AOL Wins Anti-Spam Case 374
saikou writes "CNet writes in this story: 'A Virginia federal court awarded America Online nearly $7 million in damages as part of the Internet service providers' legal victory over a junk e-mail operation, AOL said Monday.'
Now, given tough times we should see more and more ISPs sue (and, hopefully win) the evildoers if not for their users mailboxes sake, then for their own budget. How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"
i'm so confused (Score:5, Funny)
Re:i'm so confused (Score:5, Insightful)
They are a media conglomerate, but they are about as non-evil as they get.
They are also Microsoft's second biggest problem, and anything that annoys them is fine by me.
An enemy of an enemy...
Back on topic, money seems to be the only thing spammers care about. $7 million is bound to be an eye opener.
Re:i'm so confused (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:i'm so confused (Score:2, Informative)
Re:i'm so confused (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, now they control them, but how much has changed in these three since they got bought? Not much, just more crap was added to them to make AOL money.
Travis
Re:i'm so confused (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, you misquoted me, or didn't understand my message:
Second, perhaps you would care to explain how ICQ and Mozilla, let alone Winamp, make AOL/TW more money than they cost? Let's see... Some versions of only official ICQ beta clients display banners. We all know how successful those have been at sustaining revenue.
AOL/TW is responsible in that they are funding these projects.
Re:i'm so confused (Score:4, Insightful)
AOL is not simply being a "nice guy" in buying ICQ, Mozilla, and Winamp, though you're right that they fund Moz development. They're fighting for control of the Internet instant-messaging market, which would put them in an incredibly powerful position of control -- essentially the dominant "telecom" provider of the future. ICQ is a smart move for them to make, because it lets them consolidate the two leading messaging clients under their control (damn few people use MSN Messenger or Yahoo). TW is a media distribution company, and MS has control over Media Player, and would like nothing more than to exercise said control to attack competitors (as they have with other monopolies and competitors in the past). Winamp helps nullify that. Finally, the same goes for IE and Mozilla -- AOL is *the* big ISP, and being at the mercy of MS's potentially auto-updated web browser is a scary thing for them. Mozilla helps them quite a bit.
Again, that doesn't mean that AOL is to be hated and despised -- I think that they're a lot less dangerous than MS -- just that they're certainly looking out for #1 in these purchases.
Yup nothing's changed with Mozilla since 1998.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Not much, just more crap was added to them to make AOL money."
Yep nothing but crap added to Mozilla since then.
*rollseyes*
Nothing but the ongoing funding of Mozilla development. Oh right I forgot those Netscape employees who work on Mozilla do it for free. Netscape on their own would be bankrupt and gone today if AOL hadn't bought them. Thus Mozilla would NOT be where it is today without AOL. Yep sucks to hear, deal with it. I also noticed that ICQ and Winamp continue to be fully funded as well.
AOL may be a big bag of crap when it comes to their client software, but they served as Internet training wheels for a huge part of the Internet surfers today. They have their place.
DMCA? Not evil? (Score:5, Informative)
They are a media conglomerate, but they are about as non-evil as they get.
Time Warner was one of the biggest backers of the DMCA.
Re:i'm so confused Crack Smoking confusing you? (Score:2, Informative)
You ever try to cancel an account with them? Good three monhts before you get any results. Plus the asshole who gets rude on the phone with when you try to cancel.
There was a time when AOL was the only National ISP and most techs kept an AOL account for travel to hit email and keep in touch.
And AOL sells its own customers to spam lists. Plus the advertisements they inundate you with.
AOL bought all those companies to further there share in the marketplace. They bought Netscape(where is it now) they bought Winamp, and ICQ, which totally sucks now and gives its own nice little pop ups.
Time Warner inventing phone telemarketing as we know it. I worked in a call center running dialing systems in the early 90's.
We called people whos subsciptions were about to end, had ended, and even vaguely looked at a magazine in the airport.
Entertainment Weekly, People, Time, NewSweek, and we were hired outsourced to other magazines. And this is a Time Warner org. Still operational today. All sanctioned by time warner. BUT NOOOOOOOOO they are not evil.
AOL hates Microsoft cause they took a big part of their business. Because AOL is all about the content they want you to see. And with IE and other Browsers, it is about what you want. Sour grapes all over the place.
