Fax-Spammers fax.com Sued For 2.2 Trillion 353
linuxwrangler writes "Fed up with junk faxes which have been illegal since 1991, a Silicon Valley businessman has launched a lawsuit against junk faxer fax.com. Steve Kirsch seeks the damages provided in the law: $500/fax for the last four years. If certified as a class-action on behalf of the 3 million receipients of the faxes that fax.com claims to send each day the total damages would reach 2.2 billion even without invoking the "triple-damages" clause for "willful" violations. Federal regulators hit fax.com with a 5.4 million fine just two weeks ago after the company ignored numerous warnings from the FCC and was found to be in "flagrant violation" of the law. Fax.com maintains that their actions are protected by the constitution and court decisions in this case could lay the foundation for the future of junk email regulation"
The Budget (Score:1, Informative)
Read the article... (Score:3, Informative)
Do the math... (Score:3, Informative)
2) They could both be right, if linuxwrangler is British (sorry, too lazy to check), since on the west side of the pond a trillion is a million million, while on the east side, that number is called a 'billion' (which in my head makes more sense anyway)...
3) Either way, it's a helluva lot of money to be fined, and would [ probably | hopefully ] kill off the company involved...
Re:"Firewalls" for fax machines? (Score:2, Informative)
But not all hope is lost, many telecoms offer services that block calls from unknown and blocked numbers. That is, unless the other party enters their phone number. So, simply by signing up for services like these, you can protect your fax machine from receiving the junk.
Re:Do the math... (Score:2, Informative)
1,000 * 1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000 (one billion)
Maybe you meant to say that a British trillion is the same as an north american billion?
Re:The Budget (Score:4, Informative)
According to the Office of Management and Budget [gpo.gov], total spending of the U.S. Fed. govt in fiscal year 2002 was $2.052 trillion.
Re:Like it was.. 1999 (Score:2, Informative)
That would only apply if they're a partnership, which I'd bet they're not.
Corporations are limited liability, meaning that the shareholders are not liable for the debts of the company.
You could, conceivably, get some money out of the executives of fax.com, though.
The Law in question (Score:5, Informative)
This law makes it illegal "to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine." The term "unsolicited advertisement'' is defined as "any material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person without that person's prior express invitation or permission." Damages are set at actual monetary damages, or $500, whichever is greater. The court may increase the damages up to three times this amount if it finds the defendant "willfully or knowingly" violated this law.
Under federal law, these unsolicited faxes are illegal, but fax advertisers simply ignore the law because few people know about and exercise their private right of action.
Jurisdiction
State courts are expressly given jurisdiction under 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(3). The following federal court cases have found that state courts have sole jurisdiction under this law:
International Science and Technology Institute, Inc. v. Inacom Communications, Inc., 106 F.3d 1146 (4th Cir. 1997)
Chair King, Inc. v. Houston Cellular Corporation, 1997 WL 768609 (5th Cir. 12/15/97);
Foxhall Realty Law Offices, Inc. v. Telecommunications Premium Services, LTD, 975 F.Supp. 329 (S.D.N.Y. 1997)
Re:Read the article... (Score:3, Informative)
1,500,000,000$/day x 365 days/year == 547,500,000,000$ / year
547,500,000,000$ / year x 4 years == 2,190,000,000,000$
It's well within the law, and they're only using the numbers that Fax.com has supplied them with.
Bad math. (Score:2, Informative)
BTW if you want to know why the judge won't make the damages class action it's simple. Fax.com isn't going to argue for it, and these two guys lawyers want to hit fax.com to pay the legal fees, as well as take a percantage of the damages. If they lost a class action lawsuit they'd be shut down completely, and any outstanding creditors would have first take on any assets they had left.
And if they loose the private lawsuit that would essentially kill their junk fax buisness anyways.
And while it may someday affect spam rulings, it's already pretty clear that e-mail messages don't fall under the anti-junk fax law. Potentially, loosing a private lawsuit could force them into converting into an UCE company, since that is only illegal in a handful of places.
Only incoming messages you're required to pay for are covered under that law, like say cell phone calls (if you're billed by the minute) or SMS messages (if you're charged per message recieved.) Frankly, I'd rather that UCEs be required to pay a fee (per spam), and be required to put ADV is both machine and human readable text in the subject line. The fee could cover the costs incurred by ISPs to carry all that mail traffic, and by requiring ADV in the subject people and companies especially can filter it out easily.
The upside of 'legitmizing UCE' is that instead of a 'war on spam' we can just focus on the people who are unwilling to play by the offically sanctioned rules of the game.
Basically if legit companies want to send out mass-mailings, they would have a legitimate way to do so, and so they wouldn't offer affiliate programs who harvest and spam people to make money. Even scam artists who wanted to look legit might be forced to follow the official rules, because it would be too easy to say, "well if it doesn't have ADV in the subject then it's a scam for 100% sure.."
The problem is that it's almost as much of a war to get established rules set up. People have been talking about ADV tags on usenet almost since when spamming still meant cross-posting to more than one or two newsgroups (or at all, depending on who's defintion you go by).
go after the customer (Score:4, Informative)
So I complained to Sun and Computer Associates (the two biggest donors to the Center) and very quickly I got an appology from the center's director and the junk fax stopped. Until about 2 months ago when it started up again.
text of letter:
We are sorry that you have been inconvenienced
with the fax transmissions sent out by Fax.com.
If you will provide me with your fax numbers, I
will contact Fax.com and request that they remove
your numbers immediately from their database.
Our ability to use Fax.com to distribute posters
of missing children has been a great success and
has resulted in the recovery of a number of
missing children. We certainly understand your
request and will make every effort to stop the
transmissions to you when you provide me with your
fax numbers.
I am forwarding a copy of your fax message request
to Fax.com
--
Ben J. Ermini, Director
NCMEC Missing Children's Division
703-837-6236
and the response to my reply:
Thank you for your rapid response. I have directed Fax.com to remove your fax
number from their database.
Fax.com has assured us that all NCMEC poster fax transmissions are sent to fax
numbers that have agreed to participate in the poster distribution program.
We are sorry for any inconvenience that we have caused you.
Ben J. Ermini
---
so once again spammers lie. My fax is unlisted etc, and never opted into any such program.
sorry if this is long winded by fax spammers are even worse than email spammers in my book
Re:Do the math... (Score:2, Informative)
So, you don't need the US "billion", as we already have a name for that - "Thousand Million" (think "Hundred Thousand" and scale up!)
- Ten
- Hundred
- Thousand (the US count in tens of hundreds here?)
- Ten Thousand
- Hundred Thousand
- Million
- Ten Million
- Hundred Million
- Thousand Million
- Billion [Phew - here at last]
- Ten Billion
- Hundred Billion
- Thousand Billion
- Ten Thousand Billion
- Hundred Thousand Billion
- Million Billion
- Ten Million Billion
- etc etc
you get the ideaRe:Like it was.. 1999 (Score:2, Informative)
Chapter -7- on the otherhand...that's liquidation
Re:1st amendment rights? (Score:3, Informative)