Australian Spammer Sues Back

Vilorman writes: "We've all heard the one about the spammers begin sued. Now, an Ausie spammer is suing back, for being blacklisted. Claiming damages and equipment replacement costs and so on. The whole article is over at Yahoo. So, I guess now, not only are we subjected to the spam, but we can't block it either?"

In other news...

[Bonker]

...A robber once successfully sued a homeowner because he fell out of a window and broke his leg while escaping after a heist.

This is bullshit. Spam is theft. Spammers steal the use of bandwidth, machine use, and disk space from ISPs and users. Any court who even thinks twice about letting this go to trial will be so caught up in legal technicalities that it won't hear *any* trial fairly.

Oh, get a grip.

[The Wing Lover]

So, I guess now, not only are we subjected to the spam, but we can't block it either?

People sue for things all the time. It doesn't mean that the case has any merit whatsoever.

should have known about the blacklists

[bberg]

I'm always telling my employer that if he isn't carefull we will get blacklisted, sense we are ridding a "grey line" with our mailings. I'm just waiting for the day I can tell him "I told you so". Now that he purchased an email farming program I be that day will come sooner than later.

Re:In other news...

[ChristTrekker]

Yup. If you have to defend your home with force, you're better off killing an intruder than wounding him. And if he makes it outside onto the lawn before expiring, drag him back inside just to be sure his family can't sue you for killing an innocent passer-by. *sigh* Mighty sad commentary on our screwed-up legal system.

On the other hand, this guy is innocent until proven guilty, and deserves his day in court. Is there a clause in the law that says it's your own fault if you are injured (however injury is defined in the particular situation) during commission of a crime? There should be. It could be called the "Personal Responsibility Act".

This is such a joke

[pogle]

If they're losing ~$10,000USD in 20 days, can they even afford the legal fees for long? Is it worth it for them, if they are that low profit, to invest thousands and thousands of dollars into lawyers for a court battle?

Think about it all you American /.ers...we could each send them a dollar to recoup their 'losses'.... just make sure you write something nasty about spammers on the bill.

Or we could send the bill to the guy being sued to use in his defense...we'd bury T3 Direct's legal fund in a day ;-)

Or...I could buy a soda. Mmmm...caffeine...

Precident

[gnovos]

What kind of precident will it set if he wins? Well, very simply, it will open the doors for DDoS kiddies to get away with thier attacks quite legally (in Austrailia at least) simply by making sure each ping packet that goes out contains an ad for a get rich quick scheme... This is some bad, bad stuff.

SpamAssassin

[totallygeek]

This is the beauty of Spam Assassin [spamassassin.org]. You do not blacklist or build elaborate access tables. The spammer never gets a notification that his mail violates any RFC or is triggered as spam. All that happens is you rate inbound mail by certain criteria and if it hits a scored threshhold it is placed in a container mailbox for admin review. No lawsuits can be filed...

Real legal issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for an "op-in email marketing" company. While the company in question is probably a dirty dirty spammer, the issue is still is legitimate. Since my company has historically insisted that we will only send to opt-in lists, most of the emails that we send are to people who have asked for them. Blocking our ability to deliver those messages, then, is directly interfering with business between our clients and their customers who have requested that they be contacted.

Re:Not everyone hate spam...

[Anonymous Coward]

You want his e-mail. Here is his e-mail. Can't believe he uses AOL...

Web site:
http://www.geocities.com/bdennis410/netweb.html
[e-mail]

Feel free to past his e-mail address out... I am pretty sure he will thank everyone of you helping him get more e-mail, consider HE LOVES SPAM!

Once Again, Nothing New Under the Sun

[markwelch]

This certainly isn't new. I was privileged to be sued by the "Spam King" himself (Sanford Wallace) in mid-1999 [markwelch.com]. He blamed me when his internet connection was cut by Verio after I informed Verio that Wallace was sending spam through their network. (Verio had knowingly agreed to sell service to Wallace, on the condition that he not send any unsolicited commercial email, which is like hiring a vampire to work in a blood bank and telling him he'll be fired if he drinks any blood -- it's not a question of "if," just a question of "when.")

