Firefox - when visiting a website hosted by a spam-friendly network that appears on RBLs a little icon should glow red, thus quickly allowing me to determine if I want to patronize that website - if there was an easy way for my browser to alert me to spam-friendly networks then I would definitely do my web shopping elsewhere.

Spam Is A Social Problem

[Fecal Troll Matter]

You can't fix a social problem with legislation. Spam won't as long as there will be idiots who buy products advertised by unsolicited email.

Spam is not covered under free speech

[nurb432]

"Free speech" only applies to the extent that you have the right to speak freely, it does not extend to the point that you have a right to be heard, as you dont.. Nor does it allow that I have to pay to hear your "free speech".

Same reasons fax-Spam is illegal. It costs the recipient.

Re:Spam is not covered under free speech

[bleckywelcky]

Exactly. Here's how I see it:

This is my computer, you can not bother me on it unless I allow you to. If I visit your website, spam all the pop-ups you want. If I give you my email for the purposes of marketing, spam me all you want. But if I am just sitting here and you spam me with pop-ups through some spyware program or send me unsolicited emails, then you should be punished (assuming laws are in place to make such acts illegal).

You can compare the situation to your property. People are not allowed to just walk on your property and put a lawn-sign in your yard. Nor can they can come up and talk to you if you've told them to stop trespassing (or through a restraining order, etc).

Why should the two venues be considered any differently? They're both my property and I decide who can come, who can go, and what happens on my property. Simple as that.

WTF?

[enginuitor]

"...while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech..."

Now that's a new one...
What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?
My point here is that nobody should legally be able to flood your email account with messages you don't want. It wastes the resources both of the systems across which the messages travel and of the people who have to go through them. In addition, it has been repeatedly shown in studies that unsolicited email is not an effective advertising strategy.
In summary, free speech is the right to express your views, not to shove them in someone's face without their permission.

Re:WTF?

[dameron]

What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?

I agree with your point regarding spam, however graffiti is a bad example. Graffiti has often been used as an anonymous way to question the established authority or show defiance. While it's not protected (and rightly shouldn't be, as there is a very low signal to noise ration in graffiti), it has shown some social and political value in the past.

Spam hasn't.

Until there is a spam equivalent of the "V" for victory from WWII I'll give graffiti a little more play than spam.

But yes, in general you are right.

-dameron

What free speech issue?

[ShatteredDream]

With physical mailing systems like the USPS and Fedex, the bulk mailers have to pay to send you their printed spam. In the case of the private services, they are paying for the cost of sending and receiving the communication, and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.

Online spammers, however, are not paying for their usage of my email server. Most of my email is delivered to my website's hosting service, which I pay a monthly fee for. Any spam that is sent to me costs me money in the form of infrastructure that my hosting service has to maintain to keep the QoS acceptable. They are thus, even if only indirectly, burdening me with part of their cost. We are not paying into a subsidized system.

At a minimum, I have a right to refuse all of their communications, and the only thing that keeps me from supporting massive litigation and regulation is the ineptitude of the legislatures to craft workable legislation that won't turn into another big lawyer feeding fest. Still, though, the Internet, unlike the USPS, is a totally private service, at least in the US. As such, if I choose to "censor" the spammers, that is my right as a paying user, especially since the government isn't doing it for me.

I think the solution to spamming might be to give a right of private action to infrastructure providers to fine the big guys for imposing cost on them. Seriously, let the hosting services and telecoms sue the pants off them for imposing the burden of supporting more bandwidth and hardware just to provide an adequate QoS.

And as for spyware, I think the best thing that could be done would be to amend the federal anti-cracking laws so that any software that is bundled that acts like spyware must inform the user on installation or the company that made it is guilty of federal anti-cracking law violations. Make every individual at Gator responsible, from the software developers to the CEO for criminal violations that could get them locked up for a few years if Gator as a corporation is found guilty.

Potential Civil Suits

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

I have always considered seeing if one of the owners of a computer that was rendered unusable by spyware that I know would be interested in launching a civil suit. I would imagine that sneaking something onto someone's property and causing damage that could at least be measured in hundreds if not thousands of dollars would merit a court case.

No.....

[creaturespeaker]

In my experience, most people who get spyware don't even know how they got it. Should you really have to read through a huge 20 page EULA everytime you install software (or an ActiveX control) just so you can find one sentence where it mentions "this will install spyware". Thats absurd to expect people to do that. Some of it even installs itself on to your computer by taking advantage of a security hole in the browser, so their is no EULA. Of course legislating spyware won't stop it totally but at least it will reduce it.

Free Flat Screen HERE!

Spam is not the issue

[Black Art]

People claim that Unix does not have spyware.

We do.

We just call them "rootshells".

There is not much difference between an app designed to steal your surfing habits and one designed to execute foriegn code.

Part of the total cost of 0wnership...

THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[Pig Hogger]

*** THERE IS NO GODDAMMED FUCKING FREA SPEACH ISSUES WHEN IT COMES TO SPAMMING. ***

Spamming is *** FUCKING TRESPASSING ***, it is *** THEFT OF COMPUTER RESSOURCES THAT DO NOT BELONG TO THE SPAMMER ***, it simply boils down to *** PROPERTY RIGHTS, NAMELY THE RIGHT OF A NETWORK OWNER NOT TO HAVE HIS COMPUTER RESSOURCES STOLEN BY A GODDAMMED FUCKING SONOVABITCH SPAMMER ***.

