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Massachusetts Atty. General Forces Spammer to Pay
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Oct 10, 2004 09:42 PM
from the small-change dept.
from the small-change dept.
Cildar writes "The Attorney General of Massachusetts has forced a Florida spammer to pay a $25,000 fine and enter into a cease and desist order. The original suit contained both state consumer protection theories as well as allegations of CAN-SPAM violations. Here is the Attorney General's press release.
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Cost of doing business (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:5, Informative)
Whether or not it's a legitimate business is another story, though.
Parent
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like they're not (anymore) in the United States - at least on the Federal level:http://grassley.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAct ion=PressReleases.View&PressRelease_id=59 [senate.gov]
Parent
A bit more looking (Score:5, Informative)
That does look pretty cut and dried that they are not deductible.
Parent
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:5, Insightful)
We shall see.
Parent
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Try a somewhat different scam.
b) Try the same scam, but claim it is different while the actual results are much the same.
In most other cases, you can be barred from doing a particular business. It is kinda hard to bar a con man from doing cons.
Kjella
Parent
Shell companies (Score:3, Informative)
Civil fines presume that you're dealing with businesses that are basically honest. I think people involved in spammer are basically dishonest, and while a few that operate
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:2, Insightful)
(emphasis mine)
I guess that means if he decides to spam again, Massachusetts can reopen the case and seek more damages.
I wonder (not being a lawyer) whether a contempt citation and jail time would be an option if one were to repeatedly refuse to live up to a settlement?
Re:Cost of doing business (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:5, Insightful)
The point isn't that WE aren't doing enough to protect ourselves from spam, but that we shouldn't HAVE to jump through hoops to avoid this shit.
Parent
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:5, Informative)
Some people use the internet for more than just playtime, Threehead. Some of us have to maintain legitimate whois contact info for all the domains we're responsible for, and can't just go changing our email addresses every time another fuckload of spam rolls in.
Parent
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, you might find you have a problem when sender verification starts becoming standard practice. Soon, servers will not accept mail from user myname@gmail.com coming from server mail.myisp.com. We already implement this sort of thing for hotmail.com and yahoo.com sourced email. If the sender claims to be a hotmail user, the SMTP server better be a hotmail server.
-matthew
Parent
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:3, Insightful)
They destroy legitimate sources of advertising income.
They should be treated as criminals... how would you label someone who says, "They broke my window, I buy a new one problem solved! I like spammers if they break your window don't get angry!" -Flamebait.
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:5, Funny)
Yes please, won't someone think of the advertising.
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Parent
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you will. Eventually, someone who has your address in their address book will be hit my a spam worm, which will send out spam both to and fronm your address, spreading it all over. Or a clueless friend will put it in a CC when sending a joke out to his friends. Or someone will dig it up in a list of addresses from your ISP. Etc, etc.
Parent
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'd Prefer Stoning (Score:2)
Good to see. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good to see. (Score:5, Insightful)
Either purchase what is called a "pink contract" from your ISP, which allows you to spam, or simply use a series of throw-away sender accounts. Each is legitimate, but each is used to harvest the "opt-out" addresses and use them for the next spam for a slightly different product or for a distinct username with the same product. This kind of abuse is trivial, and already widely in practice.
What needs to be forbidden is the sending of unsolicited bulk communications: not "spam" as in "advertising", because that's too hard to decipher in court and gets into First Amendment issues. But outlaw unsolicited bulk communications of *any* sort: advertising, religious spew, political campaigning, etc. People can sign up to get email from you, but as soon as you start sending it unsolicited, face criminal penalties.
This kind of law has been in place for many years, successfully, for junk fax. The CANSPAM act is aimed at the wrong target: it's aimed at fraud, not at spam.
Parent
Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code (Score:4, Insightful)
Lex Talionis, the principle of an eye for an eye, is a morally bankrupt code of law we've been moving away from for the past few thousand years, thankfully. It can't deal with the complexities of the modern legal order, and it ignores all proper justifications for systems of punishment: rehabilitation, prophylaxis, etc. It makes an assertion of rigid judgment in an attempt to avoid judgment itself. We can't live in a world without judgment.
Ask yourself this: should we rape the rapist? If not, why not? (Ignore for a moment that we essentially do rape rapists by committing them to so-called "maximum security" prisons where they get systematically brutalized and raped by guards and other inmates.) It's not a morally tenable position to lower ourselves to the level of brutes just so we can vindicate some idea of retribution.
Therefore, ask yourself why we should be happy when the spammer gets spammed? No one should have to endure the pain and annoyance of spam: it's the scurge of the online world. Not even the spammer, who may be in his business because of factors outside his control like debt or bills for an illness in the family, etc. We should be outraged when anyone is spammed, and we should put the full force of the state and the law against the perpetrator no matter who the victim! Picking and choosing among which victims to protect is something the legal order of former barbaric times did. I'd be disgusted if our government returned to those days.
Spam == bad. Victimization == bad. Why do people conflate the two? What kind of giddy moral superiority to you get from seeing anyone hurt?
Baloney (Score:4, Insightful)
"An eye for an eye" is an advanced, progressive, touchy-feely principle made popular by Hammurabi about 6000 years ago.
