MySpace Sues Spam King

Harry Maugans writes to mention a lawsuit filed by MySpace against Scott Richter, the 'Spam King'. Filed under California's harsh anti-spam laws, the suit alleges that Richter sent millions of unsolicited 'bulletins' to MySpace users over the past few years. From the article: "The suit is aiming for monetary damages and an injunction that would permanently ban Richter and his affiliates from MySpace. The amount of money sought by MySpace has not been disclosed. Richter was already ordered to pay $7 million in a 2003 lawsuit filed by Microsoft after initially refusing to settle the dispute for $100,000. Microsoft announced in 2005 that it would be using the money from the settlement to fuel further antispam operations."

Comments

Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[jellomizer]

The only way to stop spam is to make it unprofitable. So if you get enough lawsuits on you Spams become unprofitable. Thus it stops.

Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[jackharrer]

Or we will have a lot of small spammers that will be quite hard to track and sue. It's easy to find somebody like Richter, with big company and proven track of shadowy activities.

To make spam stop is to educate people not to buy crap they advertise.

Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[jellomizer]

And how will you do that. Spammers get the stupidest of the supid people. Any education attempt will not effect the stupid people thus crap over spam will still be sent. At least Lawsuits against spammers espectilly high profile ones, allows the "Honest" Spammers to pause and rethink the cost of doing business.

There are actually differnt levels of spammings.

Level one. People have a legit product/service to sell, they were gullible enough to beleave spamming works well and it is legal and just like any other form of marketing.

Level two. They still have a legit product/service, they know it it could have a negitive back lash and there are some legality issues what are not 100% clear but they figure the Benefit is worth the Risk.

Level three. They have a Questionable product/service and want to buisnes anonmymously with legal forms of advertising out Spaming is the only alternitive form.

Now with high legalsuits the Level one and Level twos Spammers will rethink thier options with spamming. Level 3 will still be there but it will reduce the Legit qualitys of Spam even further making each lawsuit more and more easy to convict spammers.

Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[UbuntuDupe]

Well, you know how it is... government agencies lose their effectiveness the moment they would be useful: the SEC won't pursue pump-and-dump spam, the military won't go after real terrorists, police won't enter a school to stop a shooter until it's "safe" (!), NASA won't let rich people fund space exploration in exchange for tiny favors, INS won't investigate H1-B circumvention, the Department of Education won't investigate teachers' union corruption ...

did I miss anything?

Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[C_L_Lk]

Certainly, at least in the US, some spammers could be considered enemies of the state and enemy combatants, if they are spamming government email addresses and cause congestion or other undue strain on the mailboxes of government employees and staff members. So, just declare them an enemy combatant, they lose their rights as a citizen, they get moved to Guantanamo, the suspected terrorists they share quarters with find out they are spammers, and they swiftly end their lives without prejudice. Why? Because their last terrorist bombing was thwarted because their cell of operatives couldn't get their proper instructions by email, because they were too busy trying to filter out the stock pump-n-dump emails for PHYK.PK and the ones from the Cialis pushers. Problem solved.

Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[Tom]

200 Known Spam Operations responsible for 80% of your spam.

Re:Unfortunatly it is the only way to go.

[Lord Apathy]

Or we could take a few of the big ones out and stake them out in the desert like one of those old western movies. Then we could strip them naked, poor honey all over them and sit back and wait for the ants. We could even pass the day by placing side bets on what would get them first, the sun or the ants.

Then we take the video an post it to youtube.

It's just a thought....

In related news...

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Tom has had a class action suit leveled against him for sending out millions of unsolicited "friend" requests.

mmmm, spam

[bsundhei]

So is 'Spam King' the even cheaper version of Burger King?

Banned?

[Rob T Firefly]

an injunction that would permanently ban Richter and his affiliates from MySpace.

For those unfamiliar with Myspace, it's that thing that a 13-year-old child can easily get a new account on after being banned. Good thing this guy isn't a 13-year-old child!

IANAL

[mastershake_phd]

Filed under California's harsh anti-spam laws, the suit alleges that Richter sent millions of unsolicited 'bulletins' to MySpace users

Are bulletins considered emails? I would say no.

