Slashdot Mirror
Judge Rules That I Own Slashdot
So I returned to the e-mail, which began, "Dear Webmaster". Scrolling through it, I found the part that I was looking for (I munged the sender's URL slightly, to avoid crashing the poor guy's server from all the traffic I'm sure he's already getting):
As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites. Please post a link to my site as follows:
Title: Work At Home Business Opportunities | Online Career Training
URL: http://www.theeashblahblah.com/
Description: Your Source, and Resource for starting a Home Business, or Growing the One You're In.
Of course I am always interested in growing the business that I'm in, which is why I served him with papers a few days later under RCW 19.190, the Washington anti-spam law which prohibits e-mails with a "false or misleading subject line".
OK, technically at this point suing spammers in Small Claims is really more of a hobby. I still think that the real future of spammer-suing is in federal court, if you can amass enough damages against a particular company to reach the threshold of $75,000 to bring a federal lawsuit. The idea is not to go after the bottom-feeders who are sending the actual spams from their Mom's basement, but to follow the money and see who is ultimately buying the leads. You can respond to mortgage spams by entering a drop-box phone number and a made-up name, waiting to see who calls you, and then telling them that the person who sold them that lead is generating them illegally and that they shouldn't buy leads from them any more. Next I'll probably try responding to some ads for pills or other shady products by using a temporary one-time-use credit card number that's only authorized up to the amount of the purchase, to see which companies are doing the sales on the back end. (The checkout forms for those pill-hawking pages rarely say the name of the company that will end up on your statement, but the charge on your card has to be from someone.) The only types of spam I can think of where "following the money" wouldn't work, would be pump-and-dump stock spams -- in that case, the beneficiary could be anyone holding stock in the company. The SEC can freeze trading in stocks that are promoted in pump-and-dump but it's still no guarantee of catching the guilty party -- even someone who buys a lot of the company might just be an "innocent" third party who knows it's a scam but hopes to cash in on the price spike (although FAQs suggest that this strategy doesn't work). But for other types of spam, it's already been well documented how you can track it to the financiers without even trying to identify the actual person who pressed "Send".
Of course there's another reason why you'd rather be in federal court. Small Claims anti-spammer cases may not shed a lot of light on the economics behind spam, but they are instructive for what to expect if you ever appear before a District Court judge for any other reason. In this trial, heard by Judge Judith Eiler on November 5, 2007, the defendant telephoned in to the court hearing and said several times that this was a "personal e-mail from me to him" and should be exempt from the anti-spam laws. I said that I didn't think an e-mail with the subject "Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org" could be considered "personal" since nobody who knew me would think that was my website, and in any case, personal e-mails tend not to start with "Dear Webmaster". But Judge Eiler ruled that this was a personal e-mail after all:
"Um, spam, these are anti-spam laws, which imply that they are mail just sent out in huge bulks, which would be the antithesis of a personal e-mail. And here he puts his name, in fact this is the person that you directly sued rather than somebody that's in a corporation or a company. The court does think that there's some indication that this is a personal-type e-mail. While it may have gone out to a number of people, it doesn't have quite the earmarks."
mp3 here
Below is a copy of the e-mail that the judge was holding when she ruled that it "didn't have the earmarks" of a bulk e-mail:
To: bennett@peacefire.org Subject: Reminder: Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org X-PHP-Script: www.theeashblahblah.com/linkmachine/auto.php for 87.102.22.100 Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:34:26 -0400 From: Roderick Eash Reply-to: reash@tconl.com Message-ID: X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: PHPMailer [version 1.72] Errors-To: reash@tconl.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="b1_b43cabef83c9f9123db7a78ef9a73362" Dear Webmaster, My name is Roderick Eash, and I run the web site Work At Home Business Opportunities | Online Career Training: http://www.theeashblahblah.com/ The other day I wrote you to let you know I'm very interested in exchanging links. I'm sending this reminder in case you didn't receive my first letter. I've gone ahead and posted a link to your site, on this page: http://www.theeashblahblah.com/linkmachine/resources/resources_home_based_business_41.html As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites. Please post a link to my site as follows: Title: Work At Home Business Opportunities | Online Career Training URL: http://www.theeashblahblah.com/ Description: Your Source, and Resource for starting a Home Business, or Growing the One You're In. Once you've posted the link, let me know the URL of the page that it's on, by entering it in this form: http://www.theeashblahblah.com/linkmachine/resources/link_exchange.php?ua=_ua9&site_index=MTg4MTgwMjc%3D You can also use that form to make changes to the text of the link to your site, if you'd like. Thank you very much, Roderick Eash
Every time I write about a spam case, I swear it's the last time. I wonder if judges read that and say to each other, "I'll bet we can get him to do it again." With this ruling, if the subject line "Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org" is not "false or misleading", does that mean I can claim slashdot.org as my site after all?
So I don't think that suing spammers in Small Claims will make much difference in the long run. But the odds are that you might have a case come before a Distict Court judge at some point in your life. Consider that the same type of judge who thought the message above was a "personal e-mail", might someday be deciding whether you're responsible for $10,000 in damage to someone's car, or whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that you were guilty of rape, or whether you get to keep custody of your child. There's no joke here, just something I thought you should keep in mind.
So I'm hardly a victim, but it could have been worse; I could have gotten a spam -- excuse me, a personal e-mail -- with a subject like "Your g1rl says you n3ed a b1gger m3mber". I would have been pissed if the judge had ruled that subject line was not misleading.
I for one welcome our new slashdot overlord.
sorry, I had to do it.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
reads like the body of a SPAM message - divorced of context and nearly indecipherable syntax.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Can someone say this in English please?
This article reads like most spam, very confusing and all over the place. What is the point?
