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Spam Government Privacy The Courts Your Rights Online News

Good Guys 2, Spammers 0 415

Posted by timothy from the except-for-the-rest-of-the-score dept.
JoeJob writes "A couple of victories in the legal war against spammers. First, a Washington resident has been awarded a $250,000 decision against a spammer that sent him 58,000 copies of a spam. Second, looks like the spammers who are trying to sue Spamhaus, SPEWS, and other spam blacklists have decided to tuck their tails and run. Let's hope this trend continues." If you care to celebrate this, one food springs to mind.
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Good Guys 2, Spammers 0 More

Good Guys 2, Spammers 0

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  • This is what it has come down (to) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by trolman ( 648780 ) * on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:51PM (#6923539) Journal
    When you look at the big picture CAUCE [cauce.org] and the likes will prove to be the Open Source solution to the problem. Those other guys are just doing it for the banner ads.

    Back in the day; when the debate about allowing comerical interest on the Internet fired up, many predicted that today' situation would be the outcome... *soft crap destroying the backbone and .com(ers) diluting the content to the lowest common denominator.

  • I won't be happy till (Score:5, Funny)

    by greechneb ( 574646 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:54PM (#6923576) Journal
    i won't be happy until there is no spam at all.... That, or capital punishment. Nothing like deterring spam with a good caneing. Anyone who recieves a copy of the spam gets to give the offender a whack. In extreme cases (porn sent to childrens email address, etc.) the spammer is sent to a federal -pound me in the ass- prison. Don't even ask about what happens for the penis enlargement senders ;)

    • If you get the capital punishment you will be happy?

      You must really hate that spam.

      • Re:So.. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Frymaster ( 171343 )
        You must really hate that spam.

        or really hate freedom.

        nobody likes spam, sure, but this whole scene is really about encouraging the government to regulate communication. i find it amazing that the slashdot crowd who are usually such virulent defenders of an unfettered internet are more than willing to give the government more control when it comes to penis-pill ads!

        if you don't like spam, do something about it. filter, build a honeypot relay, whatever. but don't go whining to the feds demanding they r

        • find it amazing that the slashdot crowd who are usually such virulent defenders of an unfettered internet are more than

          We only support freedom if it doesn't bother us.

          • Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Oliver Wendell Jones ( 158103 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:21PM (#6924450)
            We only support freedom if it doesn't bother us.

            We only support freedom/rights as long as they don't overlap our own freedom/rights.

            In other words,

            Your right to walk down the street swinging your arms around like a windmill ends where the tip of my nose begins.

            Your right to listen to your choice of music at your choice of volumes ends at the point where I can hear it.

            Your right to speak (including sending spam) ends at the point where I decide I don't want to hear it any more.

            In my opinion spam is worse than telemarketing phone calls and if there can be federal regulations that keep somewhat legit telemarketers from interrupting my dinner, there is no reason there can't be similar legislation that stops spam from filling my inbox.

            It's Wednesday afternoon and my 'Probable Junk Mail' folder already has 228 messages in it since quitting time last Friday. Someone sold part of our corporate e-mail list to a spammer and I'm one of the lucky few to be in that group. I can't even begin to imagine how much spinning drive space is currently occupied by spam messages in my employer's computer systems (dozens of GB I'm sure) let alone the entire world...

            • Re:So.. (Score:3, Funny)

              by Xerithane ( 13482 )
              Your right to speak (including sending spam) ends at the point where I decide I don't want to hear it any more.

              I then, to prove a point, revoke your right to speak as I don't want to hear it anymore.

              Thank you, and have a nice lifetime of quiet solitude. I appreciate it.
              • But... but...

                Damn...

              • Re:So.. (Score:3, Insightful)

                by shamino0 ( 551710 )
                I then, to prove a point, revoke your right to speak as I don't want to hear it anymore.

                Go right ahead. Add him to the "Foes" page of your SlashDot account and configure it to mod all his articles down to -1. Voila, you don't have to hear it anymore.

                This forum is a perfect agument against you - anybody can speak, and you can choose to block anybody you don't want to listen to.

        • Actually, what I meant was that, the way he phrased it, it sounded like he would only be happy if he got the capital punishment himself.

        • Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dimensio ( 311070 ) <darkstar@NoSpam.iglou.com> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:05PM (#6924270)
          or really hate freedom.