Parent
Re:Baloney (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know why I'm bothering to respond to your out of context post, but the reason that we consider raping the rapist to be morally bankrupt is that rape is an awful violation of somebody's human rights, even if that person has themselves committed that crime. Spam, while an annoyance and a pain in the ass, is not a violation of human rights, just a negative externality (and one I certainly despise). So the point is that when a thief gets something stolen from him or a spammer gets spammed, it's not comparable to a rapist being raped. As to the effectiveness as a means of prophylaxis or rehabilitation, I'm not sure that ANY means of punishment have been shown to be effective in those ways.
Parent
Re:Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code (Score:3)
And this, perhaps, is the primal argument of pragmatism against idealism when it comes to criminal "rehabilitation". Retribution has some preventative effect on the commision of crime.
Some people get very idealistic about this, but the point of the system is to stop crimes from happening so that the majority of people can live comfortable, relatively safe lives. As to whether pu
Re:Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code (Score:3, Insightful)
How about.... (Score:5, Funny)
I think he can then do his thing. Well, maybe he can use Gator to remember his passwords.
Waste these assholes...
Why settle? (Score:5, Interesting)
Spammers spam because they think they have the freedom to spam, and the only way to stop this is to take away their freedom, ie some jail time.
Failing that, I thought the fine is a bit small, but sooner or later, people will find the "threshold" fine to impose, which basically make the whole spamming business unprofitable.
public results (Score:5, Interesting)
Most likely, he's used the benefit of spyware to send this bs out. It would be really nice to make those results public, so it would shed a better light as to why we should protect against that crap...
Re:public results (Score:2)
And insert them into one of his convenient orifices...
Looks like the crux is the opt-out link (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need is a PROA (Score:5, Interesting)
Reilly rocks. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, not O'reilly. Tom Reilly, the MA Attorney General.
He's been on a virtual warpath against corporations. He didn't back off like all the other states did in the case against Microsoft. He took on the Catholic Church, and sent them running for cover. He's been a non-stop machine against corporate greed and corruption, and it's about damn time. We need a lot more state AG's like him.
I have a feeling he has aspirations for being federal attorney general. Long as he keeps up his current record of corporate ball-busting, I'm all for it. Yet another reason to vote for Kerry, I see it- Bush is quite happy with Ashcroft, and I doubt Ashcroft would last very long under Kerry. Somehow, I don't see Ridge lasting long either.
Pretty sad when you loose an election to a dead person and get slotted right into a high ranking, federal executive position you're not even remotely qualified for.
Re:Reilly rocks. (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen this many times before, here on /. too, and it makes me sick. It's not like he was an incumbent that was so bad he lost to a dead guy (which would be one thing). He was the challenger. He lost to a very popular man who died VERY shortly before the election. They couldn't change the ballot. Some (many?) people saw voting for him as a way to honor his memory.
Now I'm not going to pretend to know whether Mel Carnahand, a.k.a. "the dead guy", was good or not. I won't pretend to know whether his wife (who got the seat he won) is any good. I don't live in Missouri so it doesn't effect me personally. But if you are going to pick on someone you don't like for political reasons... GROW UP and do it in a more mature way (like with real, relevant facts). "He must be dum and abizmul at his job 'cause he lost to a dead guy! Ha ha ha". Grow up. Have a little respect.
And it wouldn't matter if Ashcroft was a good AG (I'm not saying he is or isn't). Chances are he would be replaced with the change of administration anyway.
Parent
Re:Reilly rocks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reilly rocks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Missouri voters still chose not to elect Ashcroft, and there was even the idea floated of Carnahand's wife taking the position. Basically Missouri voters
Running to the cameras (Score:5, Interesting)
$25,000, from what has been reported as spammer income in other stories linked from here on slashdot is less than a day's profit. The Mass. AG did the same thing the NY AG did, grab headlines to promote himself for future office, and tuck away an action against a popular cause.
If the intention was to stop the spamming, the fine would have been higher, the AG would have forced the spammer to give up the mortgage brokers who are paying the spammer affiliate commissions for the leads, and the AG would have revoked the licenses of the mortgage brokers.
But the mortgage brokers have friends in high places, and well placed campaign donations.
Follow the money. Pull the licenses of the mortgage brokers. Pull the licenses of any other individual or company who pays a spammer affiliate money, commissions, or any other types of payments based on results of spamming. Delist public companies that pay spammers and fax.com in cash and stock to blast fax and spambomb advertisements to promote and raise awareness of their penny and dollar stocks.
$25,000? A mosquito bite. The spammers are laughing at the Mass AG right now.
Re:Running to the cameras (Score:2)
Then expect Iowa's AG to do the same thing within a couple of weeks. He's the greatest "me-too" attorney general in the country.
Better than a fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this would be very fitting punishment for a spammer.
Assisted by Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
This particular tack is one that MS is uniquely positioned for, given their rather strong contacts in government (hmm) and impressive financial and personell strengths.
Hell, I wish 'em luck. It'd be nice if they'd stop with the "gain control of eMail" angle, but this approach is useful. Even if it's not overly effective or efficient, it'll be one more thing that makes spamming less worthwhile, and that can only be good.
As I always do when a spam article comes along... (Score:4, Interesting)
You know the government is screwed ... (Score:3, Funny)
$25,000 to this guy is as remarkable as your first time was to you.
on the good side (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest issue here is this is only the tip of the ice berg. And a one off wont do enough to scare spammers. Its all about volume and consistancy.