Video Production Support
Just what in blue blazes is his story about? I tried reading the whole thing and it still makes no sense to me. Who is this guy? What does he have to do with Slashdot? Is this just some kind of weird fiction that's supposed to be funny?
I'm baffled.
I have a vision of you standing on a street corner shouting this post at passing vehicles.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
The part that would explain who is who and that would tie this story together so that it made actual sense.
I'll take dups to good stories over this nonsensical submission anyday.
My response was "uh. Hum." and my next thought was "who posted this?", and "Why did I just waste my time reading this undecipherable article..."
Is this something you need to expand, strengthen and elongate upon?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
My understanding is that Bennett Haselton sues people who spam him as a hobby. His stories are entertaining and show some of the difficulties in implementing a legislative solution to Spam- many judges he deals with would rather discard the case on some technicality than enforce the law. It's nice to see people standing up for themselves, even when they'd probably be better off ignoring it.
What happened in this particular case is some spammer claimed he owned Slashdot, he sued the spammer, and lost.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
#1: thank you author, for providing a public service by going after these lowlifes
#2: somebody get Judge Judith Eiler's email address. make sure she's on lots of "personal e-mail" lists. if these seems unfair to the judge, hey, she's the one who ruled this crap isn't spam, it's personal
and come to think of it, she's right, it is personal. i take it personally the moron doesn't know obvious spam when it's in front of her face in a court of law. thereby emboldening the assholes who fill our inboxes with this crap every day, every minute, every hour, every second. the only cure is to give her an education in what she is woefully ignorant of. open the firehoses, fill her inbox with "personal e-mails"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So, like, this guy got a spam email that said "Hello Slashdot webmaster". He sued the spammer in small claims court. The judge threw it out because this was a personal email from the spammer to the "webmaster of Slashdot". Hilarity ensued. Also there was some point about federal courts inserted in there to make it more confusing. And they all lived happily ever after.
:wq
A lot of people here in the comments are saying they can't make heads or tails of this summary, so I'll summarize it:
(1) Bennet, a guy who makes a hobby of suing spammers, gets an email with the subject line 'Reminder: Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org/ offering a link exchance with his website.
(2) He sues spammer under Washington state laws against misleading commercial email
(3) The spammer argues in court that it's a personal email. Bennet argues that nobody who knows him would think he owned slashdot, and that therefore it is not personal. Judge rules in favor of spammer, saying that the email was a "personal email" and thus does not qualify under the law. An alternative reading of said ruling could imply that he (Bennet) owns slashdot.
Hope that clears things up for everyone.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
This is what happens when you try to both write and direct...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Only coherent stories please.
Dear CmdrTaco,
Please inform me where I may be able to get the last 3 minutes of my life back. I know it's not a lot of time but life is short and this is a horrible way to have wasted the precious time we have on this planet.
Thank you.
Some guy wastes his time suing a spammer and loses by the letter of the law because he failed to educate the judge properly.
Aend hee cain't right fer sheeit.
Slashdot rules that this article sucks.
When is SourceForge going to return slashdot.org to Bennett Haselton? And what can we do about unscrupulous domain squatters in the future?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The only types of spam I can think of where "following the money" wouldn't work, would be pump-and-dump stock spams -- in that case, the beneficiary could be anyone holding stock in the company.
Actually, there is a very insidious form of spam that we do not (yet) see, where "follow the money" doesn't work: disinformation.
Imagine if shady people on the internet kept whispering rumors and innuendo into your ear. "Britney Spears this... John McCain that..." Sometimes it turns out to be true, so you begin believing that they may have grains of truth.
Suddenly there is a whole new component to public discourse on politics, religion, etc.
For all those who are confused by Bennett's "story", don't be. Let me break it down for you...
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Perhaps when this writer's English teacher returns his red-lined first draft to him and he prepares his final draft, this article could be posted again.
Or is this merely just a case of "ooh - someone mentioned /. - that's front page material!>
I did it for Johnny.
This guy has posted before on slashdot. He is a regular and in general well liked if considered a bit weird, but on slashdot, that just proves you fit in.
He uses anti-spam laws introduced in recent years to sue those who sent him spam in court. He does this himself, in small claims court and represents himself. He has mixed results in this and publices this from time to time. Sometimes it gets dismissed by a judge who doesn't think anti-spam rules should exist, or a judge doesn't think people should be allowed to sue, or in the more hilarious cases a judge shows a mental grasp of the issue that would land a regular person in the looney bin. This case is one of them. If a normal person spouted the nonsense this bitch did she would be wearing a straight jacket.
Basically, the poster received a spam, that used some "personal" details. Apparently the judge is unaware that spam can be personalized. It gets a bit complicated (it always does when you try to figure out the resoaning of the insane) but apparently the fact that the email was signed with a name was part of why it could not have been spam.
The poster then makes a link himself, because the email was personal, that means the reference to him owning slashdot must be right, therefore slashdot belongs to him.
It is a bit of a leap, but makes for a nice headline.
But basically this is just an other episode of "The spammers I sue and the idiotic braindead judges that rule on them".
There really should be a system where judges are tested and if they fail a test case they should be fired and every case they judged re-evaluated.
If you wonder why the legal system is so screwed up, judges like this are the answer. The various lower courts rule so absurdly that they are pointless, you must appeal since if you lost it is most likely that it was a dumb idiotic decission. At least the higher court judges tend to be selected from the ones who weren't complete failures earlier in their career.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I for one welcome our SPAM fighting overlords
Basically, in short, the slashdot frontpage is Bennett Haselton's personal blog. Full of "what I did today" stories full of inflated self-importance about being the New Media.