          Good point. I mean, if I want to spray-paint advertisements on the side of your house, and then charge you for the materials used, that's my right! Free speech and freedom and all that, right?

        • Re:So.. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Eggplant62 ( 120514 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:16PM (#6924379)
          You must really hate that spam. or really hate freedom. nobody likes spam, sure, but this whole scene is really about encouraging the government to regulate communication. i find it amazing that the slashdot crowd who are usually such virulent defenders of an unfettered internet are more than willing to give the government more control when it comes to penis-pill ads!
          We love freedom, freedom from assholes who think that they own our inboxes. A marketer's right to push his information into my living room ends at my doorstep, whether it be physical or electronic. This isn't about freedom of speech in this case at all, as it's been determined before that commercial entities have a very limited right to freedom of speech.

          See U.S. Supreme Court
          ROWAN v. U. S. POST OFFICE DEPT., 397 U.S. 728

          Chief Justice BURGER delivered the opinion of the Court:

          "Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit.... The ancient concept that 'a man's home is his castle' into which 'not even the king may enter' has lost none of its vitality.... We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. That we are often 'captives' outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere.... The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain."

          You can read the entire Supreme Court decision on the FindLaw web page (http://www.findlaw.com/). The specific URL is http://www.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US &vol=397&invol=728 [findlaw.com].

          Then of course, there's the CyberPromo/AOL lawsuit, in which the judge held that CP had no First Amendment right to send UCE to AOL's customers. The transcript for that case can be found at:

          http://www.leepfrog.com/E-Law/Cases/Cyber_Promo_v_ AOL.html [leepfrog.com]

          Note: Most of this was lifted verbatim from Message-ID: 343A9BBF.4340@stanford.edu

        • Re:So.. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by DoctorPepper ( 92269 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:17PM (#6924392)
          but don't go whining to the feds demanding they regulate a free and open communications channel.

          Actually, it's not a free communications channel. You, me, and everyone else that connects to the internet has to pay for that connection.

          Unlike television and radio, where advertisements are a necessary requirement in order to enjoy free reception (if you have cable, it's your own fault! TV and radio are broadcast free to you) of the programs, spam actually unnecessarily consumes bandwidth and time, especially for those on dial-up and/or metered accounts, and enriches no body but the spammer.

          Spam is like all that junk mail you get in your snail mail box every day, except the spammer doesn't even have to pay bulk postage rates.

          Whereas TV and radio ads are a kind of symbiosis, where you agree to watch the ads (whether you really do or not), and you get the programming for free, spam is like a parasite. It rides along on the internet, not paying for the bandwidth it steals from people, and clogging their in-box with worthless junk.

        • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:50PM (#6924781)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:I won't be happy till (Score:5, Insightful)

      by why-is-it ( 318134 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:01PM (#6923647) Homepage Journal
      i won't be happy until there is no spam at all....

      Then I guess you won't be happy.

      Look at the articles that show that there are enough gullible people out there to give the spammers a viable (if repugnant) business model.

      I figure the bogus lawsuits against spamhaus present a good way for us to fight back. If we can take down some of the main offenders, it won't necessarily reduce the amount of spam we get, but it might act as a bit of a deterrent for some of the other pond scum.

      We need to fix the SMTP protocol to put these guys out of business for good. That, or a bullet...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Don't even ask about what happens for the penis enlargement senders

      They are sent to Federal PMINTA Prisons, and their cellmates are given viagara and enlargment pills that work?
    • AFAIK, caning is "corporal punishment", not capital. Capital = death, corporal = physical.

      And I agree - bring back the cane!

    • "That, or capital punishment. Nothing like deterring spam with a good caneing."

      Damn. And I thought the electric chair was a cruel way of killing people. Still, very creative indeed! Have you ever considered a career at the RIAA?

    • > i won't be happy until there is no spam at all.... That, or capital punishment. Nothing like deterring spam with a good caneing.

      Um, I'm sure you mean corporal punishment, not capital punishment. Capital punishment equates to a death sentence. But maybe when we're talking about spammers both are appropriate?

    • Re:I won't be happy till (Score:5, Funny)

      by osjedi ( 9084 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:45PM (#6924084)


      I won't be happy until someone sends me 58,000 copies of a spam message and I get paid $250,000 for it. That's $4.31 per message. I would love it and ask for more. I would even invest in more bandwidth and a server farm so they could send it to me faster.