Your idea won't work.

[paladinwannabe2]

Your post advocates a
( ) technical (*) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(*) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Thanks to Cory Doctorow for his excellent form post.

Re:Your idea won't work.

[esme]

Your post advocates a
( ) technical (*) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

Actually, it was a judicial solution

(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money

They already know where this guy lives, and M$ is apparently collecting money from him.

(*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers

Not really, since our courts already have wonderful ways of dealing with uncooperatives.

(*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email

Not sure how this applies.... You sue each individual spammer, so no central authority is needed.

(*) Open relays in foreign countries

Foreign countries with different laws (or standards of justice) could be problems. But in reality, most spam comes from two or three dozen operations, and most of them are in the US or Europe. So the legal problems are not as complicated as you might think.

(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems

Ibid.

(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes

This solution specifically avoids this problem -- by removing the source of spam rather than trying to stop it technically.

(*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft

Again, our courts have good safeguards for this.

(*) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves

Ibid.

(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical

The laws have only been in place for a couple of years. And the big spam-victims have started to use them. We'll see how effective they are.

(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem

How is this a feel-good measure? People are actually suing the spammers right now. He's saying we should do more of that (which I'm sure the major spam victims are working on as we speak).

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.

Maybe not. Maybe we'll take down the big spammers only to find out that a bunch of little spammers from Indonesia take their place. But it certainly seems worth a shot, particularly if we can get large amounts of money back from the spammer assholes.

-Esme

Wait for people to stop being idiots...

[Per Abrahamsen]

If that is really the best plan to combat spam, all hope is lost.

It makes sense if you RTFA

[Lazerf4rt]

Richter gained access to MySpace user accounts via phishing schemes, or took control of accounts that had already been phished, and then used the service's bulletin feature.

He was on the Daily Show

[Lazerf4rt]

They interviewed this guy on the Daily Show last year. Fun watch. He insisted he was not a "spammer" but rather a "high volume e-mail deployer". He also argued that people "want" to get the e-mails he deploys.

I wonder how he will spin unsolicited bulletins sent from stolen MySpace accounts? "People enjoy receiving bulletins from their friends about valuable products and services. We just help them do that."

Re:He was on the Daily Show

[Tom]

That's not from last year, it's from 2004.

To think of it. This dude sends 100 mio. mails per day. And CAN-SPAM or not, they let him continue for over 2 years even after this. That's 73 billion mails. Spam-excusers say "it takes only 5 seconds to delete an unwanted mail". Following that we're talking 101 million hours here. I'll leave it to someone else to put that in terms of productivity and national economy.

Scott Richter - sole destroyer of the US economy. Hey, maybe we can get him under some terrorism law?

Simple solution

[VEGETA_GT]

All the cash being spent on lawsuits should be spent to buy Sealand and donate it to spammer's with one simple Rule, you all live there. I am sure they would jump at the chance. Then you tell the US that we have a nice target here to test your new rail gun on. See it works out great, the US is happy it got to fire off its big new guns, and we Kill off spam as who would start spamming if they realize we killed the last major spammers in a fun way. Win Win Baby.

Spammers practically own myspace

[British]

I swear 50% of the accoutns on myspace are "spambot" accounts, usually using a hot chick for a picture. They are getting more and more advanced on trying to make the profiles look legit, by listing random bands in the music section, popular tv shows in tv shows, etc. Some even post blogger entries(typically with links to spam sites).On any time if you are "online" you'll get about 8-10 friend requests from them, recycling the same images.

Heck, they even ignore messages sent to them just like real myspace users. :)

Sigh...

[paladinwannabe2]

Fist, Judicial solutions are Law-based, i.e. legislative.
The real problem is tracing the idiots who send the spam- while we can sue the pants off the few people we can find, we can't find everyone. Also, we have very limited jurisdiction over most of the world- we may be able to identify some Spammer's IP, but we need cooperation with the authorities to do anything about it.
Basically, sueing spammers works great when they are in the U.S. and identifable, but that is not going to stop Spam. Obviously we should sue the buggers we can find- but thinking that will solve the problem is far too optimistic.