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Spammers Sue Spamee
sebFlyte writes "In an interesting take on the law, some (alleged) spammers are suing some poor chap who got them blocked by ISPs due to the fact they kept sending him spam. According to Spamhaus the company doing the suing is on their books as spammer, and also as a spyware company... If this case goes the wrong way, things could get very sticky for anyone wanting to report spam."
(Yeah, I know, and if horses had wings...) They'd actually listen to people who want to "unsubscribe" from their lists and remove them. Why? Because if any spam makes it to me, through filters, then it gets reported to Spamcop, and they get to spam less. If they don't want to be reported, don't send me spam.
This is a serious problem. Lawyers/spammers are now citing CSA, and as long as they're following that ACT, it will be legal.
But really, all this guy did was complain to his ISP. You cannot get sued for complaining. If there is a lawsuit, it should be against the ISP for canceling the account. No? Seems like a million lawyers would jump at a countersuit on this one.
You'll have that sometimes...
According to the article, these spammers were in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act. The act isn't meant to prevent people from spamming; it's meant to make it easy to filter the spam out.
There were free-speech issues involved. The design of CAN-SPAM prevents anybody from saying that they're being censored. You're allowed to send all the spam you want; that's your free speech. Your right to free speech stops the moment it enters my server, so I drop it.
Now, I'm not sure exactly what the spammer's case is. What exactly did this guy do that was illegal? If he got the ISP to filter or refuse mail from them, as far as I can tell that's precisely in keeping with the intent of the act.
I wish more spammers would get compliant with the act, so that I can ignore them even more efficiently. And I wish that the FTC would start stringing some noncompliant spammers up by their gonads until the rest of them come into compliance.
This case has marks of a SLAPP suit. Depending on what state he lives in, there may be effective countersuits, but I'm not a lawyer. When you find out where I can pitch in to buy the guy one, let me know.
I only wonder what my fate is. I typically call and pester a company if their products happen to arrive via spam email.
I've spoken to maybe 15 small businesses who's products show up in spam directed at me. Typically, I track down a real office number and make one phone call to speak to the company president. If future emails keep coming, I keep calling. People scream and moan, but I am "just responding to your ad" in the end. Make the emails stop and I'll stop calling to ask how that marketing firm is treating you.
Each ISP has an abuse@ISP.com emailadress, where you can report malicious activity of a user.
If you, as a person, notice that a user of a certain ISP is using its subscription for illegal activies (like, if someone is probing your machines for days, constantly trying to get a virus through to your domain, spamming you, you just trace them back and include logs.), or any activity that might be against their userpolicy you can email then there to report said activities. And they will investigate the matter (at the very least you get an auto-reply, it has been more then once the case I've gotten a personal reply from some ISP's in Europe), and take appropriate action if needed. So it isn't really "telling a company to do something", but merely pointing out something which will be put under investigation.
I don't know what the case was with this guy, it seems he just has emails a whole lot of ISPs and some put the spammers' domain into their spamfilters?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
...In his essay entitled "Civil Disobedience" , or perhaps it was the beginning of "Walking", I don't have my reference material handy, he stated that these types of things only hold weight if we support them.
Of course, he was talking about the government and his VEHEMENT disagreemtn with the way they were handling things. He stated that the only way to deal with this was to not pay taxes, and not acknowledge the institution. Let them carry him away, but he will not submit to what he doesn't agree with simply because everyone else was.
We could take a lesson in this case. The SPAMEE could just ignore the lawsuit. What else could possibly happen? Contempt of court for not appearing, right? WHO THE HELL CARES. I know it's drastic and the consequences could possibly be dire *in the beginnig anyway( but if we ALL reported every spammer at the same time and they all tried to file lawsuits against us and we ALL ignored them, wouldn't we be takin gaction by NOT taking action?
A lesson from Thoreau, Ghandi, and a lot of other unmentioned non-violent protestors. This is really crazy. I can't believe how many people on here are actually suggesting not reporting and letting this go on. to the people that do NOT suggest this, KUDOS, I'm with you!
Get spam and lose your mind
Get spammer banned/blocked
Get spammer to sue you
Get spammers personal info from law suit
Spammer found sleeping with fishes.
You win case as your alibi is that you were too busy removing spam from your inbox to do anything that smart.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
That grievance should be a reasonable one. I should not be able to sue someone for saying that I am wearing a blue sweater when, indeed, I am wearing a blue sweater.
Maybe the judge took the case so he can award the defendant legal fees in the counter suit I hope he is taking up. Yeah... or maybe this Jay guy should sue the spammers for defamation, claiming that falsely claiming the he is defaming them is hurting his public image.
I haven't actually seen the specifics (except for what's in the article) but these guys are listed as known spammers, using underhanded and illegal tactics to get their emails through. They do not appear to be a legitimate advertising firm.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Sometimes law schools provide this type of thing through the local state agencies. Students will review a case for free or a small fee at times.
The retort is that Haberstroh did things for which her should be charged, but has not been. This could be hard to prove, especially if Haberstroh stayed just inside the letter of the law.
I didn't see anyone mention this before, but every ISP I have ever had business with prohibits bulk email in their terms of service, regardless of the CANSPAM act.
I don't know who Atriks contracts for internet service, but dollars to donuts I bet their terms of service prohibit bulk emailing.