GEEZ
PUTO
Re:i'm so confused Crack Smoking confusing you? (Score:2)
Now, the evil media conglomerate conspiracies I'm all for, but I'd say AOL provides a friendly and easy method of getting online for people who don't know the difference between "the internet" and Internet Explorer.
Re:i'm so confused Crack Smoking confusing you? (Score:5, Informative)
While it's true that a single asshole rep shouldn't be taken as a smear on the entire company, they do have a big problem here, not just one rep. It's a structural thing. They have taken it upon themselves to make cancelling very difficult, on the apparently accurate assumption that their subscribers are rather easy to manipulate. They have a cancellation department, and those people are the only ones that can cancel your account. If you ask someone in another department, they can't transfer you, they can't even give you the number normally (unless you tell them you can't get online at all) rather they are to send you to 'keyword cancel'. There you find the number to call. There are one or two other choices, I think you can snail mail them (certified mail!), and maybe send a fax. Most people will call on the tollfree number, and it's set up to encourage that. When you call the tollfree number, you wait on hold for a fairly long period of time normally. If you hold on long enough, you eventually get a 'cancellation representative.' Now these guys are trained and expected, not to cancel your account as asked, but to find some way, any way, to talk you out of cancelling! In fact, their job performance is rated by the percentage of calls they 'save' from cancellation, and if that percentage dips below the goal, they are out looking for a job again. This can be turned to your advantage if you really didn't want to cancel, as they can and will give you free service for a month or sometimes more in order to get you off the phone without cancelling, but it's annoying as all hell if you really don't want the service. And given the pressure these kids are under to 'save' you whether you want to be saved or not, and the training they receive (adapted from the training developed for hard sell telemarketing) it's not surprising at all when one gets rude. She may, in fact, be fired for cancelling your account, so why wouldn't she be stressed out?
Your experience is somewhat dated btw, AOL in 1994 was a very different company. I don't know exactly when the system I described was put in place, but I know it's been this way since '99, and almost certainly a bit earlier, but probably not in '94 - there was a huge cultural shift at AOL after the huge expansions of the mid to late 90s.
And we wonder why business is corrupt (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) have a cancellations department
(b) make that department's contact information readily and easily available through all means which the company can be contacted (eg, no "online-only" phone list)
(c) the cancellations department's sole job is to cancel accounts. They may only ask once for a reason for cancellation and then process the cancellation. No offers, no lying, no bullshit, immediate cancellation.
Making you jump through sales hoops to cancel your account is dishonest, there's no two ways about it.
Re:i'm so confused (Score:2)
Perhaps instead of Good/Evil, we go with:
*Very Good
*Good
*Quasi-Good
*Mildly-Good
*Neutral
*Quite Evil
*Evil
*Microsoft
So, for example, AOL/Time Warner would be Somewhat Evil, and Google would be Quasi-Good.
Re:i'm so confused (Score:2)
You're not quite good enough. You're semi-good. You're quasi-good. You're the margarine of good. You're the Diet Coke of good, just one calorie, not good enough
My apologies to Dr. Evil
Re:i'm so confused (Score:2)
And all of them combined have, maybe, 2% of the popularity and recognition of Winamp, and all except perhaps two are significantly less refined, and all are significantly less tested.
Yeah, and Stalin looks like a regular saint compared to Hitler.
I'm not saying AOL/TW is saintly, but they are pretty good for a large media company. They could be a lot worse, yet all I hear is complaining. How about recognizing them for not being total pricks?
Read the papers some time. AOL/TW's biggest problem is AOL/TW.
I wasn't talking about AOL/TW's problems, I was saying that AOL is Microsoft's second biggest problem.. I Don't particularly care if AOL/TW is having problems within themselves. They are a corporation, they'll just have to deal with it.
How much is spam free worth? (Score:2)
LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a paying subscriber and I *still* get pop-up ads from them!
Re:LOL! (Score:3, Informative)
Now to get back at the millionare spammer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now to get back at the millionare spammer (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anybody dig up Jay Nelson's home address? Imagine if every spammer that makes his name in any headlines gets slammed with junk snail-mail. It might just raise the cost of spamming to a level that would be prohibitive.
Does this include... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
I want to SHOOT them.
Seriously, I think if the Mafia went after spammers, we'd be seeing a whole heckofa lot less spam.
