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.

Comments

Why Spam is a Bad Thing

[An Ominous Cowbird]

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..."

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