  • Virus Spam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by schnarff ( 557058 ) <(alex) (at) (schnarff.com)> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:55PM (#6923580) Homepage Journal
    Too bad it'd never be feasible to penalize all of the people who aren't patching their systems and thus flooding people's inboxes with virus spam. I'm still getting hundreds, sometimes thousands of fscking "Your Details" e-mails every day -- despite the fact that the problem was widely publicized and (supposedly) widely patched. In a way, this is worse than spam, because not only do I often get more virus mails than regular spams, I *know* I'm using a lot more bandwidth on all the SoBig.F crap...but until it's ever feasible to punish folks who won't/can't patch their systems, I guess we're stuck with this crap, too.

    • Re:Virus Spam (Score:3, Informative)

      by grub ( 11606 )

      You can filter at the server end based on subject:
      # "Subject" blocks
      LOCAL_CONFIG
      HSubject: $>Subject
      D{Subject}Re: My details
      SSubject
      R${Subject} $#error $: "553 Reject - Likely worm infection."
      Of course if you don't run your own server, you're SOL.

      • Re:Virus Spam (Score:2, Informative)

        by schnarff ( 557058 )
        # "Subject" blocks
        LOCAL_CONFIG
        HSubject: $>Subject
        D{Subject}Re: My details
        SSubject
        R${Subject} $#error $: "553 Reject - Likely worm infection."

        You've probably got a good point here -- but it'd be an even better one if you mentioned what mail server this little recipe worked with. Would you be so kind as to post that info, so I and other mail server admins might be able to use it?

    • Re:Virus Spam (Score:2, Interesting)

      by giftzwerg ( 697798 )
      I *know* I'm using a lot more bandwidth on all the SoBig.F crap...but until it's ever feasible to punish folks who won't/can't patch their systems, I guess we're stuck with this crap, too.

      The problem is that these new-age "viruses" aren't lethal enough - infected systems spew digital crap for years without themselves being affected.

      What some helpful soul should do is wait a week after a new virus appears, so that everyone has plenty of time to patch against it, and then release a version of that exact vi

    • I'm still getting hundreds, sometimes thousands of fscking "Your Details" e-mails every day -- despite the fact that the problem was widely publicized and (supposedly) widely patched.

      Heck. I'm running a completely non-microsoft shop and am still getting bogus bounces from mail transfer agents warning me that I might be infected, because the darned worm found my "Rod" address in somebody's address book and is masquerading as me.

      (But at least the author of ONE of the darned MTA firewalls had the cluefulln

    • Re:Virus Spam (Score:2, Informative)

      by PhoenixRising ( 36999 )
      There's a huge problem with this approach. Satisfying though it might be to punish such people, it's typically not their fault that they are ignorant. How can someone's grandma, who's still trying to figure out this "email" thing, be expected to know that she needs to purchase a firewall and install it, keep up to date with all the Windows patches /and/ all the patches for other applications that she has, and purchase a copy of an anti-virus program and a subscription to their update service? Even someti

      • Re:Virus Spam (Score:3, Insightful)

        by evanbd ( 210358 )
        How is this different from regular maintenence on a car? I'm required to keep my car up to date on polution standards; if I don't keep my car well maintained and the breaks fail and cause an accident, I'm liable for the damages (though insurance exists for that), etc, etc. How is expecting a random pc user to keep up to date on patches any different than expecting a random driver to keep up to date on state inspections? And before you complain about expecting too much of people, if they were legally requ

  • Now that's sleazy! (Score:5, Funny)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:55PM (#6923587)
    "We are not satisfied that petitioner presently possesses the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law," wrote the state's Supreme Court panel [regarding Attorney Mark Felstein]

    When a group of lawyers thinks you are too sleazy to join them, then that's really saying something!

    • Isn't Grouch Marx supposed to have said "I don't want to join any club that would let me be a member" ... maybe this is the reverse case, maybe the supreme court panel is saying the guy isn't sleazy enough ...

      • Re:Whoa! (Score:2)

        by El ( 94934 )
        No, he represents spammers... they're right below child molesters on the popularity list. So the problem must be that he doesn't have sufficient moral character to be a lawyer. That's kinda like not having sufficient education to work at McDonald's!
    • ...but the first image that came to mind when I read your post was Anubis from Stargate SG1. "He was banned from the system lords because his crimes were unspeakable, even for them."

