$1 Billion Awarded in Lawsuit Against Spammers

phoric writes "In what is believed the be the largest federal judgement in history against spammers, an ISP from eastern Iowa was awarded a $1 billion dollar judgement against three mass-mailing companies, which were said to be sending up to 10 million e-mail messages per day to the small internet provider."

Comments

Why them, not me?

[elh_inny]

Will they share, after all I am a vicitm as well?

Re:Why them, not me?

[eneville]

The money _SHOULD_ go towards projects like Spamcop et al.

As someone else just mentioned its the ISP who sues and wins, part of the money will go towards damages involved in catching the nasty people.

The winning ISPs will probably now get a torrent of mail heading their way, which probably futher anoys their customers, but I bet they have tighter logging in place!

Re:Why them, not me?

[Fishstick]

>You ought to have to pass a test to be a legislator, judge,

yes. it's called an election

Re:Why them, not me?

[TekPolitik]

[If you don't like paying tax] You can leave the country at any time.

If you're a US citizen, and you earn more than around $US70,000 (it may be more than that now), you have to pay US income tax (virtually) no matter where in the world you live.

Re:Why them, not me?

[TekPolitik]

>You ought to have to pass a test to be a legislator, judge,

yes. it's called an election

Actually, an election is quite an appalling test if you're trying to find the person who will be best at the job. Imagine getting some random person off the street and asking them to interview candidates for a tech job. "This person thinks tha' InterWeb is called tha' Internet. How dumb is that?". Are you certain that if you were the best candidate for the job, you would be able to convince somebody who is entirely ignorant of your field that this is the case? What about when you're up against a slick con-man who knows how to convince the ignorant person of anything they like?

That is what elections are like. The average person has no idea what skills are required to be a good legislator, or a good judge. Most have no idea of the terminology involved, and have no real way of evaluating the skills of the candidate. However, the average person is likely to be taken by a slick con-man running for office.

Elections are not about choosing the best qualified candidate, they are about being able to throw out somebody who has proven themselves to be a bad candidate.

The truth is, when faced with a field of entirely new candidates for a public office, you are probably just choosing the con artist who takes you in most effectively.

Re:Why them, not me?

[soft_guy]

Do you honestly think they can't or won't extradite you if you don't pay your tax?

Guarenteed?

[Renraku]

I'll believe it when I see it. Spammers have a way of packing up and vanishing from the face of the earth over night.

Re:Guarenteed?

[Richie1984]

"We hope to recover at least his costs,'' Wallace said.
I doubt that they'll ever see any of that money, but the ruling will perhaps put off people from getting into the spamming business. A $1 Billion fine is, after all, a major incentive not to flood networks with spam traffic.

yay!

[northcat]

Now this is how it is supposed to be done. Make them pay monetarily. If you send them to jail they'll just come out after a few years and enjoy their money. (They'll even enjoy getting ass-raped)

Re:yay!

[MrRTFM]

Now this is how it is supposed to be done. Make them pay monetarily.

It has always puzzled me that crimes where the criminals make lots of profit, somehow get to keep that profit when they get caught and go to jail.

Surely a better deterent would be - you lose *all* the gross money you made from this illegal venture PLUS 50% (or $25,000 - which ever is more).

But then IANAL although if there are any lawyers out there, I'd love to know the reasoning why this cannot happen.

Okay, but now let's look at the big picture

[davmoo]

This ruling is good.

But for every spammer eliminated, 5 more pop up to take their place. And the new ones are popping up outside the US, where US court rulings don't matter.

Nothing will change in the long run until the email protocols are changed to prevent spoofing and such.

Re:Okay, but now let's look at the big picture

[miu]

I figure it's a culture thing. We over here simply know and understand that spamming is just wrong.

I don't know if I buy that. People are people and engage in profitable criminal activity everywhere it is possible - an explanation that makes more sense to me is that Internet access is more tightly controlled in Europe than in the US. Every American spammer has probably burned through dozens of ISPs and incorporations - I get the impression that such behavior would be nearly impossible in much of Europe.

Re:Slippery Slope

[jcr]

You seem to be under the misapprehension that spamming is a first-amendment issue. It's not, and has never been a free-speech issue, it has always been a property rights issue. Spammers make their money by stealing service from millions of people.

Ralsky and the rest of his ilk are free to say whatever they want to say, but that does NOT include a right to use my computer/router/etc. to convey their message.

-jcr

Re:Slippery Slope

[tomstdenis]

What?

CAN-SPAM [iirc] defines spam as [other than unsolicited] email with fake headers. If you don't misrepresent yourself in email it's not technically spam as far as CAN-SPAM is concerned.

As for "if he was smart..." do you know how much spam public folk get? Fuck I'm just a small-time OSS developer and I get 100s of spams a day. I can only imagine what other big OSS developers, politicians, etc, get.

Even with a filter I have to at least look at the subject lines. For instance, I recently received an email from Joy Latten [from the linux center at IBM] which was first sent to my junk box until I marked it as not-spam.

What if it had been a job offer or other actually beneficial offer? I can't afford to just "delete all junk" without looking at the lines first.

And the problem isn't "oh block one IP and all your spam disappears". I tried that. A year or so back I had about 200 networks and 700 IPs in my ban list. And I still received a barrage of spam each day.

So yes, suing the larger spam operators is a good idea. It takes the profit motive out of the business. And really while I think spammers should be shot in the streets for ruining such a simple and effective communication medium I don't think prison time is the answer. Civil actions are enough.

Tom

Let's don't blame the victim here

[gadlaw]

This argument reminds me of arguments like 'she asked for it' or 'well, you should have locked your doors'. Blaming the victim for not doing everything humanly possible to prevent the crime against them is one step away from anarchy. And make no mistake, this was a crime as defined by the law. The spammers thought that they had a small company that wouldn't and couldn't fight back. The spammers thought they would get away with it as they have always done. In this case the victim fought back. Shame on the spammers and hooray for the victim.

more needs to be done

[harryoyster]

The real problem is that more people need to make a bigger effort against spam. The US fines and stuff imposed on spammers doesnt really make that much of a difference to SPAM world wide. The majority of my spam is now non-us based for the first time in years. What can we do.. stop routing to those ISPs that have problems. revoke entire ranges of IPs. it will work.. make everyone on that ISP suffer will make the ISP change thier policy very very fast.

Florida bankruptcy laws?

[AndroidCat]

Some of these spammers were in Florida, and I know that Florida has laws that let you keep large personal assets like houses even in bankruptcy. (Strange how many scam artists move to Florida.) Does it matter that the judgement was from a federal court?

The question is probably moot since the spammers vanished before the case started. (They didn't didn't even send lawyers to the court.)

$1 billion vs $2.6 million

[jmcmunn]

Ok, so the spammers have to pay $1 billion for what they did. On the other hand Diebold only had to pay $2.6 million for writing bad voting software that potentially ruined the future of the country by allowing for voting results to be hacked?

There's something wrong with the way our legal system works, and more importantly this shows that people don't value their right to vote nearly enough. Spam seems so terrible to people because it annoys them on a daily basis, and yet no one is up in arms about their freedom to vote being insecure.

Come on people get the priorities straight...afterall there's decent antispam software out there, and even a small ISP can block people from sending spam through their servers if they are properly patched and up to date on security realeses. Damn, I only wish some spammers would take advantage of any holes I have now, then I could sue and be rich forever.