Slashdot Mirror
ISP Sues Spammer
Stephen writes "UK ISP Virgin Net is suing a former subscriber for loss of business caused by his alleged spam. "
The subscriber supposedly spammed a quarter of a million people
(advertising his email address list no less!) and got the ISP
on the blacklist. It'll be interesting to see where this one
goes. I personally think that we should legalize spam, but
require the word 'SPAM' or 'AD' to appear in th subject so
we can procmail it out. Or just set our sendmails up to discard
it. And I think failure to clearly label spam should be
punishable by death.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
DON'T legalize labelled spam. It isn't just mailboxes filling up that's the problem. You apparently have a dim idea that this is the case since you made that sendmail comment, but the spam would still be running over the network.
STOP spam!
According to the article, the spammer had *4*
opportunities (not simulataneously) to spam
the number of messages that he did.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice,
shame on me.
The ISP should have kicked in a mail filter that
would block such large numbers of message being
sent at nearly the same time. The fact
they didn't implies they didn't really care
then, and only until *they* were blacklisted
did they seem to take steps (and as indicated
elsewhere, one spam abuse doesn't get you on
the list; it's the repeated spam abuse).
this sounds similar to the women suing credit
card companies for money she lost by internet
gambling; not seeing the light until all was
said and done.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If spam is legalised in its current form in any way, it will still be the redistribution of network bandwidth and disk space to parasitic advertisers. And being legitimate, it will escalate and become even more of a blight on the Net.
The only way that spam could be legitimised was if the advertiser paid for it. If it was conducted over a protocol other than SMTP (as it currently is), where each message was accompanied by payment (or by an account number and credit limit; the server would send it only to as many networks as the credit amount would cover). Receiving servers would be reimbursed for resources used, and advertisers would be billed. Also, fraudulent advertisers could lose their accounts. This could then translate to an alternative to banner ads for free POP/IMAP accounts; users get a metered amount of legit-spam in return for the free account.
Other than something like this, spam is theft of services, plain and simple.
In the last part: "The European Consumers' Organisation (BEUC) has lobbied for governments to have the right to block advertising and marketing that violates their own laws rather than leave it to the country of origin."
*sigh* Will they ever understand? And this is coming from a consumer organisation?
Any kind of government-mandated filtering is doomed to be incomplete, because people will make copies of the material, and especially the kind of people who would engage in ripping off consumers, and thus evade the filter.
But it will also give governments a change to filter other kinds of stuff they don't like; just label it "bad marketing" or whatever.
What happened to educating people? Europeans don't have as much Internet-experience as Americans, but does that mean that we have to be treated like children here?
What happened to your own reponsibility?
I really feel sick because of this kind of ignorance.
The ISP only really has an interest in the content if that content harms the ISP in some way. As you have to enter into a contract with the ISP when you sign up, part of which is an agreement not to send spam, the ISP is quite within it's legal (and moral, IMO) rights to sue.
Remember, this guy knew that he was breaking the agreement, and that he was abusing the system.
I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. successful in suit
against junk emailer
Press Release: I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. successful in suit against junk emailer
April 1, 1999, Toronto - In the first successful lawsuit of its kind in Canada,
independent Internet service provider (ISP) I.D. Internet Direct Ltd. today announced
that the court has ruled in its favour in its recent application for an injunction against
junk emailer Cory Altelaar. The ruling grants I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. an injunction
preventing Cory Altelaar from delivering junk email through its systems and awards
the ISP a reimbursement of its legal costs.
"This is a ground-breaking ruling in the struggle against junk email in Canada," says
John Nemanic, President of I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. "If Mr. Altelaar violates the court
order and attempts to use our services for junk email again, he'll be looking at some
serious charges."
Nemanic says that his company received several calls and emails of support from other
ISPs who were similarly abused by junk emailers (also known as "spammers"). "We
want to thank our lawyer, Andrew Lundy of Brunner and Lundy, for his fine work in
this case," says Nemanic. "This ruling sends junk emailers a serious message: this
activity is not legally acceptable in Canada. You can try to hide, but you will be caught
and risk prosecution if you abuse the Internet."
The problem truly is that there is very little practical way to enforce any spam related legislation. Adopting a law
wont prevent the problem, it only punishes the worst of them (should they get caught) after the fact.
