Spam Haters Given Right of Reply

rk_cr wrote to mention an Israeli technology firm which has set up a system to allow harried email users the right to reply in force. The system "batters spam websites with thousands of complaints. The plan is to fill order forms on spam websites offering pills, porn and penile health tonics with complaints about the products advertised for sale in junk messages. The plan has been criticised by other anti-spam workers who say it amounts to vigilantism."

Comments

Legality?

[gunpowda]

Would the users not then be liable for precisely the same kind of charges and punishment that the spammers are?

Re:Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent's comment feeds nicely into the close of the article:

But the scheme has been criticised by John Levine, a board member of the anti-spam Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.

"It's the worst kind of vigilante approach," Mr Levine told the AP news service. "Deliberate attacks against people's websites are illegal."

Except there's several minor problems with this supposed illegality:

(1) The spammer has sent you email inviting you to the spammer's website. Under the law, this explicit consent makes you an invitee, and not a trespasser.

(2) The company is filling out a form provided by the spammer's website. Arguably, there is implicit consent for the user to fill out the form, and the fact that the response rate has jumped from 0.1% to, say, 10% may be unusual, but it is a foreseeable consequence of the spammer's campaign. If you are replying in exactly the manner intended by the recipient, it's hard to classify the response as a denial of service.

(3) The spam complaints may not be legal in and of themselves, so if the company is smart, it will include an unreasonable counteroffer ("Dear sir, I would like to purchase your product, but I am only willing to pay $0.01 per item, including shipping and handling. You may accept this offer by shipping the product to [P.O. box that nothing is likely to ever appear in anyway owned by company]"), which in fact will be perfectly reasonable because the offer invites counteroffers, and the subjective intent of the person making the counteroffer is irrelevant to a legal analysis of the contract (note: I am not arguing that there is no risk whatsoever, courts are not stupid, but they tend to employ 'cruel' ways of being fair).

(4) The spammers haven't exactly shown that they are willing to disclose their identities. At some point, the spammer has to sue someone. That subjects them to both subject matter and personal jurisdiction for various claims like private nuisancce, misrepresentation, breach of contract, etc. by anyone willing to cooperate with the company based on the admissions that the spammer will have to include in the complaint. Even if a spam association chooses to file suit, the ORIGINAL spammer will have to be identified in the record when whoever brings suit attempts to authenticate the evidence. Given the paltry number of pro-spammer lawsuits based on commercial rather than constitutional theories (where it's easier to hide the identity of the real party in interest), does anyone think that there's a substantial likelihood of civil complaint or criminal prosecution?

Re:Not just getting the spammers though

[Detritus]

If you sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas.

Nuke them all. If you do business with a spam-friendly ISP, you are partly responsible for the spam.

Of course spam fighters find this innapropriate

[NeedleSurfer]

The plan has been criticised by other anti-spam workers who say it amounts to vigilantism.

Have you noticed that everytime a brilliant solution arise, a solution that seems just right and appropriate. A solution that would maybe not stop but at least truly hinder spam or virii and stuff like that, security firm says its a bad idea, its vigilantism and crap like that. Who cares if its vigilantism, it works and thats all that count. The fact of the matter is that none of these company want virii gone or spam dead, they want to sell you stuff that gives you the impression its doing something usefull about it. deleting spam, filtering it, scanning for virii and removing the well known ones, it just doesnt do crap about the problems... retaliating might, so facing a technique that could work the "spam fighters" dismisses it...

Catch a clue

[DynaSoar]

A vigilante is someone who usurps ot assumes power or authority from where it rightfully
exists.

Now, show me an elected or appointed spam cop that this is taking authority away from. There is none. Don't even bother to pretend ISPs fulfill this role. Their role is to keep customers. Some do better than othres at cleaning the trash, but none can act beyond their boundries.

And speaking of boundries, that's where your anti-spam laws stop. And that's as it should be.

This is the emergence of a regulatory force in the absence of any. That is not vigilantism. The net should police itself, including the dirty work. If it doesn't, someone will.

Spam Haters Given Right of Reply

[wljones]

This is an old pattern. The bad guys (Spammers this time) inflict themselves on the public. Authority is asked to help, but cannot or will not do so. Victims then search for their own solutions. Authorities see their monopoly threatened and cry,"Vigilantes!" The authorities, whether government or private concerns, feel they have more to gain protecting their monopoly than by fighting the problem, and victims are an easier target than organized thugs. Notice that their protests against the victims do not offer a better solution, only name-calling and threats.

Re:fight fire with fire?

[h4rm0ny]

Right now the Internet is an incivillised place, a sort of new colony, but settled by people who have the benefit of hindsight from the modern societies they have come from. I say let us fight it out for ourselves, establish our own rules, enforecements and bounds of behaviour, not have them imposed from the founding states (physical world).