Slashdot Mirror
Major Anti-Spam Lawsuit To Be Filed In VA
Rick Zeman sends
us to the Washington Post, which is reporting that a John Doe lawsuit
will be filed in US District Court today in spam-unfriendly Alexandria,
Virginia. The suit will be filed by Project Honey Pot, which is having
a week of big
announcements. The suit seeks the identity of individuals
responsible for harvesting millions of e-mail addresses on behalf of
spammers. From the Post: "The company is filing the suit on behalf of
some 20,000 people who use its anti-spam tool. Web site owners use the
project's free software to generate pages that feature unique 'spam
trap' e-mail addresses each time those pages are visited. The software
then records the Internet address of the visitor and the date and time
of the visit. Because those addresses are never used to sign up for
e-mail lists, the software can help investigators draw connections
between harvesters and spammers if an address generated by a spam trap
or 'honey pot' later receives junk e-mail."
which is here
Obviously this kind of litigation is a good step and to be encouraged, but it's interesting to imagine what would happen if nobody took action against spammers through the courts.
Clearly spam works, so the amount of spam being sent would only continue to grow. Would this lead to increased vigilante action? More privacy and restrictions imposed by administrators? Decrease in the use of Email as the signal-to-noise ratio continues to degenerate? All of the above?
Peter
Perhaps a it's time for the SPAMish Inquisition.