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Canadian Spammer Fined Over $1 Billion
innocent_white_lamb writes "A man has been fined ONE BEELYUN DOLLARS (yes, really) for sending 4,366,386 spam messages that were posted on Facebook. He was fined $100 for each message, and including punitive damages he now owes $1,068,928,721.46. A ruling by a US District Court judge in San Jose, California has now been upheld by the Quebec Superior Court (the defendant lives in Montreal)."
I just have to think -- when was the last time a large corporation was fined $1 billion for anything? This has to be just because he had a crappy lawyer or something. Justice quality depends on personal resources in America, no doubt about it.
Currently hooked on AMP
This is something that I've tried and tried and tried to explain to some of my friends that work in marketing. When you are sending spam, you are literally using somebody *else's* property in a way that they don't want you to use it in order to give them messages.
This should be looked at no differently than causing unused speakers in my house to play radio advertisements when I want them turned off.
You send spam, and it's taking up a limited resource (disk, bandwidth, power, man hours, etc.) to your end and against the will of the recipient. I really hope that there are more cases like this.
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Funny..a company was just fined a few million for (illegal) human experimentation of their bone anchoring glue which resulted in several deaths, but a spammer that didn't cause any physical harm or death is fined a billion dollars. Let's get some file sharers fined for more than the GDP of several small nations combined too, for good measure.
I hate spammers, but you're telling me that a few million spam messages are worth more than several LIVES and ILLEGAL MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION ON HUMANS?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
A 1 billion dollar fine is absurd. First, there's no way he can ever pay it. Second, it is way out of proportion to the harm caused. Third, it undermines respect for the courts by making them look out to lunch, foolish and/or vindictive.
Think about what a billion dollars represents: the lifetime's earnings of a hundreds of well-paid people, or a thousand low-wage people, or the GDP of a small city. Spam sucks, but the damage this guy caused doesn't measure up.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Possibly they're not "upholding" the US court ruling, but rather, they're not finding contrary to what a foreign court has found. Splitting hairs? Maybe. The one SCOTUS case that I heard oral arguments for (yes, in person) was a jurisdictional issue. A US merchant had already been found against by the Chinese Admiralty, he didn't like it, counter-sued in the US and it made it's way up to SCOTUS. I think it was Ginsberg that came right out and asked why they should create an international incident by "over-ruling" a foreign court. Sharp lady.
How can a Canadian court "uphold" a ruling from a US district court? Why do Canadian courts even care unless this guy is going to be extradited?
Because this is a fine rather than a jail sentence, no extradition is necessary. By upholding the ruling, the Canadian court is agreeing to collect the money on behalf of the American court.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
It's pretty fucking simple this guys... Don't mess it up.
A US court ruling has no power to get anything from the guy as long as he and all his possessions are outside of the US. Before anything happens in Canada a Canadian court needs to look at the case and see if it agrees on the ruling.
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I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.
4,366,386 messages x $200,000 = $873,277,200,000 or $873.3 billion. Actually, it's only a couple hundred times more than what he owes now, which is more than the total amount of money the U.S. government gave the banks in the TARP program, but still just under 1/3 of the U.S. national debt as of October 2009. Are there any economists out there who can tell us if this amount of money is printed (Canada or U.S.)? Would it be theoretically possible for him to walk into the court, and pay in cash?
"he conned passwords out of users and then fraudulently accessed their accounts"
When are these idiots who were stupid enough to get 'conned' going to see that money, then? Sounds like they were the ones who were 'damaged'.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The joke here is that the courts have virtually guaranteed that this guy will go back to spamming by giving him such a large monetary punishment. I mean consider from his perspective: he can no longer make any money legally (other than a very basic income that the courts will allow him to keep), so he's forced to go under the table (or live a paltry life). Considering that his skills and contacts all revolve around spamming... Guess what his next illicit job is going to be? Spamming!
On top of that, claiming that a single spam causes $100 worth of damages is ridiculous, verging on incompetent. A spam causes maybe a cent worth of damages, rounding to the nearest penny, even including wasting peoples time and whatnot. Double that for punitive and the total becomes a much more sensible $100,000.
Did no one else notice the even more horrifying fact that he set up phishing websites to steal account usernames and passwords?
According to Facebook, Guerbuez fooled its users into providing him with their usernames and passwords. One method was the use of fake websites that posed as legitimate destinations.
This guy deserves to be repeatedly sodomized in jail with the use of unpeeled pineapples.
http://www.object404.com
What damages? What damage was done by this guy?
Apart from stealing a load of bandwidth and wasting about a couple of years of productivity (deleting four million spams adds up), he set up a load of fake websites to steal Facebook user's passwords (which is how he sent the spam).
Is that your definition of 'harmless fun'? Seems other people don't agree with you...
No sig today...
$100 each? Or, is it like the american legal system where the victims just get a warm feeling in their hearts just knowing they made lawyers richer?