Shit, I think even Jon Katz had more respect for his readers.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
So the story is written (and I use that term loosely) to suggest that the Judge doesn't know a Spam when he sees it and punishes the wrong party. However, from the quality of the writing in the article I can't help but to wonder if this guy talks like this in real life, IE like a crazy person. Maybe he's one of those guys who's in small clams court every couple of weeks with what the Judge thinks is some frivolous nonsense that just eats up his time and pushes back the docket even further. Maybe this guy has ignored the Judge's warning not to bring this claptrap back into the court? Finally the Judge got fed up and just ruled against the guy to try to discourage him from doing it again?
I read the internet for the articles.
The point is Judges will rule on what they know, regardless of the facts and laws at hand.
For example, earlier this year I had to go to court over a child support issue. My wife and I were not married when our son was born. Rest assured I was a dutiful father and paid for our housing, food, and as much of the related medical expenses as I could, but we were dirt poor. So we took advantage of a State aide plan to help single mothers afford proper child birthing care. My wife's insurance covered most of her costs, but 0% of the child's. So, three years later, we're married and happily raising our son, when I get a bill out of the blue for $2000. Apparently, my wife was suing me for child support and the State was nice enough to step in and help her with the lawsuit.
So after the usual pre-trial rituals, and a lot of research, I presented the Judge with a series of marriage and Tax laws that showed that regardless of our marital state at the time of childbirth, in our current situation, the State was limited in it's ability to collect.
The judge said, and I quote, "I am not familiar with those laws, so I am going to rule on the one I know." And summarily ordered me to pay $1600 to the State. Maybe a lawyer could have argued it better, but when they Judge just flat out told me that nothing I could present him with would be considered in his decision, I kinda lost hope and just paid the damn bill.
So in closing, 2 points:
1) Most Judges will take the easiest path available to make it through the 9-5. Even if it means ignoring the obvious.
2) If you are about to have a child out of wedlock in Wisconsin and you are receiving state benefits, get married. Regardless of whether you intend to stay married or not. Get the license, have the kid and flip the State the bird as they foot the bill and get to ask for a dime back. (note: this is not legal advice!)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
From your description it sounds like the Judge ruled that the statute did not apply because the email was personal (not commercial), not because the subject line was true. Regardless of whether the judge was correct that it was personal, the judge did not rule that you own Slashdot.
Granted, townie judges may not be the brightest bunch. Then again, are federal judges so much more intelligent? I often wonder how do judges with no technical background decide on highly technical issues? I mean, they are lawyers for the most part and have no other experience. Do they go entirely by "expert" testimony they hear, or are judges arrogant enough to presume they actually understand what they are talking about? This was a simple case, but there are far more technically complex cases, such as patent hearings, for example. It's a battle of experts (the best Big Money can buy), so how can a judge possibly render an intelligent ruling without understanding the technical meat of the case?
is going to close.
With all the turmoil in the United Gulags of America, you jokers post fake news. Amazing.
Zzzzz.
1.This was a small-claims judge in a small-claims court. I'm not saying that small-claims judges are less capable than other judges, but clearly small-claims court isn't held to the same rigor as courts charged with child custody or rape. Quite simply, the purpose of small-claims is to get a judgment quickly (and cheaply), and for the judge to apply a bit of "common sense" to small-scale disputes. To generalize from an "injustice" in small-claims to saying that the entire court system should be questioned is weak logic.
2. We don't know enough about the judge's ruling to say whether this was really a mistake or not. We've only heard one side of the story. The judge will have considered evidence and statements from both parties. For all we know the defendant provided some reasonable explanation (e.g. provided sufficient evidence that this was a one-time mistake). It's quite possibly that this was a correct ruling.
3. Also worth noting is that the judge isn't really saying "this isn't spam" but rather saying "there is insufficient evidence that this is spam." So the judge's ruling shouldn't be construed as an endorsement of what the defendant did--it could merely be that from a single email alone (and without, e.g. proof that the same email was sent to other people) the judge cannot reasonably come to that conclusion.
So, while this makes for an interesting case to test what types of spam can be fought in small-claims court, I believe generalizing beyond that is not valid. I'm not saying that the court system is without faults--but this present evidence is weak indeed.
There's definitely a buddy-buddy thing going on here, but we don't know if or how many of his "blog" entries have been denied.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Seriously, the header information states that this is generated by a PHP script, not by an e-mail client. Now, I can't expect the judge to interpret SMTP headers, but provided this was pointed out, it beggars belief that the judge could rule the e-mail as personal on any kind of "obviousness" test.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That's all very good insight, but I want to be clear that I wasn't taking a position on the merits of Bennett's "story". I was simply summing it up for the myriads of confused slashdotters. I'd rather see ten people debate the particulars of this relatively dull story than see one more hardware "review" pop up in the firehose.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
It does not seem, like she has one... We'll have to wait until she — and others like her — retire or die out and get replaced by the new generation of judges. Of course, the new generation will be quite ignorant of details of some other new tech. Such is life today — unlike for the previous part of civilization's history, technology can now change drastically within a human lifetime...
Then, again, this particular woman has already been cited for:
This suggests, our (self-represented) anti-spam crusader annoyed her and lost for that reason — not at all because she does not know, what spam is... I admire his intentions, but he needs to partner with a like-minded lawyer, who would be going to courts leaving Bennet to what he does best — baiting spammers and collecting evidence.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Does this mean that the reason most slashdotters don't ever RTFA is that they can't handle very long text?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
As much as I like to see people go after spammers, this seems a little stupid to me. Looks like a personal email, the guy was just confused about who to contact for Slashdot. If I send an email to someone I think is the webmaster of a site concerning something on said site, but choose the wrong person by honest mistake, am I automatically a spammer?
I think it would be interesting to see this guy now file suit in the same court claiming ownership of slashdot.org and using the judges previous ruling as evidence. How fast would she reverse herself?