      Kjella

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by elid ( 672471 ) <eli@ipod.gmail@com> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:56PM (#6923592)
    58,000 separate offers to make $10,000 each = a lot more $$$$ than the $250,000 he got He obviously picked the wrong option in suing

  • Musubi (Score:5, Informative)

    by drpentode ( 586437 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:56PM (#6923597)
    Spam and rice is what my Hawaiian college buddies called it. You could smell it all the way down the drom hall. And it tastes really good. Really. ;) Kind of reminds me of sushi, only saltier.
  • Anti-spam litigants seem pretty similar to the RIAA in their tactics of making it hurt--financially--for illegal activity. I will be interested to see if each side continues to be successful and if it ultimately causes the behavior changes (in spam and music file-sharing) that they desire.

    Unfortunately, I think that the RIAA's financial clout is likely to give it a greater chance of success than individual anti-spam activists.

    • Anti-spam litigants seem pretty similar to the RIAA in their tactics of making it hurt--financially--for illegal activity.
      WTF are you talking about? It was the spammers (ie: Mark Felchstain and the alleged members of his "organization") who sued.
      • It was the spammers (ie: Mark Felchstain and the alleged members of his "organization") who sued.

        LOL! That made me almost spew coffee all over my laptop, and I'm not even drinking coffee.

    • according to stats, a lot more people share music than do spam, and eliminating the major spammers would probably contribute a lot more to killing spam than sueing a bunch of 12-year-olds would to killing P2P.

      RIAA has bigger resources, but also a much larger spread target

  • Correction... (Score:5, Funny)

    by evilninja ( 261516 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:56PM (#6923599)
    ...good guys: 2, Spammers 1,943,238,345,753,261 (today alone)

  • Suing SPEWS, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kalewa ( 561267 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:58PM (#6923622)
    I don't think it's right to sue someone because they're trying to help block spam, but I think the way that some blacklists go about it is very much wrong and harmful to innocent bystanders, and they really should be held more accountable than they are.
    • You should hold accountable forced services governments and the like. If people dont like what spews is doing they are free to stop using it, ask there ISP to stop using it or move to an ISP thats not using it. You should not be able to sue somebody so they have to listen to you.

      Persoanly I filter at the client level rather than with a blackhole list. But my mail is at a hosting center incoming bandwith is free. I had a spammer steal an entire /19 from me this spring when it stoped being advertised. I


      • You should hold accountable forced services governments and the like. If people dont like what spews is doing they are free to stop using it, ask there ISP to stop using it or move to an ISP thats not using it.

        Yes, but...
        People aren't free to choose if when they're being feed disinformation.

        Boycott organiziers like SPEWS should be accountable for what they "say" via their lists.
        If, for example, they claim to list only spammers, and ISPs that support spammers,
        but they also list anyone who owns a rab

        • Re:Suing SPEWS, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Eggplant62 ( 120514 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:30PM (#6924540)
          People aren't free to choose if when they're being feed disinformation.

          Boycott organiziers like SPEWS should be accountable for what they "say" via their lists. If, for example, they claim to list only spammers, and ISPs that support spammers, but they also list anyone who owns a rabbit, then they are publishing disinformation. It would be completely unfair to bunny owners, and they should be held accountable for that.
          SPEWS never said it would only block spammers or single IP spam sources. SPEWS exists to block spam-friendly service providers. Where's the disinformation? Listing starts at the single IP, and maybe the /24 he's occupying. If the spam stops, the listing is lifted. If the spam continues and further complaints are ignored, the blocking expands, sometimes until an entire ISP's delegation is covered.

          Again, where's this "disinformation?" Having trouble comprehending the SPEWS FAQ [spews.org]?

  • "Good guys 2, Spammers 0" (Score:5, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:58PM (#6923623) Journal
    When I saw that header, I was hoping that the article would involve ballistics, automatic weapons, and close-range muzzle burns. Instead, it's only about litigation.

    You can imagine my dissapointment.

