Slashdot Mirror
Spammers Finally Under the Legal Gun?
MarkvW writes with this welcome bit of Schadenfreude: "People are finally starting to use the anti-spam laws in the malevolent manner in which they were intended — unlimited consumer lawsuits from unlimited plaintiffs!" The story's protagonist is my hero for the season.
It used to be, not as much now, that spammers would scrape web sites to obtain e-mail addresses to spam to.
Terms of use are many times enforceable as a contract.
The simple thing is NOT to SPAM!
Just because the DMA bribed enough congress people to get a law passed to allow it in the USA, specifically to override the California ban on the law, does not mean that it is wanted.
There is more to comply then providing an opt-out link.
Fight Spammers!
Spam is just one of many intrusive and privacy-defeating marketing and revenue-generating practices established during the Internet era.
How about when you visit a site and are greeted by ads that target your past buying and/or surfing behavior? How about a search engine that can instantly summon the date of birth, job history, income, present and past street addresses, phone numbers, and other details given a person's name? How about "slambook" sites that allow people to anonomously post comments about teachers or fellow students? Some would say that such practices are all protected by the laws governing free speech, etc. Then why isn't spam protected under the same principle?
Well, this guy is making a living out of it. He's seeking spammers, at least the kinds of spammers he can figure out where to send a subpoena.
Unfortunately, those seem to be the comparatively benign spammers. Oh, they're still spammers and I wouldn't shed a single tear if any of them had their faces eaten off by wild dogs. But at least from the article, this isn't the Nigerian princes, or Russians trying to sell you v1@gra. It's the companies who really should be complying with the CAN-SPAM laws so that they "can spam" you. (And the kind that's REALLY easy to filter.)
They're not filling your in-box with millions of spams. That's the other guys, and as far as I can tell this guy isn't doing squat about them. Work for somebody else, but it means that this guy is less interesting than he might appear from a cursory summary.
Like I said, I hate spam. I get hundreds of pieces a day, and I wasn't for CAN-SPAM (since it legitimized it). I think all email should be opt-in. But Dan's little agreement seems like you suing me if I sent you a letter from my business because I didn't take the time to go read a note posted on his door I didn't know about. It seems like trap, and a somewhat unfair one.
I just worry is method is too heavy handed. What if I send him a question (about something else, totally not business related) and he decides that the "I work for Joe Bob Web Services, ask us about our XMas Special" in my signature makes my message count as commercial solicitation and decides to sue me? He's a lawyer, that's all he does. Just to go to court (in California) to get it dismissed would cost me a fortune.
When I first heard of Dan, I was like a lot of people here. "Good for him, he's doing something to stop spam." The more I learned, the less sure I am that his little "EULA" is a good way to go about it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Replying to self, logged in now.
More specifically my idea was-
He says:
" Unless Dan Balsam or someone else with an email address including “danbalsam.com” "
which i now have, since my email includes danbalsam.com in it. (someuser@iamdanbalsam.com).
" has specifically opted in to receive commercial email from you, you understand and agree that neither Dan Balsam nor anyone else with an email address including “danbalsam.com” has ever requested any commercial communication from you, and that any commercial email you send that includes “danbalsam.com” in the To, Cc, or Bcc fields that fits these criteria is against the express wishes of the recipient(s)." "
I specifically opted-in myself in as someone with an email address including "danbalsam.com".
He's scummy because he doesn't do a damn thing. He sets up honeypots, and then sues the spammers, hoping they settle. It's like the pigs buying up a crackhouse and busting everyone that comes in, but never finding the dealer. Legally right? Yes. Morally? No. Only scum go after the low-hanging fruit.
Any Joe Sixpack moron can go file a lawsuit at small claims court. If he was really interested in making a change, he wouldn't be taking the settlements, he'd be dragging them all through the coals. Instead, he's just a money grabbing slimeball.
Hell, he was just some two-bit marketing droid before he thought "oh kool, getting default judgements is fun, I'll go make myself a loyuh!"
Fuck him. Maybe I'd be OK with him if he was working pro bono to help 419 scam victims or something, but right now, he's just as bad as the assholes on TV that advertise class action lawsuits
By requiring all incoming mail to be either on the user controlled white-list (ie: any user can opt to allow an address such as *@slashdot.com or joe@sixpack.net), or to be linked via our PGP chain of trust we have eliminated all spam.
Signing up for a web service that validates e-mail address? Simple: add that site to the white-list first.
In my company signing our e-mails via our PGP key is essential to prove who wrote what when.
Seriously folks, the solution to SPAM is not yet another awesome filtering algorithm, or futile and expensive legal proceedings; It's verifying the sender is who they say they are. Stop complaining about how unsecured & non-authenticated the unsecured & non-authenticated e-mail protocol is and instead, help us all work towards the solution by adopting/advocating secure & authenticated e-mail.
Why does SPAM exist? Because people are too lazy to force the authentication issue. If everyone digitally signed their e-mail we could say, "filter all mail connected by more than 6 degrees of separation into the junk folder," and the fight against SPAM would be over. IMHO, we shouldn't be fighting against SPAMers, we should be fighting for adoption of authentication.
Exactly. The California law allows for $50 per violation, up to $25,000 per day. The federal law allows for $250 per violation, up to $2,000,000 total. Settling out of court for a few thousand each case means he is not tying up their time, not causing a significant monetary hit, and not bringing any publicity to his cause.
and (2) if many people do it, it will bankrupt the people who are advertised by the spam. This threat may convince companies that will hire spammers to think carefully before hiring a spammer.
But that's exactly what makes this one guy unremarkable. He's not going around helping others to sue the spammers which you suggest is the solution to the spam he "hates."
Sadly, he's not there to solve the problem. He's just another asshole out to make a quick buck without doing an honest day's work. That should never be praised, regardless of the harm he inflicts on other parties we don't like.
It's entirely possible that his taking $4,000 from that company actually causes them to increase the amount of spam they send in order to compensate for that "business expense". In this scenario, would he still be worthy of the praise he's getting?