Bennett explains that this is important because (pay attention now) the same judge that wasn't able to determine what spam looks like also sits more vital cases like child custody, property damage, and rape.
IANAL and especially not familiar with the applicable laws of Washington State, but to me "spamming" has at least as much to do with the distribution practices of the sender as with the content of the message.
One common, non-Hormel-trademark-infringing term for spam e-mail is "bulk unsolicited e-mail"; presumably both adjectives are requisite conditions for e-mail to be considered spam. The message Bennett sued over was unsolicited, but perhaps not "indiscriminate", which is another term often used to define spam; Bennett is not the webmaster of Slashdot, but he has some affiliation with the site, so the sender's misunderstanding may not be entirely unwarranted.
What was not proven in any way was that the message was sent in bulk. Part of the definition of spam being unmet, I believe the judge made the right decision in classifying the message as personal communication.
Am I the only one who thinks the name Bennett Haselton sounds like a hedge fund, or maybe a purveyor of fine quality marmalades which grace the breakfast tables of the discerning?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I know. I wasn't accusing you of the faulty logic! I was just using your succinct and well-framed summary as a convenient place to argue my point. I apologize for the unintended implication that you were using faulty logic!
Nfx, naq lr funyy erprvir.
uggc://jjj.pbhegf.jn.tbi/pbheg_qve/betf/190.ugzy pbagnvaf n ersrerapr gb n pregnva whqvgu.rvyre -à- xvatpbhagl.tbi . Cyf gb or ercynpvat gur Serapu n jvgu gur nccebcevngr flzoby xguk.
uggc://jjj.zrgebxp.tbi/xpqp/rvyre.ugz
*fbbbbb fzht*
> Basically, in short, the slashdot frontpage is Bennett Haselton's personal blog.
And why not? It is his website.
[the story] reads like the body of a SPAM message - divorced of context and nearly indecipherable syntax.
That happens when you quote small claims court.
Let me simplify it. The author sued a small time spammer in small claims court. Audio, transcripts and original documents are provided for your contemplation, amusement and horror. The judge was clueless and the author worries that the judge may move up to where they can screw up more important cases. An interesting opinion about federal spam cases is also provided. The author is rightly frustrated and bitter.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
What I gather is this:
As a hobby, this guy sues spammers. On a particular case, he has an email he received from a spammer, which he submits as evidence. The judge rules that the email is personal, not spam. That email contains "Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org/", and the submitter interprets the judge's ruling to extremes. The email referred to Slashdot as a site supposedly owned by the recipient, and was "personal" according to the judge, therefore the recipient must be the actual owner of Slashdot.
Ok, so the judge got it wrong. Probably was being stubborn about the mistake too, and refusing to fix it or listen to reason, or so I would guess. What to do now? Go public!
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Ah, but you missed the most important detail. According to the submission, in Washington a misleading subject line is illegal. Since the subject line claimed that the submitter owns Slashdot, it should have been an open and closed case.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Sure seems like a lot of you guys couldn't stay focused enough to read and comprehend the entire text. I mean I didn't finish it either, but I don't claim to be perfectly sane either.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Slashdot gets a literate editor! And in charge, too!
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
From soundpolitics.com
A King County District Court judge and Federal Way resident named named Judith Eiler, who in 2003 taught a seminar to Washington state administrative lawyers in "ethical fitness" will now be taking ethics and sensitivity training at her own expense. This last part according to an article in the Tacoma News Tribune.
A longtime South King County judge was reprimanded Friday by a state commission for a pattern of "rude, impatient and undignified treatment" of self-represented litigants.
Judge Judith Eiler works in the south division of King County District Court, which includes Federal Way, Kent and Enumclaw. The division is based in Kent. She served in the now-closed Federal Way division from 1992 through 2002.
The state Commission on Judicial Conduct said Eiler's treatment of those who represented themselves included "inappropriately interrupting them, addressing them in an angry or condescending or demeaning tone of voice, and threatening to rule against them if they interrupted or annoyed her."
Eiler agreed her conduct violated the Judicial Code of Conduct. The commission ordered her to take ethics and sensitivity training at her own expense.
The online brochure for the "ethical fitness" professional seminar she gave in Tacoma in May, 2003 (second link from top) notes - rather interestingly - that the credits for that portion of the program were "pending." Coinky-dink, I'm sure.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Yeah, I should have qualified that better. It is not legal advice, it is an idle suggestion for action based on the heavily scewed experiences of a bitter and disallusioned young man.
Real legal advice would be more like: Research your State's family, child services, and medicare laws and determine if it is in your best interest to wed prior to your child's birth. Make sure you ask about recoupment, the fathers role, and all parties liability after the fact.
In the State of Wisconsin though, you're pretty much screwed. Hell, for a 1 time assistance fee that I paid back, I am now on the State's list of un-wed fathers, and due to State and Federal laws, my name can not come off that list until my son is 18. So yeah, I'm just a touch annoyed.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I can see it now: the 6th, hidden, case in the newest version of Phoenix Wright.
What happened in this particular case is some spammer claimed he owned Slashdot, he sued the spammer, and lost.
The subject of the e-mail was 'Reminder: Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org./
The spammer did NOT claim he owned Slashdot. The spammer thought Bennett Haselton was the webmaster of slashdot.
This is not a defense of the judge, as the judge was clearly ruling on something she had no clue about. What is her definition of 'the hallmark of a spam message'? Is the way to avoid the 'hallmarks of spam' to phrase your emails such as "Dear Sir, I would like to propose to you personally that you take into your consideration this product which I offer and believe would be perfect for your specific circumstances as living in the Atlanta area where erectile dysfunction is unfortunately ripe"?
