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."

Comments

Re:Can Spam Act as defense

[tha_mink]

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.

Just filter it!

[jfengel]

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.

Old fashion way

[future assassin]

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.

Re:Can Spam Act as defense

[dnoyeb]

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.

Terms of service?

[Hamster Lover]

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.

Donations?

[AstroDrabb]

Is there anywhere we geeks and donate a few bucks to help this guy out?

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?

Re:Can Spam Act as defense

[Big Jojo]

Problem is, many states don't have laws against frivilous [sic] lawsuits...

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).

This is why we need tort reform like Newt Gingrich was touting in his contract with America...

Two things wrong there, and before you even finished the sentence!

1. We don't need "tort reform" in any sense that's been widely discussed. The abusers of the legal system are primarily corporations; look at the statistics. In this case, it's a corporation suing ... in other cases, it's often corporations selling faulty products since they know Deep Pockets Win, except in class action lawsuits which can tap many pocket. But all the "reforms" so far presented by Republicans (and corporate lawyers) are geared at removing what limited recourse individuals have against those corporations.
2. That should be Contract on America to be precise. Yes, the title has been widely misquoted forever, but if you look at the details you see what's up.

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.)

Re:Can Spam Act as defense

[uberdave]

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.

Buy Insurance Against Frivolous Lawsuits

[bigtallmofo]

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!

Summons

[AstroDrabb]

Has anyone (especially a lawyer) read the summons to this guy? Scroll down and read item number 22. It states:

The defendant has repeatedly contacted the third parties who provided Internet access the Plaintiff[sic], knowing that a contract existed at the time between the third party and ATRIKS, and has convinced the third parties to terminate their contracts with ATRIKS.

Please. Is the prosecuting attorney trying to claim that this guy had knowledge of the third party contracts for this "company" ATRIKS? Come on now. Any lawyer with more then 4 brain-cells should be able to beat this case.

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!

Re:Can Spam Act as defense

[sg_oneill]

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.

Re:Can Spam Act as defense

[eric76]

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.