The drawback to that is there probably isn't enough ocean to hold all of the spammers they'll give concrete shoes to.
Can we colonize Mars with spammers that lost a lawsuit?
Re:Not good enough. (Score:4, Funny)
They'd take over the operation. Then, what do you do with an offer you can't refuse?
That is absoutely disgusting... (Score:3, Funny)
Think of the marine life who would be poisoned!
Better to just shoot them into a distant star. Not our sun, beacuse all of the hot gasses inside of spammers might cause it to go nova a bit early.
wait a second... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wait a second... (Score:2)
Re:wait a second... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are reasons to dislike AOL, but their attitude towards spam is not one.
I like AOL because:
- they've funded mozilla for so long,
- they made a nice open-source webserver, and
- they actually work to fight spam.
I dislike AOL for a number of reasons I won't bother to iterate here. Basically, they're a mixed bag, like most big companies.Re:wait a second... (Score:2)
AOLServer is open source? (Score:4, Interesting)
No kidding? AOLServer is open-source? I always figured it was some closed, propriatary thing, but it's free and Free, according to sourceforge. Son of a gun.
AOL's products kind of suck, but unlike MS they can't (or don't) force you to interact with them. So, yeah, I suppose I like AOL more than MS.
"Evildoers?!?!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Evildoers?!?!" (Score:2, Funny)
Re:"Evildoers?!?!" (Score:3, Interesting)
not all spam is evil, but many spam messages are
misleading
most of these can be considered as some sort of evil
Re:"Evildoers?!?!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Evildoers?!?!" (Score:5, Interesting)
May I beg to differ? Why thank you.
If you subscribe to the notion of "evil" at all, it comes in many shapes and forms. There are enormous evils like the Holocaust and Stalin's murderous rampages through the Soviet population. There are small but still potent evils like small boys torturing animals.
Obviously spam is not "evil" on the scale of the Nazis/pick your favorite world-scale evil. The interesting thing is that sending a single piece of spam is a very small evil. Does the fact that billions of these small acts of evil have been committed add up to a large evil?
Is evil additive?
disagree (Score:2)
Then of course, there are side effects like getting porn at work in email all because I'm on some list I can't rid my name from. What if I get fired for that? (Unlikley, but still).
If you had the abiility to put a nail in the tire of a million people a day, I would call that evil as well. Spam is the ability to annoy people brought to the level where it does, in my mind, become worthy of being labeled evil.
Customers to get their share? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Customers to get their share? (Score:2)
Or, should I say,
SIGN UP ME NOW!!! ASL??? MONEY FOR ME!!! WOOT!
(sorry, I've been at work for the last 14 hours, and the rest of the week looks like it'll be worse. Please pardon any excess sarcasm from me until after the new year)
oh wow fantastic (Score:2)
I don't know about you guys, but this is not good news at all. I'm still hoping AOL goes down.
Re:oh wow fantastic (Score:2)
So what exactly is the current status of AOL as a spam-friendly ISP now?
Re:oh wow fantastic (Score:2)
Up to 25% (Score:2)
25% ?!?!?! Holy dilly bars (tasty Dairy Queen treats).
Don't send spam (Score:2, Funny)
Put advertisements on CD's and mail them everywhere.
Cool. (Score:2)
I'd pay to see that...
Time to sue UUNet/Wordcom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to sue UUNet/Wordcom? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Time to sue UUNet/Wordcom? (Score:3, Interesting)
But in UUNet's case, they are not saying "we want to pretend to some misunderstanding of common carrier notion, so we won't interfer with customers who spam from us." Their Acceptable Use Policy says that they don't allow spammers on their net.
The simple fact of the matter is that they lying about their policy. They do allow spammers (but claim otherwise), as long as those spammers pay a premium for "bullet proof hosting". (No, I don't have specific evidence of this in UU.net's case. But there is evidence of these kinds of contracts in general and it is the only way to explain the pattern of UU.net's selective enforcement of their AUP.) Also consider the fact that UU.net collaborates with spammers that they host to reduce complaints without reducing the spam.
Re:Time to sue UUNet/Wordcom? (Score:2)
they stopped spamming me a long time ago. I made thier sales drones suffer by forwarding all the spam back to sales@uu.net, in addition to abuse. of course uu.net abuse was ignored. went from 5-10 spams per day via uu.net to one every 3 or 4 months.
oooh it hurst to say this but... (Score:2)
US postal (Score:5, Funny)
1,000,000,000 hours free! Because no one really wants dial-up.