But a lot of judges grew up and went to university when there was no internet, and they have legal secretaries print out every email for them and deliver it to their desk hardcopy. This makes them clueless about internet matters.
It's a sad fact of the way the system works that the judges don't simply declare themselves unable to rule on internet matters. Possibly a bit of personal prestige, as saying "I am clueless about topic X which most people would think I should know about" isn't something anyone would like to put their name on.
The good news is that higher courts have higher standards for justifying judgements and generally higher standard judges. I would suspect that small claims courts is where (some) judges go to hope to retire.
Since posting his email address on /. should generate plenty more spam...
I live in Washington State, so maybe I should sue the poster and/or CmdrTaco for a misleading headline. Both of them clearly knew that the judge did not rule that the poster owns Slashdot. As parent points out, the judge only agree with the spammer that there was not sufficient evidence to prove it wasn't a personal email and ruled as such.
Think of it this way: Assume the spammer dude is a moron. Assume he did a web search for something blog-related and this guy's name is the first thing he found with a URL at Slashdot, so he mailed the guy thinking he was actually mailing a small time blogger who owned a domain called Slashdot. What we know of the contents of that mail support this theory, which does not violate the law in question.
The judge probably applied Hanlon's razor and realized that there are a lot of morons out there, so ruling against stupidity in this case would mean any idiot that doesn't do fact checking before sending out a cold personal email will end up being a victim of the law intended to go against people sending out thousands to millions of spams.
IMHO, there's nothing misleading about it: The body of the email agrees with the subject. So even if it was spam, the law doesn't apply.
I'm guessing you're in your twenties. I'm 46 and had no trouble understanding it. - Guy gets mail saying "hey, you slashdot owner, link up with me and we'll are in the bux". Guy sues using 'spam email' law. Judge says "it's not spam, it's personal, but here's 25 greens anyway, get a burger and leave me alone").
Now, great literature it most certainly ain't; and it could do with more paragraphing at the very least. But it's not that hard to understand.
Personally, I blame the teachers. Or the parents. Oh, it's Bush, isn't it?
I own Slashdot!
The idea is not to go after the bottom-feeders who are sending the actual spams from their Mom's basement
Considering that most spam these days comes from botnets, it's more likely that they're sending spam from your mom's basement!
my mom doesn't have a basement.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The subject line was incorrect, not misleading. There is a difference. Since you obviously are perfectly aware of whether or not you own slashdot, the implication that you do in the title could not possibly have been intended to mislead you. It was just a fuckup on the part of the sender. Whether or not it's spam is another question -- annoying link pleading is not spam. Even form letters are not necessarily spam. But massively automated annoying form letter link pleading to the point that the things plugged into form letter fields seem to bear no relation to reality, probably do signify that this guy's crossed the line. But I don't think Hazelton's proven it.
Some of us were involved in the construction of this mess called "The Internet". We feel responsible.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
No.
Now, can you please ask something intelligent instead of that?
Are you adequate?
So what evidence did you provide?
You can't expect the judge to know all about email headers and what Slashdot is. She's just a judge. Computers are not her business. You have to explain how it works and why she should find that it is a "bulk email".
Judging by how you wrote the article, I'm going to guess that you didn't give a full explanation to the judge. And I doubt that you explained your background and expertise in computers (assuming that you have some) so she could have an adequate basis to determine that you know what you're talking about.
Whenever you sue someone, you have the burden to prove each and every element of your claim. It sounds to me like you didn't even attempt to meet that burden. And now you blame the judge for not knowing as much as you do about computers.
Typical nerd mentality, I suppose.
Well, well, the honorable Judge Eiler does not like it when litigants represent themselves. See http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003709.html
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
....judge... child... rape !
Burn that Wich !! just set up a meeting point and I'll be there !
Consider that the same type of judge ... might someday be deciding ... whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that you were guilty of rape
Er, no. A jury would decide that.
1. Dumbass gets a spam email.
2. Dumbass decides to sue, purely because that kind of lawsuits seem to be his idea of entertainment. (Even he admits that there are more efficient ways to attack spam than what he does there.) Although he doesn't have the evidence that it's spam, and he doesn't seem to know what the laws actually say about spam.
3. Judge decides that, based on the presented evidence, she can't rule out that it might have been genuine stupidity.
Remember: email from strangers isn't against the law, and it was in fact how email was supposed to work. So you have to prove that it's actually spam, and not some genuine idiot who sent exactly one message. Yes, it _could_ have been spam, but that's far from proven here.
Also remember: the burden of proof lies on the litigant. Sorta the extension of "innocent until proven guilty" to civil lawsuits. If my whole base for a lawsuit is my claim that you broke the law, then it's my job to present all the proof, beyond a reasonable person's doubt, that you're indeed guilty. If not, then the only safe position to take is to assume that you're probably not. If there is enough doubt -- even Hanlon's Razor -- that you might not be, then I failed to make my case, and the judge is _supposed_ to rule in your favour.
4. Dumbass takes it personally and tries to name-and-shame the judge in a public forum. (Pay attention now.) Add some childish tantrum about how then she's also unfit to judge more vital cases like child custody, property damage, or rape.
He hasn't proven that either, but, apparently just as with his lawsuit, we're supposed to just believe him that the judge is unfit because he said so. And he's so l33t that he can't _possibly_ be wrong. He may not know what the law actually says, he may not have bothered to gather the evidence, but by Jove, if the judge didn't _instantly_ see that he's obviously right just because it's him, then that judge is obviously unfit.
Let me tell you how _I_ see that:
A) Good! That's exactly the kind of judge that I'd want there in a lawsuit about rape, child custody or property damage. I want a judge who'll just look at the evidence, and decide impartially if it meets the standard or not.