Seriously, we need to pull together and help this guy. It could have been anyone of us that reports spam. Maybe we, as a community, can donate enough cash and help this poor guy get the EFF to defend him?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
But many, including California, have laws against SLAPP lawsuits, and this would seem to fit firmly into that category. SLAPP == Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, as I recall. Where "public participation" has to do with maintaining the Commons, e.g. if Corporation X sues Joe Penguin for speaking up against it in a public forum, then Joe can relatively inexpensively file to have it dismissed as a SLAPP suit ...
and Joe can collect triple damages if it's established that
the suit was just to prevent Joe from opposing that
toxic waste dump (or equivalent).
Two things wrong there, and before you even finished the sentence!
That article was rather devoid of essential facts; I'd really like to know if for example California's SLAPP statute could apply. (Many other states have them too.)
I think that both parties in a lawsuit should be required to pool their legal funds, and that should be split evenly between the two law teams doing the representing. That way, big bad rich guy could not bleed poor little guy into submission. Also, both parties would get equal legal representation.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I don't know why, but most people don't seem to know that you can purchase what's called an Umbrella Policy from your current insurance agent that will protect you against frivolous lawsuits like this. The cost? $150 to $300 per year for up to $1 million of protection.
Here's a FAQ on it:
http://www.iii.org/individuals/auto/b/umbrella/
You're just crazy to risk pissing anyone off without such a policy. Think about it. For $300 per year you can feel confident that some jerk can't shut you up just because you can't defend your right to say truthful things. Instead, let your insurance company pay to defend you in court!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Thankfully, some other /.ers pointed me to this donation site. I will certainly drink some crap beer for a night and give the extra money to help this guy out!
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
"Only In America...
That's about all I have to say."
The US hardly has a global monopoly on fucked up legal systems. Maybe you live in Utopia, but I don't think so.
"Why is it that the courts actually consider cases like these that make absolutely no sense, while people who commit actual crimes have trouble getting court dates. Nice legal system."
Number one, the right to due process is guaranteed, and any prejudice you apply to determine that this case has no merit, will be an abridgement of the plaintiff's basic Constitutional rights.
Number two, there's no reason to believe that any court has actually considered this case. It has been filed. Anyone can file a suit on any damage. Now a judge might get this on his bench and read it and dismiss it immediately. That happens a whole lot. Very few lawsuits ever reach a courtroom.
Number three, when criminals have problems getting their cases heard, it's usually because they have taken advantage of processes that extend the hearing date, or because the prosecution has done so, or both. Are you talking about appeals of convictions? That's different.
Number four, why are you bundling the civil and criminal courts together into one "nice legal system?"
What "actual criminal" are you thinking of that could not get a hearing set?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Well, according to the article and other sources ALTRIKS is doing some illegal things... such as harvesting email records from whois queries and installing malware on people's computers without their express permission. If the president authorized these actions, that would indeed make him a criminal.
Now and if this is all wrong and all of the sources (including Spamhaus and ALTRIKS OWN WEBSITE) that list ALTRIKS illegal operations is just part of a massive campaign by the defendant to defame ALTRIKS, then I'm fine with the defendant being penalized. Then he would also be able to get busted for hacking into ALTRIKS own web site.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Truth isnt always a defamation defence.
It just has to lead to 'unreasonable imputations' on your character.
Ie if I said "Hired man posts on slashdot", "Slashdot readers are known to steal company time surfing the site" "People who steal from companies are criminals" then I've said 3 things that are true.
But I've also probably defamed you (legally that is). Its all in the imputation.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I used to work in a courtroom in australia. Generally if you represent yourself you are in big bloody trouble.
However what some judges would do, is ask witnesses(etc) questions on behalf of the person representing themselves to make up for that persons lack of representation. (Especially if the judge thought the person sueing/prosecuting was just beating on some poor guy)
More often then not the judges questions would tear huge stinky holes in the case. Dunno about te US, but over here the best lawyers are definately the judges.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
to my ISPs /whois and redirect any spam traffic to the owner of that domain.
... and I never go resolving spoofed addresses. But find out the company target of the campaign.
to their ISPs
i find out their
of course i am not stupid - i can discern which emails are for phishing (so wont report citibank etc doh!)
I wanna see anyone them even trying to sueing me.
But then again we don't live in a sueing-culture (UK) which free us from cowardly legal intimidations.
I'm with you on this one Spamme, I think the chap has been more than patient with these guys who have been nothing but arrogant and ignorant in spamming some person for two years, I would have done the same thing. If there is any justice in the world, the judge would clearly recognize the innocence of this man rather than condemning him. I can only hope the tables turn on the company suing this guy and they get plastered with a huge fine.
So for example Big Corp normally spends 2 million on their own lawyers, and little guy spends $1000 on his. With this system, the lawyers aren't allowed to be paid directly, instead an escrow company gets $2001000 and gives Big Corp a credit of $1000500, and gives little guy a credit of $1000500. These funds can be spent on trial expenses, and anything unclaimed goes to the court or a charity.
With that system, Big Corp doesn't want to spend a lot more than little guy, because they're funding their opponents. So it tends to stabilise where both sides pay the same amount. Moreover, if nobody wants to pay anything at all, then the suit is dismissed.
That's very good.
The funniest thing that anyone did to a spammer was a woman who checked out the registration records on a spam domain and found that they had used a free e-mail address from yahoo, hotmail, or someone similar.
When she sent a test e-mail to it, it came back as undeliverable because there was no such address.
So she obtained the address and then used it to change the DNS servers for the domain to her own.
She set up an e-mail account to match the one in the spam and sent back a canned reply to everyone who expressed interest in the spamvertized product that they were really stupid to fall for such things. If I remember correctly, she also set up a web page for the domain to tell the interested buyers how stupid they were.
The first-time spammers were, I think, from South America and were extremely upset to lose their domain and all the potential sales from the spam. But all their complaints did nothing to get their domain back again.