They're fighting a losing battle? I dont think so. These kind of court cases need to happen MORE often. Which of the following situations would make you think twice about sending out your OWN 3 metric tons of spam:
a) no successful lawsuits against spammers. b) 150 successful lawsuits totalling $4 million in the last 4 months against spammers.
I think people need to sue the hell out of spammers. Whats their motivation to stop? If nobody is willing to actually hurt them in a way that makes them want to stop, they wont.
Cancel their account at their ISP? ooooh, no. Now they have to make a phone call and sign up with the ISP across the street.
Sue them for $1.5 million? Even if you lose the case, its damn likely they'll reconsider before doing it again.
The problem is, a lot of laws have gotten soft. Freedom of speech does not give anyone the right to invade my freedom of privacy. If I dont want to hear about their great new offer of prOn or printers or paper, I shouldn't have to.. but the way its becoming, its becoming almost impossible to get an email account ANYWHERE without getting at lest a little spam every day. Quite sad.
Do nothing, and it will not get better, it will only get worse. How would you like HAVING to install a custom email filter that sorted out names you knew from your inbox and dumped the rest of the mail in the trash, because you received 400 spams and 3 real emails. I can see that happening not too far in the future..
-- - ReadbackMonkey writes "AOL sued a Queen's based group of spammers, and was awarded $600k. ".... but I still don't feel happy about seeing lawsuits like this. I'm happy to see spammers pay, but how far could this go? --- - End Quote
Lets see. They spam the AOL network relentlessly trying to sell their Peach seeds (or whatever). They used AOL's name in their spam, presumably to make it appear that it was a partnership with AOL.
. Misappropriation of a Corporation name (AOL) . Spam/UCE . Attempts to hide identity (fake headers) . Loss of bandwith, storage, network performance (AOL) . Possible loss of revenue (AOL could have lost potential money due to that group using the AOL name in its marketing) . Refusal to stop, even after repeated requests by AOL, etc. . Disrespecting the law (throwing the court papers they were served with right back in their face, literally (read the article) -- - All this, and you hate to see someone like this get nailed with a decent lawsuit? Personally, I think someone who behaves in that manner, totally disrespects the law, wastes everyones banwidth, and is only concerned with themselves (they continued to send mass spam to AOL customers even after the request not to) should be sued into the ground and then shot. They deserve it.
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They're fighting a losing battle?
I dont think so. These kind of court cases need to happen MORE often. Which of the following situations would make you think twice about sending out your OWN 3 metric tons of spam:
a) no successful lawsuits against spammers.
b) 150 successful lawsuits totalling $4 million in the last 4 months against spammers.
I think people need to sue the hell out of spammers. Whats their motivation to stop? If nobody is willing to actually hurt them in a way that makes them want to stop, they wont.
Cancel their account at their ISP? ooooh, no. Now they have to make a phone call and sign up with the ISP across the street.
Sue them for $1.5 million? Even if you lose the case, its damn likely they'll reconsider before doing it again.
The problem is, a lot of laws have gotten soft.
Freedom of speech does not give anyone the right to invade my freedom of privacy. If I dont want to hear about their great new offer of prOn or printers or paper, I shouldn't have to.. but the way its becoming, its becoming almost impossible to get an email account ANYWHERE without getting at lest a little spam every day. Quite sad.
Do nothing, and it will not get better, it will only get worse. How would you like HAVING to install a custom email filter that sorted out names you knew from your inbox and dumped the rest of the mail in the trash, because you received 400 spams and 3 real emails. I can see that happening not too far in the future..
-- - .. .. but I still don't feel happy about seeing lawsuits like this. I'm happy to see spammers pay, but how far could this go?
ReadbackMonkey writes "AOL sued a Queen's based group of spammers, and was awarded $600k. "
--- - End Quote
Lets see. They spam the AOL network relentlessly trying to sell their Peach seeds (or whatever). They used AOL's name in their spam, presumably to make it appear that it was a partnership with AOL.
. Misappropriation of a Corporation name (AOL)
. Spam/UCE
. Attempts to hide identity (fake headers)
. Loss of bandwith, storage, network performance
(AOL)
. Possible loss of revenue (AOL could have lost
potential money due to that group using the
AOL name in its marketing)
. Refusal to stop, even after repeated requests
by AOL, etc.
. Disrespecting the law (throwing the court papers
they were served with right back in their face,
literally (read the article)
-- -
All this, and you hate to see someone like this get nailed with a decent lawsuit? Personally, I think someone who behaves in that manner, totally disrespects the law, wastes everyones banwidth, and is only concerned with themselves (they continued to send mass spam to AOL customers even after the request not to) should be sued into the ground and then shot. They deserve it.