I _don't_ want a judge who'll decide based on emotions, sympathies and what some bit looks like when taken out of context. Yes, it's sad when a spammer gets out free, but it would be even sadder if judges started screaming "Off with her head!" like the Queen Of Hearts just because someone _might_ be a spammer, without seeing enough evidence. It's called rule of the law, not rule by emotions and personal sympathies/antipathies.
_Especially_ if it's a rape trial, I'd want the judge to weigh the evidence and make an informed decision, not to side with whoever he personally sympathises the most with. (E.g., "I'm a woman, so obviously the guy is guilty" vs "I'm a guy, so probably the bitch was asking for it.")
B) The whole name-and-shame thing just leaves a bad aftertaste. It looks like nothing more than someone's attempt at cyber-bullying someone who disaggreed with him.
It's stuff like this that makes me appreciate the school bullies more in retrospect. At least those had the balls to punch you in the face and deal with whatever consequences. Whereas the pimple-faced cyber-bully expects someone else to do the dirty job for him. As low-lifes go, it's one step lower than the real bully. It's someone who probably would have done the same, just never had the balls to.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What you need is spam assassin, and a number of other spam blocking software, to proved that the industry considered this spam. In fact you should immediately file for appeal and send this message through all the spam filters you can find. This kind of hard evidence impresses judges.
More like: non-lawyer with too much spare time files an inartful lawsuit, blames the judge for his incompetence, then posts about it on slashdot to drum up publicity for his internet site.
What surprises me is that so many people seem to be taking his word for it. If you're a lawyer and you lost a case that was clearly an easy win, the last thing you should do is call attention to the fact that you made a colossal screw-up and allowed the judge to come to such a poor decision. If you're not a lawyer, but you're playing at being one, you should read a few more books before venturing in front of a judge again.
Also, the part about this judge's ability to decide torts cases, rape cases, etc. is absurd. Even the best judges in the history of American jurisprudence have made big mistakes at times. To characterize a judge as a moron for not deciding the case your way is a mark of the character not of the judge, but of the guy writing the article.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
touché
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Hello from China. I am your friend. Buy some of my Viagra.
P.S. Good luck suing me in small claims court
-Your personal spammer
-Billco, Fnarg.com
But looking at: X-PHP-Script: www.theeashblahblah.com/linkmachine/auto.php That links looks interesting: http://www.theeashsyndicate.com/linkmachine/auto.php Checked reciprocal links (19% complete) I wonder... maybe more "personal" e-mails coming?
I think link exchange requests are annoying, but I don't consider them spam when they are sent to a contact address for a web site. The world wide web is premised on the idea that people will be actively building links to resources. Most link exchange requests are garbage, but it is part of a legimate process. Even though I ignore the things, I hate seeing small businesses sued for the practice.
It is possible for mail with the subject line "Link Exchange Request" to be spam, just as it is possible for mail with the subject "You won ebay auction #1234..." to be spam.
Unfortunately, the slashdot article was too vague to let us know if this mail was really spam or something else.
What I take from the post is that there is a guy name Haselton who sues people when he gets unsolicited email. This guy received a link exchange request. He sued the sender. He lost the case, then posted a poorly edited self-righteous account of the event on slashdot.
The thing we don't know is how the Link-Exchange-Requester got Haselton's email address. We also don't know how many of these requests the guy sent.
I've designed web sites that solicit information from the public. In every single case, the site gets bombarded with erroneous information. For example, I find it highly unlikely that George Bush really wants information on buying real estate in podunk whereever. Often people put in names of people that they want to annoy.
Let's think about Haselton for a second. Here is a guy who is well known for suing people when he gets unsolicited email. Such people tend to get spammers ticked off. And, what do spammers do when they get ticked off?
You've got it! They enterd the person's email address in every single mail list and request for information form that they can find.
So, what we know from this poorly written post is that a guy requesting link exchanges has an entry in his mail list that says Haselton owns slashdot. We know that there is no public information that makes this connection.
My conclusion from this information is that someone who hates Haselton managed to sneak this entry into a database of people interested in link exchanges, and that some poor schmuck who isn't familiar with slashdot sent a link exchange request based on that erroneous information.
It is possible that the Link-Exchange-requester really is a spammer. The fact that Haselton got email that he did not request is not sufficient to say it is so. If Haselton really did sue a guy for having a database entry with erroneous information, then this entry should be filed under the heading of "nuisance law suits" and we should be complaining about how litigation happy souls like Haselton have a a chilling effect on legitimate business operations.
Who is right or wrong in this case depends entirely on how the link-exchange-requestor get the email address. That issue was not mentioned in the post.
I'm against spammers rabidly, but even I don't see the problem as that simple. The guy takes several leaps of faith, based on little more than redefinition of terms or postulating axioms. And by his own incoherent account, he's done them in front of the judge too.
1. He seems to think that it can only count as a personal email if it's from people he personally knows, or who know him personally. (Seein' as the cornerstone of his argument is that noone who knows him would think that he owns Slashdot.)
Well, stop right there. That was not how email was supposed to work. It _is_ what it degenerated into, thanks to spammers, but it was supposed to be a more general all-purpose communication medium, including from people you don't personally know. It was for example considered proper nettiquette to use your real email in usenet postings, for example, so people don't pollute the whole newsgroup when they wanted to go off-topic with you or ask/add stuff that they didn't think would interest everyone.
