4th Circuit Court Sides With a Spammer

bulled writes to tell us about coverage on CNet regarding a ruling a couple of weeks back that allows a spamming company to procede with their suit against a spamfighter. The 4th Circuit court ruled that the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, much derided here, trumps the Oklahoma law under which anti-spam activist Mark Mumma sued Omega World Travel for spamming him. The ruling allows Omega World Travel's countersuit, for defamation, to go forward. From the article: "'There's been a lot of activity in the states to pass laws purportedly to protect their citizens' from spam, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. 'The 4th Circuit may have laid waste to all of those efforts.'"

Comments

Here's what I don't understand...

[SeekerDarksteel]

If he sued a company under an existing law, and a court later found that a federal law outweighed the state law, how can the person suing possibly be held responsible? How can it be considered his responsibility to know the judgement of the circuit court before he even filed the case in the first place?

Re:Here's what I don't understand...

[sribe]

The well-named federal CAN SPAM law explicitly preempts state and local laws to allow spamming, so the Oklahoma law was already superceded.

Read the article more carefully. CAN SPAM explicitly allows for state laws dealing with "falsity or deception in any portion of a commercial electronic mail message." But this judge decided that a falsified header and return address were "immaterial errors" and that a strict reading of that portion of CAN SPAM was "not compatible with the structure of the Can-Spam Act as a whole." In other words, strained rationalization of the result the judge wished to reach.

Re:duh

[ScentCone]

anti spam "activist"? wow, some people have really fucked up priorities. who cares?

You could say the same thing about people who breed cats, clean up highway trash, attend scifi conventions, babble on slashdot, attend soccer matches, or obsess about their particular pet Linux distro. At least this guy's passion happens to involve punishing people who cost the economy billions of dollars in lost productivity, bandwidth, and resources.

Re:Important Because

[0x537461746943]

But how can a state protect you from spam when the problem is really global where the state and US laws don't always apply? Even if all the states came up with some extremely strict spam laws it would just push spammers to other countries and they would still end up using spam bots from around the world. As long as there is email there will be spam. All we can do is deploy the best spam fighting techniques we can around our mail servers to reduce it.

Re:Important Because

[ScentCone]

But how can a state protect you from spam when the problem is really global where the state and US laws don't always apply?

The real key is to follow the money. For spam recipients in the US, most of the pitches are for goods/services that US consumers will hopefully by talked into buying. If the businesses that will transact the money are in the US, or have ties to people in the US, that's something to go for. If the pitches are for outright fraud (say, phishing, or the sale of bogus meds), then you've got a good case to take to law enforcement in whatever country is harboring the scammers. Sure, that isn't always helpful... but recall the recent article discussing how some companies (like Microsoft) are helping to fund the local PDs as they pass that research and evidence along to those other countries. It can't hurt.

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

before we get into a pissing contest about what company does what... i work for a major metro hospital. we are currently deleting about 65000 messages every 12 hours. this is stuff we consider obviously spam through a quite sophisticated algorithm. 65000 represents 86% of our email. now, ask me again why this matters.

"In response to your email.

[Anachragnome]

.....I have come to the decision to NEVER do business with your company, nor any of its subsidiaries. Your decision to utilize a means of advertising at the expense of consumers highlights the general business attitude your company has taken. Further emails to me will only reinforce this opinion, and quite possibly trigger a public effort, on my part, to make known to as many consumers as possible, via the internet, and any other means available to me, that your company is taking part in illegal activities (email advertising) at the expense of the very customers you are trying to do business with."

I send this to as many spam adverts as I can. I simply cut and paste the exact same reply. And NOT to the address contained in the advert. I look up the SALES dept. address and send it to THEM. In EVERY instance I have done this, the mails stopped.