Business plan (Score:3, Funny)
2. Sue spammers
3. PROFIT!!!!!!
Re: Fwd: FA$T CA$H 339dj3jjK (Score:5, Funny)
Are you having trouble paying your bills and affording subscriptions to all those porn sites?
Well our unique money making system will ensure that you can claim squillions of dollars in just a few short weeks.
Yes, based on the recent spamming decision in favor of AOL, we've produced a set of reports that you can use to earn a fortune!
By following the simple instructions contained in these reports, you can set up your own tiny ISP operation and your own spamhaus.
Then, after you've sent *yourself* several million spam messages, we show you how to get the courts to award you $7 million in damages against yourself
It's so easy anyone can do it.
But hurry, supplies of these important reports are strictly limited so don't miss out.
Do not reply to this email, we made a small typo when entering the address - it's not Ajj389782@yahoo.com it's actually zw99qwX@hotmail.com.
Or you can ring our toll-free 19-00 number and speak to one of our friendly Romanian operators who are waiting to take your order.
NOTE: this email is not spam, it has been sent because you (or someone with your hair-color) filled out a contact form on our website.
If you wish to be unsubscribed from our special offers mailing list then simply send an email to signmeup@spamhaus.spam.spam
38enmdu3nmd3i393je
the legal system (Score:3, Interesting)
AOL: We have your settlement money (Score:5, Funny)
Mumar Zibutu
Former King of Nigeria
Spam Hunters (Score:2)
My usual suggestion would be taxing spam, licensing it at non-viable rates, etc. The results would be used to help defray the cost of the infrastructure, and to compensate spam victims.
and of course, you would need bounty hunters to track down the ones who are using fraudulent information.
Licensing is to verify correct legal data on spammers.
Personally, I think spammers should wear their spam licenses out in the open in public, so everyone knows who they are. Extra bonus brownie points if the spam licenses are large bright orange tags attached to the ears.
Re:Spam Hunters (Score:5, Funny)
Nah. Brightly colored concentric circles, centered on the chest.
The alternatives? Many! (Score:4, Interesting)
And sending commercial email under the guise of someone else (ie - using my email address in the FROM: header) ) should result in very heavy fines (may I suggest to the legislators a punitive fine of US$25000 per email destination)
Some free speech advocates will complain about a loss of their freedom to send commercial information to deserving customers. Happily, there are still countless avenues to communicate to these deserving souls: telephone, personal visits, snail mail, newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads, pre-movie ads, magazines, movie product placements, tv show product placements, yellow pages, airplane banners, billboards, etc.
And the other 1%? (Score:3, Funny)
What's the other 1%? Desirable or cheap?
Good AOL, Bad AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they will pave the way for an Internet with less and less spam. If John Q Public wants to use AOL more power to him. There are many alternatives readily available. So what if he doesn't care that its simple and remedial when compared to what other ISPs can do. How many times have you (me too) rationalized a somewhat if not wholly impractical decision?
Re:Good AOL, Bad AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, you're absolutely right. And some of us, who where here before AOL ever existed, aren't exactly pleased...
A.
who are the morons taking the bait? (Score:3, Informative)
found here [toymania.com].
Everyone has seen at least 20 of these in their own inbox.
Based on volume of messages as a percentage of all spam, the following Subject lines top the list in 2002:
1. "Protect Your Computer Against Viruses for $9.95"
Anti-virus software spam was the most common this year
2. "Verification Department"
Credit card scam spam has been especially in recent months
3. "Refinancing? Get a FREE quote on any mortgage loan program"
Mortgage spam holds its ground this year as a classic
4. "Printer Cartridges - Save up to 80% - Free Shipping Offer"
Printer cartridge spam, also a classic, is still one of the top spams
5. "Miniature Remote Control Car. Great Gift!"
A newer spam, an email about toy cars for the holidays has hit email accounts at full throttle in recent months
6. "$100 F R E E, Please Play Now!"
Casino spam continued to stake out email inboxes worldwide
7. "Online Auction Marketing Secrets!"