What part of *** MY OWN GODDAMMED FUCKING NETWORK, MY OWN GODDAMMED FUCKING RULES *** don't you understand???

Re:THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[Sein]

They don't understand the bit where it says "Congress shall make no law restraining the freedom of speech".

Okay, that's a bit disingenious - they do understand it, they just hope you don't. It's why they try to make it sound as if Congress passing laws dealing with a specific mode of theft of services (spam, spyware, trackerware, thiefware and other commercial malware that does not also violate other laws such as phishing and ID theft) is somehow "Restricting commercial free speech".

No such goddamned thing - it's congress putting the assholes on notice that "You! Yes, you. The laws of theft of service applies to you too."

However, spyware/thiefware (Gator/Claria, WhenU, and Spamford in this instance) is even worse - they specifically set out to steal the revenue from other affiliate/content providers/merchants and they also steal the computing resources neccesary to do this from you.

Bayesian filtering and such can to some extent stop spammers. Ad-aware and Spybot can to some extent deal with hijackers. But neither is a solution to corporate interests legally stealing resources from others, is it?

The next spam mail you get in your email, you can send a "Fuck you very much" to the Direct Marketers Association in the USA who spent more money lobbying for an opt-out regime than the rest of us will see in a lifetime.

Their Canadian counterparts in the Canadian Direct Marketer's Association on the other hand has adopted a strong support for opt-in and preferably verifiable/double opt-in as the industry Recommended Best Pratice.

The CDMA understood something the DMA failed to get: in the long run, it's Bad For Business to piss off your potential customers.

How exactly do you fix social problems?

[schon]

Umm, legislation is pretty much the *only* way to fix social problems.

Just like any other form of fraud, you can't eliminate it completely, but you can certainly slow it down.

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.

No, spam will never end as long as there are fools who *THINK* that people will buy products advertised via spam.

The spammers making money *aren't* doing so by selling products, they are making money by getting fools who have products to pay them to spam.

Looks like they've suckered you into believing their lies.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[dhoonlee]

Nobody believes they are the bad-guy.

Even the most heinous criminal has a way of justifying their actions to themselves.

Social Problems

[Thu25245]

Taken a sociology class lately? Almost every problem is a social problem. Crime is a social problem. Poverty is a social problem. Discrimination is a social problem. But we still create laws against crime, welfare programs, and anti-discrimination laws, even though we know we'll never eliminate these problems. Legislation can never completely solve social problems, but if enacted and enforced well, it can reduce them. Not by stopping each and every spammer or malware creater on the planet, but by taking out the big fish and keeping the small fry intimidated enough that they never grow too big.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[dubl-u]

If you want to blame me, fine. Sadly, I have bigger concerns than the morality of unsolicited email, giving someone a tool to spider popular websites and search engines (complete with auto-correcting open proxy support), amongst other things.

Yes, I do blame you. To get a few hundred bucks in your pocket, you're helping create tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to other people. Heck, if you're working for a big spammer, the trouble you help make could cost others millions.

I have a lot more respect for the crackheads who steal stuff out of cars in my neighborhood. Why? Well A, they're in the grips of a drug addiction; you're doing this with a clear head. And B, they're selling the stuff they steal for maybe 20 cents on the dollar, whereas your waste/profit ratio is 1-3 orders of magnitude worse.

The only reason you and your employers aren't in jail is that the laws haven't caught up with you yet. But they will. A fine example of this comes from Con Man: A Master Swindler's Own Story. Many of the things he pulled happened to be legal at the time he started in the 1890s. But they're all illegal today precisely because people like him took advantage of the gap between "wrong" and "illegal". And I look forward to the day you and your kind end up, like him, in prison.

If you really have "bigger concerns" than the waste of millions of dollars and the annoyance of millions of people, you'd better be the leader of a medium-sized country. Otherwise, you're just a sad loser who can't even be honest with himself about the harm he's causing.

From the article

[techno-vampire]

Wallace's lawyer, Ralph Jacobs of Philadelphia, said Wallace wants "to use the Internet for advertising in lawful and proper ways."

So why doesn't he?

Historical Analogy

[bill_mcgonigle]

The founding fathers would probably have frowned at the suggestion that someone had a right to walk up on your porch, take your stack of paper, your quill, and start writing whatever they wanted on it and post it to your house, in the name of "free speech".

As usual, their rights end where they intrude on yours.

Of course, they can stand in the road and talk all they want (to the extent that they're not disturbing the peace), but that's a website, not spam.

Not Scalable

[bill_mcgonigle]

First off, you're bidding against guys in India and parts of Eastern Europe where $200 is a month's rent. The buyers are well aware of this and drive the price down to far beyond minimum wage. I've done a couple projects which equate to cents on the hour, but again, food on the table.


Cents per hour? Are you nuts? WalMart is paying $9.50/hr for a cashier.

For each cent you're making you're costing everybody else hundreds.

Write some open source in the evenings to keep your resume hot and you'll have a real contracting job soon enough.

The problem is what you're doing is not a scalable behavior. As yourself, "what if everybody did what I'm doing?" Think that through and you'll see your behavior is not ethical.