The judges interpretation of "personal email" seems to be more along the (saner) lines of person-to-person communication. And, honestly, I don't see anywhere that enough information has been presented to rule that out. We don't know, beyond reasonable doubt, if it's not just a room-temperature-IQ (in Celsius) moron who genuinely thought that the submitter owns Slashdot, and sent exactly one message to suggest a link exchange. Sure, it could be spam, but it's not quite proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Basically what I see him doing there is redefining, or mis-understanding, in one fell swoop:
- what personal email means
- what burden of proof means
- what the judge meant (just ruling that someone could have genuinely thought you own Slashdot, isn't the same as ruling that you do own it)
2. The argument that noone who knows him would think X is a tenuous one too.
Point in case: I had a (now ex) girlfriend who seemed to genuinely think that I'm a mighty wizard and can exorcise ghosts. No, I don't know how would anyone sane get that idea, but kinda that's the whole point: she wasn't sane after all. What I assumed to be just a nonsense talking contest and nodded through, Eliza-style, turned out to be her probing whether she can tell me that she sees ghosts in her room. She seemed to be schizophrenic enough to actually see those, but also still sane enough to realize that if you just tell people that you see ghosts, they'll think you're crazy.
That's the disconnect you occasionally get shoved in your face, between what you imagine about the people around and what they know or think, and the reality of what they actually know or think.
So even "noone who knows me would think I own Slashdot", is a somewhat fragile assumption of what people know or think.
Doubly so, since, see point 1, it's not a requirement for someone to personally know you, for it to count as personal email. So once you disregard the "who knows me" part, you're left with the whole cornerstone of the lawsuit being that everyone should know that he's not the webmaster of Slashdot. You know, all 6 billion people on the planet. Noone could possibly make a honest mistake.
3. What to do now? Blimey, of course, name and shame the judge. Don't just get angry that she didn't side with your leap of faith, but also include some snide remarks about how it's scary that we also let people like her judge cases like rape, property damage and other such serious stuff.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If she ruled that it wasn't proven to be spam that would be 1 thing. The problem is she ruled that the email was personal in nature and not commercial. If she had ruled that the subject was in error and not misleading, or that there was a lack of bulk distribution, or any of the other reasons it potentially wasn't spam, then OK. But she ruled it wasn't spam because it was a personal email.
The whole point is that the blatant commercial nature of the content, tone, and greeting were all ignored. I would have to say that per her ruling, 95+% of the mail I've sent from my work computer in the last 2 years qualifies as personal correspondence. Why she would make that determination I have no idea. Regardless of how she ruled, this would have been off her desk in the same timeframe, so why did she decide that
Dear Webmaster (of a site you don't own),
Would you pretty please help bump my search rating on my website?
Thanks
Bubba Jones
is a personal email instead of commercial?
According to some other postings regarding her previous censures, she's a bitch with a gavel who shouldn't be anywhere near a small claims court room. She apparently hates pro-se (For self) litigants, which is 99+ what you see in small claims. It's entirely possible she ruled against him simply because he's not a lawyer & had the temerity to bring a case to her court.
are you taking your ball and going home now?
And on a slightly more serious note, there is a site where you're allowed to post your review/rating of a judge. Don't have the site at my fingertips, but someone else can certainly post a pointer to it. Slashdot them with negative reviews and see what happens.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
first off, IANAL (and rather proud of that fact). IIRC, in small claims court, I, as plaintiff, assert that you, as a defendant, owe me some $ amount for reason(s) a,b,c, etc. the judge hears the merits of my case, alleging you owe me, and also hears your rebuttal why you do not owe me, and then renders a decision. I don't think small claims are decided in front of a jury.
I don't have the patience to sue spammers. But in a society where we all whine about the erosion of our lifestyles owing to bad government and bad corporations, here is a guy actually doing something about it.
So to Bennett, I have to say: Go for it, man. You're putting pressure on those judges who don't know what spam is, and making it less profitable for spammers to spam. They're after the easy buck. Make them fight for it and they'll go back to making pornography and selling novelties.
technical writing / development
In Soviet Russia,Slashdot owns you!
19.190 doesn't say anything about bulk mail, in fact it specifically says "a" message, meaning a single email can be in violation. Nor do the definitions mention bulk messaging at all. It doesn't matter if you know the person or how many they send. Why didn't you point this out to the judge?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Both my sister and I lived with my mother for several years, while she tried unsuccessfully to get my dad to pay child support. In '85, my sister went to live with my dad. Everyone had moved to a different state, we were in Oregon when the divorce happened, and now my mom and I were in Washington, and dad and sis were in California. My mom tried to enlist the state's help (Washington) in collecting back child support from dad. When we went in to the office, the caseworker assigned to help her kept asking weird questions about why she was not paying support to my dad. It turns out that the state of California had contacted the state of Washington about my sister and the state of Washington started garnishing my mom's wages. This was while I was living with my mom and still in high school, so the support for each child should have been offset.
So, by trying to get the state to help her collect back support owed to her, my mom got garnished by the state for support that she did not owe. It took 3 months to get them to stop, and the whole time, the caseworker assigned to help my mom seemed to be on my dad's side. Talk about bureaucratic screw-ups...
The whole child-support issue was eventually cleared up in '93 after my sister reached age 18. My mom went back to Oregon and filed for summary judgment on the debt owed to her, rolling up all the pluses and minuses and interest into one lump sum that he was ordered to make $100/month payments on. He paid for about 3 years, then stopped.
Currently he owes something around $26k on the judgment. Anyone know a lawyer in the state of Hawai'i willing to take on a collection case?
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/saturdayspin/254057_sorbos31.html
machinator omnis sine licentia
Bennett explains that this is important because (pay attention now) the same judge that wasn't able to determine what spam looks like also sits more vital cases like child custody, property damage, and rape.
This is news? I thought everybody realized that judges (lawyers in robes) are just as vile and worthless as lawyers in suits. The civil legal system is an old boy's network, but with smarter old boys running it. Regardless of whether you win or lose a case, the lawyers all get their cut.