Online auction marketing scams bid heavily on email users this year
8. "Important news Kuira"
Septic system spam seeped rapidly through the Internet for quite some time in early 2002
9. "URGENT & CONFIDENTIAL."
Nigerian scam spam asked millions of email users to help free-up usurped royal coffers this year
10. "GET A FREE PASS TO THOUSANDS OF XXX SITES!"
Pornographic email slithered into inboxes, including those of children
I would love to meet the people who actually respond to these mass emails. I'm guessing this [homestarrunner.com] isn't too far from the truth.
jealousy? (Score:2)
Too bad my ISP doesn't do that.
Of course, the rest of their (AOL) "service" sucks...
This is not a victory at large... (Score:5, Interesting)
Once a backbone provider (like Level3 or %Bell%) gets up the gusto to throw this kind of lawsuit at spammers (and offshore spammers), we may actually see some reprieve.
Until then... "So easy to avoid spam, no wonder it's number one!"
Re:This is not a victory at large... (Score:2)
The only way to pursuade the backbone providers would be for AOL the tell them "Kick the spammers and spamhausen off your networks, or we
However, it is unlikely that AOL will do this. Consider - Exodus is pretty spammer friendly, but were AOL to block all Exodus IPs then nobody on AOL could access
Sueing could solve my edu's budget problems (Score:5, Interesting)
In the last 34 hours or so, since the logs last rotated, my server has received almost 1000 spams and blocked the delivery of over 8000 more. I'll call that 6000 spams in 24 hours. This is just one mail server on a large campus with many different mail servers.
At $60,000 a day (dreaming) per machine a cluster of honeypots could wipe out the university's $11 million budget defecit in a week or two.
Re:Sueing could solve my edu's budget problems (Score:2)
Maybe they could afford to hire someone who is literate, too!
Re:Sueing could solve my edu's budget problems (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally never really saw any reason to try to go after spammers legally, as I'd always just considered spam a common annoyance. But when spam gets in big enough volumes, its really an inadvertent attack.
Just in case anyone cares (Score:2, Informative)
AOL Could Double Their Short Term Profits (Score:2)
Who knows, maybe they could make a business model out of this by allowing those people to sign up again and repeat the process...
Yes, this was a joke, don't take it too seriously.
Bah...I'd need a full time staff to do that (Score:2)
With the amount of spam I get, it would take a full time legal staff to do this. That would kind of cancel the benefit of the $9.95 discount.
spam fighting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Although this was said in semi-jest, I think it is a good idea.
Imagine if they had some sort of centralized spam-reporting system. Everytime you got spam, you registered it (much like CloudMark [cloudmark.com]'s model). Come lawsuit time, you (depending on how much spam you registered) get a chance to cash in on all the spam they sent you.
Scary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, spam costs you money - but so does looking through all the junk mail you get at home - that filtering can take a minute or too - the same amount of time as clicking delete on your computer.
I just don't know if this is something that you truely want to support if you get to the root of the issue.
I sued in VA and I WON! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://purplecow.com/vaspam/ [purplecow.com]
I hope to offer a service soon that will help VA residents (and other states which have anti-spam laws) sue spammers. If we can all do our part, thousands of lawsuits against spammers will get them to stop!
Discount (Score:3, Insightful)
They could offer a small bounty for every spam header you recieve on their network that you forward to their legal department. A small percentage of any legal reward from spam you recieved could be awarded.
Like the lottery.
Maybe not such a good idea.
Can anyone come up with a community-centric constructive idea? Something that will combat spam and encourage good ettiquite. Like recycling, getting five cents back for every bottle. I used to do that, when I could get that bounty back. I was a kid, so I'd go around picking up bottles and asking neighbors for their bottles.
What to do with the money? (Score:4, Interesting)
This could be good AND bad (Score:3, Interesting)
But what kind of precedent is this setting? Could this be abused too?
Let's analyze what is happening here. One person has the right to sue another because they sent a mass email. How else can that be twisted?
What about internal email? Can a person be sued because they informed everyone in the company about a bake sale for their church? After all, they ARE promoting their religion with an unsolicited email. What if somebody used a quote from Carl Marx as their sig line? Is that offensive enough to be sued over?
I am sure that everyone here can think of other examples. The point is, one particular freedom has been abused by the few, therefore, it is being taken away from the many. What else can this lead to?
