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Anti-Spam Lawyer Loses Appeal, and His Possessions
Techdirt is reporting that one particularly rabid anti-spam fighter has not only lost his case, but most of his worldly possessions as well. James Gordon tried to set himself up as an ISP to get around the conventions of the CAN SPAM act in order to set up a litigation house designed to sue companies that spam. Unfortunately a judge did not take kindly to this trick and ordered him to pay $110,000 to the firm he was suing, a decision that was not only upheld on appeal but accompanied by some very unkind words trying to shut down litigation mills like his. "But, perhaps even more fascinating is that the guy, James Gordon, didn't just lose the lawsuit, it appears he lost most of his possessions as well. Remember that ruling telling him to pay the $110k to Virtumundo? He refused. The company sent the debt to a collections agency, but told Gordon they'd call off the collections agency if he dropped the appeal. Gordon didn't."
I'm not sure who to be cheering for on this one: the barrator or the spammer. Who should we revile more? Dante reserved the fifth pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell for barrators, but he says nothing at all about spammers.
John
the appeals court came down even harder on the guy for clearly abusing the law, pointing out that he was clearly a professional litigant, and not someone running a real ISP
The spammers are violating the law by spamming. Is protecting your right to not receive spam abusing the law? Is there something illegal about being a professional litigant? I thought we called them lawyers.
There are too many powerful companies involved in spamming (aka online marketing.) There was no way a judge was going to make it easier on the average joe. Instead we all have to pay for people wasting bandwidth with their crappy advertising and making us sit there deleting emails every day.
It can be. Going against people with no regard for the law doesn't give you permission to ignore or misuse the law yourself.
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it's labeled haha because a ton of slashdotters are asshole malcontents who laugh anytime anyone but themselves get the screws. there is a paradox in wanting to rip off the man and wanting what is morally correct at the same time and it leads to a lot of gray areas. not that gray areas are bad but some people who don't fit in anywhere else find a nice cozy home in the gray areas because it allows for cynicism and hypocrisy to co-exist without having to explain yourself.
this is the same reason goosestepping is bad. when it comes right down to it slashdot, for as much as people like to say and think otherwise, has the same demographics as the rest of the world. idiots, assholes and morons abound. there's a very small sliver worth listening to but too many people with too many mod makes people who should be ignored look like wise men.
Why don't the MPAA/RIAA (MAFIAA) get the same treatment as this lawyer? Of course, this is a rhetorical question...
Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant. There's two ./ hot buttons here: spam and abusing the courts. It's a tale of a bunch of shitty people being shitty each other, and we're the one's footing the bill for the judge who has to oversee it all, and the courtroom and clerks they're using.
Not many ./ers are capable of understanding that sometimes bad people (Gordon) do good things (fight spam) for the wrong reasons (personal profit) at a cost to us all (tying up the court system). It's 'haha' because someone who thought he was gaming the system got busted.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Of course, there's the question of the spirit of the law. If you really believe that this guy was setting up the "booby trap" ISP in order to help end the scourge of spam, then the outcome seems harsh. However, if you deem--as the judge apparently did--that he's just in it to make profit and that the people that he entrapped were being sucked into arbitrary litigation, then the outcome will seem quite appropriate.
I'm sorry, but it's exactly the same. If a lawyer can figure out how to use the courts to end the scourge of spam, and profits greatly in the process (by taking the money of the spammers), then I'm all for it.
This would be like a lawyer somehow figuring out how to nab child molesters, and in the process take possession of all their assets and bank accounts. The lawyer might have money as his motive, but if he's getting child molesters off the streets in the process, then that's OK. As long as he doesn't wrongly finger someone who's not really a molester, I don't see the problem.
Lawyers have bills to pay too, and to expect them to do useful work for free, and only get paid when doing scummy work which hurts society overall is ridiculous. I think this particular lawyer had the right idea: use the law to do something good for society (shut down spammers) and profit in the process.
I actually worked with lawyers a couple jobs ago, and found them to be very likable people in general. They're very pragmatic, they tend to have thick skins, and have a very healthy scepticism about everything. And for the vast majority of them, it's simply a job that interests them, not a vocation that consumes them. They're usually the ultimate realists, and don't kid themselves about what they're doing.
So I'd reverse your ratio there, and say 2% of the lawyers make the other 98% look bad. You just don't hear about the ones putting in regular hours, collecting their paychecks, and going home every night.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Despite the name, entrapment doesn't have to do with being tricked, it has to do with being forced to do something you wouldn't otherwise have done. It's not "I wouldn't have done it if I'd known it was a trap" but "I wouldn't have done it if they didn't have a gun to my head".
One difference that I could see with a cop catching a spammer this way is that the money, if any, wouldn't be going into somebody's pocket.
But let's be honest for a second...policeman routinely act as if they are above the law. People are arrested around the country every day for asking for a badge number or going down to the station and asking for a complaint form. Don't believe me? Think your town is different? Go try it and see.
Sure, you'll get your day in court, but only when a prosecutor's been lined up and a bunch of one-size-fits-all charges have been filed against them. Resisting, interfering, failure to identify, etc.
Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing at a profit."
Why shouldn't somebody doing a public service get rewarded for it? ... we're the one's footing the bill for the judge who has to oversee it all, and the courtroom and clerks they're using.
Actually, the payer of the "court costs" is footing the bill. That's what court costs are about.
Not many ./ers are capable of understanding that sometimes bad people (Gordon) do good things (fight spam) for the wrong reasons (personal profit) at a cost to us all (tying up the court system).
That's what the court system is FOR: Penalizing the miscreants for their misbehavior in order to deter it and making them pay for their violations of law and/or harm to others. If it's not doing that why bother to have it?
"Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons" is a bogus concept.
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How do you know what Gordon's motives were? I bet he wants more than anything to eliminate spam. You label him a professional litigant, but he's got some serious integrity for a shitty person. I can't believe that standing up against the courts was a calculated decision to maximize personal profit. How does he profit from not settling with an evil party? It's civil disobedience. When the laws are broken, good people will break the laws.
The jackass had numerous chances to settle and he just wouldn't do it.
Maybe he has something called PRINCIPLES.
You are assuming he was trying to game the system. Gordon had numerous opportunities not to loose his personal possessions. Yet, he choose to loose them and continue fighting SPAM. That tells me that he values his contribution towards anti-spam over his personal belongings. As for the spam companies he was fighting...well I hope they enjoy those stinky old couches, used underwear, and pictures of dear old grand ma ma! They obviously are in it for the money. Bravo for Gordon, he didn't let a bunch of tyrants bully him.
Imposing a cost on sending of email is not going to work.
You forget that many times spammers are criminals using botnets composed of hijacked machines, whose innocent owners would wind up paying the price while the spammer cheerfully pays his chump change to the botnet operator.
My favorite solution consists of the following:
1. Widespread adoption of SPF/DomainKeys to
2. Allow anyone to sue a spammer and not just an ISP
3. Make it illegal for credit card companies to process payments for spammed products.
On the whole, politics will probably make 3 the steepest uphill battle. I'm sure the credit card companies are well represented at DC.
most of which is the web
Last statistics I saw showed that peer-to-peer file distribution services used over 50% of the Internet bandwidth. That doesn't tell the whole story, however. Something like a bittorrent client or a web server or client uses a tiny amount of CPU power per byte of data transferred compared to a spam filter. One of the big advantages of OpenBSD's spamd is that it's got a very lower overhead per message, so it makes a good first line of defence. Even then, moderately large sites need a powerful machine or two running 24/7 filtering spam. This is where the power usage comes from, not pushing the bits over the network.
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