Judge In e360 Vs. Comcast Rules e360 a Spammer

Brielle Bruns writes "Yesterday, Judge James B. Zagel dismissed claims against Comcast by e360. In the decision, the judge says: 'Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.' This clears the path for Comcast's counter-suit." e360 is the spammer that got a default judgement against Spamhaus, as we have discussed on numerous occasions.

Comments

CvE

[Anonymous Coward]

Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.' This clears the path for Comcast's counter-suit.

Comcast vs. e360Insight: Whoever loses, we win.

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[ZuG]

You know, it just occured to me that this is really false.

The spammer shares the costs with the recipient's ISP, and ultimately the recipient (through increased ISP costs). The cost of any one individual spam is very low, but taken together they quickly become noticable.

The junk snail mailer pays for all of the mailing costs, but each piece of junk mail he sends must be recycled or thrown away, creating a small effect on the cost of garbage for each individual user. The cost of any individual junk mail is very low, but taken together, they do have an appreciable effect on the cost of trash collection.

e360 aren't spammers. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows they are merely a 'high volume email deployer'.

Re:e360 vs Comcast? Yuck

[CogDissident]

Ever hear of "blue security"? They made a program which, when you got spam email, went to the website and filled out their application with tons of "remove me" messages and junk, making their data files unuseable.

The spammers fought back so hard, they knocked the nation of Israel off the internet (where their offices/server was), for a few days.

The lesson? Spamming is big business.

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[hedwards]

The spammer shares the costs with the recipient's ISP, and ultimately the recipient (through increased ISP costs). The cost of any one individual spam is very low, but taken together they quickly become noticable. That's not really correct. A spammer might have to pay as much as you or I do in terms of costs, but they're getting that amount times millions and millions for free. Since the biggest names these days generally are using bot nets and co-opting servers the cost to the spammer is in most cases essentially zero.

It's sort of like paying $5 for a car and making somebody else pay the rest of the sticker cost for a luxury car. Yes technically they're both paying, but even street people around here can get their hands on $5 without too much trouble.

Trying to fight spam with legislation doesn't have a chance without global cooperation, and the Russians in particular just don't care, as do a few other nations. It's difficult to deal with places like the US where most of the spam originating from here is doing so from compromised computers.

Technical deterrents are difficult to get right, and while they do allow for some help, it's impossible to really fix it. It makes a difference, but with the current net architecture it's a challenge to stop spam and have anonymity as well.

Ultimately what things come down to is making it less rewarding. What we really need is the ability to fine companies that are paying spammers to advertise for them. Admittedly it would be nice to see spammers drawn and quartered, but realistically, it's far easier to find Target, Walmart, Bestbuy and the other companies I've seen advertised than it is to find a cyber criminal that may or may not be located somewhere in southeast Asia. It's just so much easier to follow the money than it is to try and follow the spam.

Of course that's going to be fought tooth and nail, and I'm sure there are other problems with it. But it's a far easier solution to the problem than the others are. Of course, that isn't a license to ignore the other parts.

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[jellomizer]

Well for me in my City Garbage is a fixed cost per year. So if I use it or not I pay the same amount... However junk mail helps keep the United States Postage Service running. And for relitivly low stamp prices for the level of service the USPS offers us. Daily Home Deliver and Pickup a close by location to get federal forms. Witout Junk Mail Stamps will be well over a dollar a stamp. Mail delivery will be much slower and a lot of other bad things...

SPAM on the otherhand is advertising without the good. They dont support services that we want they are a burden on ISPs even the company who chooses to Spam reputation (albiet I havent seen a legit product being sold in years) will be shot. It really is a take-take indrustry that gives nothing back. At least tobaco comanies keep generations of farmers in business. SPAM operations run cheap make money without any benefit they are not a positive impact on the economy, they do no good.

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[Firethorn]

It's your option to shred, toss, or burn the mail in a furnace in the wintertime.

Still, the [i]majority[/i] of the costs are borne by the mailer, thus resulting in limites to the amount, and at least some specifivity. Not to mention that in order to get the best rates you have to identify yourself to the post office pretty well. This limits the amount of scamming that can be done as the scammers are normally stuck paying first class if they want to do anonymous drops. That increases costs to the point it has to be a very good scam or very selectively mailed if the scammer is to have any hope of making money and avoiding the postal police.

Linhardt is claiming that with me.

[www.sorehands.com]

I am suing e360Insight for illegal spamming. http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam/e360/e360insight.htm

In their failed summary judgment motion (asking the court to dismiss the case based on some evidence), they claim that the spam I tracked to them is not theirs, but it must be someone trying to make them look bad because: 1. They don't spam; 2. That it could have been created in a word processor using publically available information; 3. They don't format their e-mails that way; 4. That it did not come from their IP addresses.

e360 ignored that they have used Atriks, which hides the true IP address by running it through a sort of legal botnet. They also ignored that they use anonymous domain name registrations, so I must have been a good guesser to get most of the domain names correct (their co-Defendant, Moniker, admitted that most of the domain names I identified to e360 were registered through them to bargaindepot.net -- their sister company/codefendant).

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[randyest]

You should stop doing that. Instead, stuff all the spam back into the postage-paid business reply cards envelopes they send. With a little tape, you can really fit a lot of paper into one of those. They look like balloons when I mail them back. And the mail-spammer gets to pay the postage for the trash back to them! Free for me, helps the post office with a little revenue, and financially penalizes the mail spammers -- that's win/win/win!

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[geekboy642]

Careful, your ignorance is showing. Do you honestly believe there are no ways to block junk mail before it is delivered? Here's a helpful exercise: every time you find something you don't know, throw it into Google and skim the first five links or so. Here's what my 10 seconds of casual effort dug up:

This will block 90%+ of junk mail, and I actually signed up months ago. The only junk mail I get is a local free newspaper that just gets stuffed into every box regardless.
http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.php

This thing is pure gold. It will block ALL of those "pre-approved" credit card offers. You know the ones, they come with a 29.99% APR, a $650 limit, and yearly fees? Well, at least the ones my wife gets do. I signed up on this thing and I haven't had a single one since.
https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

I'm still waiting for my judge to rule

[www.sorehands.com]

Monday (4/7/2008), I had two motion hearings against e360. One was their summary judgment motion to kick their my case against them, the other was my anti-SLAPP motion against their counterclaim.

Entire details at http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam/e360/e360insight.htm

Their counterclaim is for calling libel (calling them a spammer and liar) and abuse of process (asking for their domain names in discovery). At the hearing struck/dismissed their abuse of process claim, and said that their paying my attorney fees for the motion is mandatory. The tentative did not strike the libel claim, but she said she would look into that further as the court needed to investigate if the supplemental request for judicial notice, containing articles quoting Linhardt in the press (Cnet and NY Times, DirectMag.com) is sufficient for limited purpose public figure status.

She denied their summary judgment motion on my claims against e360. Mostly because e360 refused to provide discovery to me, but relied upon that information in their motion. On the my libel claim against them, she denied that, except the portion saying that he implied that I hacked into his system.

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[sherriw]

There's no need to shred un-addressed junk mail (like flyers). If you are getting junk / offers addressed directly to you, I've had good results with calling those companies and asking to be removed from their mailing lists. Typically they don't want to pay the postage for mailing to an uninterested person.

Now I get essentially zero addressed junk mail.

Re:What's the distinguishing characteristic?

[spikedvodka]

Screw that... I followed the instructions at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/prescreen.shtm

and I get practically 0 junk mail... One place to call/visit, as opposed to haveing to call capital one... amex... etc. etc.