Appearing Pro Se is worthless except in the most brain-dead of circumstances because decisions are primarily about rules and precedent rather than reason. Unless you have hundreds of hours to devote to becoming an expert, you'd better plan on losing the case. The lawyer in a suit will cite a couple of precedents and the lawyer in a robe will make a decision against you, regardless of your reason-based argument. He might throw you a bone and give you some Latin words that explain why your reason-based argument doesn't matter, even if it is right.
...Typically something ironic that is hard to detect due to arcane facts or special knowledge required or in the calm, measured, "dry" way that it is delivered. If you don't understand the article... just be quiet please.
I know you (as in, you know who you are) are trying to be funny because you think that others will agree the article was boring, but in reality you are just creating overly-critical static that hurts the discussion.
I got through the article, understanding it perfectly as if i had written it myself it-was-so-clear. Thinking highly of the guy, i scrolled down to the comments...
My Thoughts: funny joke, funny joke, funny joke, lame joke, lame joke, critical comment, wtf? jerk, jerk, another jerk. wtf? Why is slashdot suddenly a bunch of newbs? Well, i guess i'll put my 2 cents in at the end...
... the body of text having little to do with the subject.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
To collect similar emails sent by this person to others? Wouldn't this establish that its spam? Given that the definition of spam is probably that it must be an automated email sent out en masse to people who do not wish to receive it, wouldn't it have been easier to prove if you had a handful of them?
Yeah, it's bloody obvious it's spam based on the content of the email, but a single email probably doesn't prove the case.
about the low IDers ...
Is that as a lot they seem to be able to spell and compose a proper sentence.
It should also be noted that his entries aren't put through the Firehose either. Why is that?
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
How the person got the address is central to determining if the Link Exchange Request was spam. The post really was not clear on this issue. If this was the point of the article, then there would be an interesting discussion about whether or presence of an email address on a web site is sufficient in itself to conclude that the email address wants emails about the site.
/. post that started this thread made a sufficient case for a lawsuit. He may have had a better case, and just failed to give all the evidence in the post.
Clearly the bots that make and sell email lists by scraping sites are spammers, but there are many legimate reasons for sending emails to email addresses found on a site. I admit, I've sent emails to addresses I found on a website telling them that they had broken links or bad information on their site. On today's slashdot article on banner ads installing malware, several people seemed to be of the opinion that web surfers should send emails to sites running Doubleclick ads to complain about the malware banners.
At what point is sending an email to an address posted on the site spam? I don't think the
Imagine that the SaveTheWhales site had a list of email addresses on it. My organization is holding a SaveTheDolphin rally. Would it be wrong for my organization to send these people a notification of the rally? It is possiple that SaveTheWhale people would like to know of other organizations protecting mammals of the sea. Of course, it is possible that SaveTheWhale-types think dolphins are nothing but swimming rats compared to the mighty whale. Such people would consider my dolphin loving organization as second rate hacks and the email spam.
I would consider the SaveTheDolphins scraping the SaveTheWhale site of emails bad etiquette, but I am not sure when I would want to see lawsuits flying.
Don't you want your writing to be divorced of nearly indecipherable syntax? ...Or perhaps that was just a syntactical error on your part?
Aren't the mentions of a PHP automailer in the header enough proof that it was not a personal message? Shouldn't this have been explained to the Judge?
I munged the sender's URL slightly, to avoid crashing the poor guy's server from all the traffic I'm sure he's already getting
You mean This guy???
This guy?
Carol Eash (402) 496-7015 4677 N 127th St, Omaha, NE 68164
Rod Eash (402) 496-7015 4677 N 127th St, Omaha, NE 68164
Oh, yeah ok, nobody should call him or anything then. That might be grounds for personal contact, then the guy can spam you legitimately...
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
In the truest sense, Bennett Haselton is a quixotic fool. One only needs to reach back a few years and examine the various "issues" he has championed, to reveal his true nature - an overly-idealistic media whore. Seriously, fighting for "First Amendment Rights" on the WORLD WIDE WEB? Taking two-bit spammers to small claims court? Does the term "Pissing in the wind" ring a bell?
What a waste of bandwidth...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
The title of this post. Based on what you said, there is no indication of a ruling from the judge that you own anything, let alone Slashdot.
And don't even get me started on your crappy legal argument...
I wonder how hard it will be to get a bot that automatically posts Slashdot cliche jokes in articles, to get Funny moderations.
:-)
Ofcourse, some people will moderate Insightful instead of Funny, so this bot will eventually have high karma.
Does anyone answer to the "karma challenge"?
Whose bot gets the highest karma?
Or am I too late and already replying to one?
Indeed. *raises eyebrows*
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
"For my first witness, I'd like to call Judge Judith Eiler's IT department email administrator." "Sir (/Madam), do you protect the Judge's email account from spam? Is this spammer's IP address one you would protect the Judge from?"
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Dude, you should so write to the law maker in your state that wrote the anti-spam law and let him/her see how judges are misinterpreting it.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I read this whole sorry thread.
Maybe I don't agree with RingDev's way of handling things, but I'm not going to take him that far to task just on the principle of the thing. Without more evidence than I care to collect, I have to think his primary sin was collecting from the wrong department.
You come off sounding exactly like the judge, striking out at the only guy who's decent enough to stay within striking distance long enough to strike at.
Before you go after these kinds of "deadbeats", go after the deadbeats whose primary contributions to society seems to be in demonstrating that polititicians can be bought.
And let's get some sane laws before we complain about people breaking the spirit of them.
"I am not familiar with those laws, so I am going to rule on the one I know."
As you should know, there's a legal word for this situation.
It's called "treason". Given that the judge had an armed baliff enforcing his own set of laws that provably contrary to the laws of the land, he's arguably seized power over the law by force, and is thus guilty of armed insurrection.
He's a traitor. Arrest him, try him, and hang him.