The only way to limit the misuse of technology, is to build precautions into the technology. I dont simply rely on law enforcement to find people who hack into my site, I install firewalls, use strong encryption, etc. to limit the number of people who *can* get thru (someone always can tho, I just make my site less of an appealing target).
You make an interesting point - but if I were to draw an analogy, it would be this:
"Adopting a law won't prevent someone from breaking into your house, it only punishes them after the fact. I don't simply rely on law enforcement to find people who steal from me, I install better locks, put bars on my windows, to limit the number of people who *can* get thru (someone always can tho, I just make my home less of an appealing target.)"
I work for an ISP - we pay by the packet for our upstream bandwidth. When someone sends me spam, it costs us money. Therefore they are stealing from us.
The biggest problem with spam is bandwidth loss. There are a million programs out there that let you take care of clearing your mailbox, and there are plenty of ways to keep yourself off of spam lists, but there's no way to regain lost bandwidth.
:)
Here's a tip for keeping your email account spam-free: get a hotmail account, and use it for all internet registration and anything else that can be seen by a webcrawler or grabbed for a mailing list. Then all of the spam goes to Hotmail, and M$ ends up paying for it.
"Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
Well, just a thought perhaps.
In Australia, there is a guy who clearly labels his letter box and invoices people and businesses $75 per hit for his time incurred having to attend to their physical junk mail. He is well within his legal rights to do this, and is making a tidy sum from it. (Not to mention discouraging time wasters!)
Maybe thinking like this could be applied to spammers, after all, they are in many instances taking up our valuable time, and bandwidth which as someone else mentioned, we do have to pay for.
There are several reasons why Spam is a Bad Thing. Here are some of the main ones:
1. You end up paying for it whether you want it or not. If your ISP makes you pay for every message you get or every gigabyte of traffic, you have to pay for something you didn't ask for, don't want and will never use. Anybody on here who gripes about getting Windows with a nascent Linux-only computer should recognize the feeling. Even if you have a flat rate account your ISP has to spend time, effort and perhaps money to keep up with the flow of spam, and that translates directly into higher fees for you. (The junk mail analogy doesn't really apply here. The sender pays for junk mail; the receiver pays for spam.)
2. The few spams that are potentially of interest are drowned out by fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes, porno ads, ads for spam generators and the like. Yeah, right, like I'm going to buy something based on the say-so of someone with a fake e-mail address who posted his spam from a dial-up account.
3. Spam clogs the Net just by its sheer volume. Just think, if you could get rid of spam all that space would be available for information of interest (and it would be a substantial amount!).
Personally, I think spam should be lumped in with the "junk fax" law, and for the same reasons. It may happen, at least here in Washington; one anti-spam activist here in Washington took to forwarding the spam he got to everyone in the state legislature. He then went on to say (paraphrasing), "The next day I had several requests to turn off the flow of spam because it was clogging their mailboxes. That same day [a bill tightening spam regulations] passed out of conference..."
Caw Caw
If folks sending unsolicited email to multiple parties were compelled to use the "junk" priority that was put into the email standard it would solve a lot of the problems. It would be much easier to filter them, and sendmail servers would be able give them the lower prioity in delivery that they deserve.
I totally disagree. There are certainly legitimate reasons for sending out mass mailings. The obvious things that comes to mind are large-distribution mailing lists, or corporate mailing lists where receivers *requested* the information.
Think about SlashDot's Headline News sent out every-night. I can easily imagine a few thousand emails being sent on a nightly basis. Instead of making it a policy that legitimate users of the Internet and mass-mailings at-large are punished, those who abuse the system should be punished. In my opinion, Virgin is absolutely within their rights to pursue action against someone who repeatedly violated stated account policies. I would imagine their financial losses can be pretty severe, and I hope the court finds for their cause an appropriate amount.
That doesn't mean "spammers" don't have a place on the Internet to pursue their antics (which you apparently advocate). A case could be made for violations of their civil liberties. Fine, let them find service providers who are capable and willing to source such spam-artists.
The ISP I work for actually charges customers that spam using our system. Users who send mass unsolicited email through our system will incur a charge of $1000, plus a charge of $25 for each
spam message sent through our system, $10 for each complaint received by the our staff as a result of the spam, and $25 for each message bounced back to us as a result of the spam.
Mailbombers will also be billed at the same rate.
:)
-- queef