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.
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.
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
Think I found it here: http://www.courts.wa.gov/court_dir/orgs/190.html The address: judith.eiler@kingcounty.gov
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.
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.