I think Wallace may have deliberately sent me spam in order to provoke me -- he knew I'd complain since he was breaching his earlier promise to block my email addresses after earlier complaints. By provoking me to complain, he could claim a "victim" role, by falsely stating that I had "asked" to receive the emails and then unfairly complained and caused his business to lose its only internet connection (every other ISP and backbone provider had blacklisted him years earlier).

Spanford Wallace filed his suit in Pennsylvania (despite lack of jurisdiction) because he knew I'd have to hire an attorney there and spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs to dismiss the suit. He knew the suit would be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and he chose not to sue me in California because he knew that California has a SLAPP statute that would have permitted me to collect attorneys' fees and damages (Pennsylvania didn't have a SLAPP statute).

The spammers' only goals in filing lawsuits are to gain "unfair advantage" -- adverse publicity for the opponent, and deliberate choice of an inconvenient and expensive forum.

It worked for Wallace: I stopped making spam complaints for many months because I was so distracted by the lawsuit. And he also deterred others from reporting spam complaints, by loudly and publicly announcing that he (and other spammers) would not hesitate to deliberately abuse the court system in order to punish honest people who make valid complaints.

Wallace's publicity campaign was transparent: he decided to file the lawsuit one day after I appeared on CNBC regarding another consumer advocacy issue; he wanted to "piggy-back" by suing a well-known consumer advocate. He posted a copy of the lawsuit on his web site and emailed dozens of reporters just minutes after the complaint was filed (of course, I learned of the suit only when the reporters called me, and since I couldn't respond to a suit I hadn't seen, Wallace's false and malicious claims were republished as if they were true -- with no follow-up when the suit was abandoned and dismissed several months later.

Although Wallace's suit was filed in Pennsylvania despite the absence of jurisdiction, I was forced to spend $5,000 to hire a Philadelphia attorney to prepare and file a motion to dismiss (I chose an attorney who had previously obtained a judgment against Wallace). As soon as we filed the motion to dismiss, Wallace simply abandoned the lawsuit (he submitted papers to the court claiming that a "settlement had been reached," though there was no settlement.

The only good news is that I haven't heard from him since then, but of course the bad news is that he drained $5,000 of my money and a lot of my time, and simultaneously scared off someone interested in buying a web site I owned (the offer to buy my business for $350,000 was withdrawn the day after the suit was filed, and five months later I sold the business to another buyer for $175,000).

Wallace also successfully deterred many spam complaints by proving his continued willingness to abuse court processes for personal gain.)

I assume that the spammer in the current case filed a suit in the hopes of driving up others' costs and extorting a settlement.

Re:Spam stoppers are required

[phliar]

The thing with email is that it is even easier! How hard is it to push the delete key?

You wouldn't by any chance happen to be this Barry Dennis shithead, would you?

I just checked my procmail logs. How many spam messages do you think I got today? 221 messages! In one fucking day! And they're all fucking multipart MIME or have crappy fucking attachments so each message is hundreds of K in size. In contrast, even counting high-traffic mailing lists, I got 41 real messages today -- and they're all plain text so they're a few K each. This is the price I pay for having been "on the Internet" since 1986. Yup, you read that right -- sixteen years ago.

Do I have to pay for physical junk mail to get delivered to me? No. And there is exactly one third-class bundle in my physical mailbox every day, easy to toss out. Do I have to pay -- in bandwidth, disk space, and time for setting up my procmail filters -- so some piece of shit marketing jackass can make a few bucks? You bet.

Spam is killing email. You kids today, you don't know what the golden age of email was like! Email was not like sending a physical piece of mail. I could publicise my email on the network (think Usenet), and anyone anywhere could send me email and I could send email to people I'd never met before. They always replied, just like I always replied. I made many friends, got a lot of help on various matters, and helped others on various matters. Today, to be able to send me email, you have to get on my "white list" -- I only accept email from people I know.