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.
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..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
[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"
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
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
The subject line made a false claim, and the plaintiff pointed out its falsehood. However, falsehood isn't a sufficient condition for a claim to be misleading, because a false claim can just be a honest error. (Hell, falsehood isn't even a necessary condition for something to be misleading; the best lies contain nothing but true statements, after all.)
Are you adequate?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.