Just a thot.
are you kidding me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this for real?
Let me get this straight, AOL used to sell email addresses of its subscribers to 'similar-industries' as part of its EULA. The business model used to be based on advertising as of a few months ago when the backlash against all the pop-ups came. They then realized that most of their customers were leaving because of all these ads. Now that AOL has decided to kill its advertising based revenue stream, they are TAKING TO COURT the same companies that they used to sell email addresses to?
You think its a joke, start your own email server under your own domain. I havent recieved ONE piece of SPAM since I started doing that
I guess thats an interesting way to replace the revenue stream
Er, why is it... (Score:3, Funny)
New business model! (Score:3, Funny)
2) Sue customors
3) $$$!
Re:How many times does it have to be said? (Score:2)
Re:How many times does it have to be said? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How many times does it have to be said? (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't like it very much. You'd hate it in fact if it were a regular thing. While SPAM may no be trespassing, it is often fraud and that is against the law. When it's not fraud, it's often done through the use of stolen resources (in terms of server space, bandwidth, or personal information). Those too are crimes.
The few bits of spam you actually do get from legit businesses with interesting products or services are so drown out by the pure flood of crap that those who are trying to do real business without breaking any laws are harmed by the rest of the spammers.
Thus, spam isn't free speech. It's dishonest, it's annoying, it's unethical, and it's harmful to legit internet-based business.
I'm not saying spam should be outlawed altogether. I am saying that current laws should be enforced strictly against current spammers. Most of them are guilty of at least one serious crime even if it's simply an invasion of privacy.
Re:How many times does it have to be said? (Score:2)
It certainly is protected (albeit, commercial) speech to put a note in your mailbox alluding to "Dirty Cheap Viagra."
It's little more than an annoyance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is no constitutional right to send (Score:3, Insightful)
SPAMMING is stealing! You do not have a constitutional right to use my servers and my computers for advertising. I am not allowed to force you to take collect calls so I can sell you my crap.
Re:How many times does it have to be said? (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst spam, the spam that should be prosecuted, and the spam that should be destroyed, lies to the reader. The spam likely has forged headers. A lie. The spam likely has a misleading subject line. A line. The spam most likely has claims that goes beyond the traditional advertising hyperbole. A lie. The spam may fraudulently indicate that I signed up on a list. A lie. The spam may indicate a fraudult removal claim. A lie.
There is no way that fraudulent advertising speech is covered my the first amendment. Hyperbolic speech, probably, but not outright lies.
Not a bad thing (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The spammer stops spamming.
2. Starts a trend of spam not being profitable
Re:time to collect... or not. (Score:2)
1. The spammer stops spamming.
2. Starts a trend of spam not being profitable
Not really, they'll probably continue business, just under a different name. That's the problem with modern corporate structure. When individuals become shielded from liability, there's little to no accountability.
And you can thank the Bush administration (which one? both!) for helping that process along.
A game of whackamole (Score:5, Insightful)
Set up numerous little companies so that those which run into problems (such as being a box-office bust or having the snot sued out of them) can be bankrupted at no real cost to the people behind them.
I would expect that these spamhaus companies would rent their computers and other "assets" from a parent company at a rate equal to the revenues the spamming generated. That parent company would (of course) be a legally separate entity. This means that when the sued company is bankrupted for failure to pay the fines, it has neither assets nor cash in the bank and the spammers don't lose a penny.
It's a strategy that's been used countless times before in many different industries. The only losers are the *real* creditors who are unfortunate to lose their money -- but in this case that serves them right for dealing with a spammer anyway.
Re:A game of whackamole (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it is a roadblock, but not insurmountable.
maybe the answer... (Score:2)
Re:time to collect... or not. (Score:4, Interesting)
(I'm expecting a lot of Catholic church buildings around Boston will be sold soon; likely to the Vatican with a lease-back contract, but providing plenty of cash for settlements. Just my guess.)
Re:do they? (Score:2)
Instead of mailing out AOL CD's with AOL install softare, how about just blank-CDr's with a huge AOL advert on the label? They'll give out something everyone can use, as well as expanding their exposure (if that is possible). In addition, when we share our photos and other files with family and friends, they'll see the AOL ad too...unless of course you slap on your own label on top of it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Bull****. (Score:2)
That is all. :)