Judge Rules That I Own Slashdot

Bennett Haselton wrote in with this weeks amusing and shocking story of high finance, judicial discretion, and oh so much more... he writes "People still ask me if I make enough money suing spammers in Small Claims court to make it worthwhile. I say: What about the entertainment value? Recently I received an e-mail with the subject line: 'Reminder: Link exchange with your site http://slashdot.org' Finally, I thought, someone else who agrees that I'm carrying the site's entire success on my shoulders. I even hurried off to check the registration of the slashdot.org domain to see if they had made the transfer official in honor of my contributions, but apparently the domain is still being squatted by some outfit calling itself "SourceForge"." I'm shocked that a legitimate businessman would make such an error. Read on to see what Bennett does about it.

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.

Comments

Judges.

[RingDev]

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

Re:Judges.

[Achromatic1978]

Or a big news recent case in Australia.

Man and woman divorce, man paying child support for his two children. All well and good.

Woman meets other man. They marry, she gets pregnant.

She reports this to the Child Support Agency. "Can't work, pregnant, ability to generate income diminished."

The CSA responds by upping the first man's child support. Apparently it is his financial obligation to support the decision of his ex-wife to voluntarily lower her income, and his responsibility to support her decision to have a family with another man.

Even more fun is when the child is born, and CSA again raises his child support, because "the costs of raising a three child family are greater". Uhh, what?

Re:Judges.

[theMerovingian]

Hey there's alot to be said for just having the balls to get up there and represent yourself. I originally went to law school because I was mad at AT&T for double-billing me for a cell phone and turning me over to a collections agency for not paying it.

$75k in tuition and three years of my life to get out of a $600 phone bill, but what the heck :)

A bit of advice on legal writing. Each paragraph should look like this:

State your conclusion.
State the rule/law your conclusion is based on.
Talk about other cases that have ruled on the same issue.
Talk about how your case is similar/different from that case.
Restate your conclusion.

Example: Dave battered Bob, resulting in serious head trauma. Battery is defined as harmful or offensive touching without consent. State law title ___ section ___. In the case of Scooby v. Shaggy, Shaggy struck Scooby on the head multiple times with a dog biscuit. Scooby v. Shaggy ____. The appellate court ruled that forcible head trauma with a processed snack food was both harmful and offensive, and upheld the battery verdict on appeal. Id. In the instant case Dave snuck up on Bob and bludgeoned him with a wet noodle. The attack in both instances was perpetrated with a carbohydrate-based weapon, and resulted in substantially similar injuries. Therefore, Bob should recover applicable damages from Dave under a battery cause of action.

Just use that structure, flesh it out a little bit, and add in the correct citations. Make sure that you have a legal citation for every source of authority you use.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, there is no formation of attorney client privilege, this does not serve as an offer to represent you, your family, or anyone you have ever met, consult the advice of a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction before taking any action, the forgoing is for informational and educational purposes only, and any and all warranties inherent in this post whether express or implied are hereby disclaimed.

Re:Legal Advice

[RingDev]

Ehh, no one got screwed. This was NOT welfare. This is a medicade program, a 1 time assistance system set up to help single mothers give birth.

We were both military vets, so I had my health care through the VA. Her mother worked at the University, so she had coverage under her mother's insurance until she either turned 25 or got married. I was working 3/4 time as an LTE for the state and was in-elligable for benefits until my son was 3 months old. And my wife was unemployed at the time (full time student wrapping up a BS in agronomy, she banked money in the farming seasons and lived on savings over the winter).

So long as we did not get married, my wife was covered under her mothers insurance. So most of the pre-natal care was covered, I picked up the deductables.

As soon as my son was born, he was covered under the Healthy Start program in Wisconsin, which covers all children.

So the ONLY part of the entire process that was covered by the State was the actual birthing. Which I believe the total bill to Medicare (or Medicade, I can't recall which program any more) was about $3000.

Now, you may think that we just 'screwed' the State for 3k. But look at the alternative. Had my wife married as soon as we found out she was pregnant, she would have lost her insurance. We would have had to have turned to the State for 100% of the prenatal, birthing, and post-natal care expenses. And better yet, since we were a good married couple and poor, the State would have no avenue for recoupment of that money. The existing recoupment options apply only to unwed fathers.

We did what we felt was the most responsible thing we could. That year, our medical expenses were so high that I had saved every related reciept to try to get a tax break. But a year later, we came up just short of the amount needed to qualify, so, like an idiot, I tossed the reciepts. 2 years after that, the State finally got around to sueing. There are existing limitations on what the State can sue for. Specificly, they can sue the unwed father of the child for up to 1/2 of the medicare expenses minue any pregnancy related expenses the father pays, although, the State's lawyers usually ignore that limitation and attempt to sue for a flat $2000 fee.

Had the State not waited 3 year to sue me I would have had the receipts to show that I had already paid over $1500 in pregnancy related care, and the issue would have been settled.

Further more, my wife is not seeing a dime of that money, the State takes it as it's own. So this nonsense about supporting the kid is just that, nonsense. If anything, the State's decision reduced the quality of life my child enjoys. They picked a hell of a time to sue.

As for paying the State back for the Medicare program... I do it every month, it's called TAXES. And over my life as a tax paying resident of Wisconsin, I have paid well over the $3000 to the medicade program they used to help pay for my son's Birth.

By WI state laws and tax codes, a married couple's assets are considered joint assets. According to state and federal medicare laws, Mother can not be held liable for birthing expenses paid by medicare. And according to state marrage law, debt existing from prior to marrage and only hold lein against that debtor's non-joint assets. My wife is a stay at home mom. Any debt the State applied to me is immediately applied to her as well. The very laws that were written to protect women in tough positions are being used like a blunt hammer to squeze money out from anyone they can get, regardless of the situation. And on top of that, they were trying to charge me interest on top of that! Which is in direct violation of the same state laws they were suing me under.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the prosecution of dead beats and people who attempt to skip out of child support. But the State's persuit of this matter has been run on autopilot with no one in the cockpit to see where it's going. They are just so used to dealing with crap that they expect everyone they s