    • Why are you dissapointed? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Absurd Being ( 632190 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:06PM (#6923708) Journal
      Litigation is a fate worse than a thousand deaths. Lawyers have powers to destroy that far exceed anything mere torturers have available. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can be used to forever dissolve your sense of security, seal away prosperity, call down imprisonment, tortures, and exile, and to confuse you, and kill you in installments, wasting your time away with convoluted garbage. Being flayed alive to death doesn't quite match being nickel-and-dimed to death. One torment lasts hours, another lasts decades.
      • Being flayed alive to death doesn't quite match being nickel-and-dimed to death. One torment lasts hours, another lasts decades.

        The hyperbole here's too thick even more me. If you'd honestly pick having your skin slowly stripped off by lashes or knives over being poor and in debt to the court system for life, you've got some serious priority issues. Having no financial future isn't that bad. Sheesh.

  • ISPs? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gregbaker ( 22648 ) * on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:59PM (#6923629) Homepage
    Would it not be possible for large ISPs to lauch similar suits as class-action? Imagine AOL suing spammers on behalf of all subscribers in Washington, with any judgement distributed among the receivers (minus whatever fees come off a class-action suit).


    You'd have people signing up for AOL, just to get the spam.

  • 250k! thats it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by greymond ( 539980 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @01:59PM (#6923631) Homepage Journal
    Now 2.5mil woul be painful, but 250k doesn't seem like much. But at least another one bites the dust. And hopefully this will encourage others who have the means to continue to sue spammers. I have the will, but no means. As in I have a desire and a bunch of email records yet I have no money for a lawyer and googling for free info seems to bring up useless adds for stuff I don't need.

    On another note I was eating dinner wiht a friend and she told me in VERY strong terms that spam would "never go away" and as a business practice it works great and she supports it. She said in her company's case they "send" out their marketing material to harvested emails that are sold to them froma third party. Yet inthe next sentence she complains about getting penis enlargemtn emails and breast enhancers.....

    meh!

    • Re:250k! thats it? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Misch ( 158807 )
      Well, look at it this way. SLAPP isn't going to rake in the big bucks. In fact the largest SLAPP award that we've seen so far in the US was for $500,000 [casp.net] when everyones' favorite nut cult [slashdot.org] tried to kill a lawsuit against it.

      The big money will come in the punitive damages.

  • Hate Spam? Use SpamBayes (Score:3, Informative)

    by notsewmit ( 655779 ) <tim@tim-[ ]ton.com ['wes' in gap]> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:01PM (#6923649)
    The best anti-spam tool I've found so far is SpamBayes [sourceforge.net], a great open source app that lets you decide what is spam and what isn't. Just train it for a few days (perhaps longer depending how much Spam you get in a day) and it'll filter all the junk mail to a separate folder. If there are any false positives (or negatives), just move it to a "good" folder and train it again. After a week of training, it hasn't failed once!

  • But will he collect? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by redwoodtree ( 136298 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:02PM (#6923663)
    This is all well and good, but it will be news for real when the spam house pays up. The chances of ever collecting on this judgment are slim and none.

    Actually finding and garneshing their accounts is possible but I can not imagine that will be easy or practical.

    The other question I have is, how about a class action law suit. I know about 100 million people that would like to sue, the ULTIMATE class action.

  • Com'on (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Tech solutions will beat legal ones in this fight. Check out Mailinator [mailinator.com]

  • Welcom'... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:03PM (#6923672) Homepage Journal
    Da only thin' I can 'tink of is:
    I, fo' on', welcom da' new musubi cookin' overlords

  • The FTC says Childs and Lightfoot promoted a "get rich quick" chain mail scheme via spam and Web sites, promising participants they'd receive $10,000 in "gifts" within a "short period." Recipients of the e-mail and visitors to the Web sites were asked to pay a one-time $41 membership fee.

    $250,000 is more then $10,000. Profit!

  • I'm not a spammer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by anotherone ( 132088 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:07PM (#6923714)
    But I'd still like to see SPEWS sued into the stone age. If you want to block spam, that's fine... but you just can't convince me that blocking thousands of legit servers, just because they're close to spam servers, is in any way a good practice.

    • Re:I'm not a spammer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Eggplant62 ( 120514 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:36PM (#6924604)
      But I'd still like to see SPEWS sued into the stone age. If you want to block spam, that's fine... but you just can't convince me that blocking thousands of legit servers, just because they're close to spam servers, is in any way a good practice.
      So, gimme a better incentive for an ISP to clean up its network than being blocklisted to hell and back for supporting spammers? MAPS tried to do it by the single IP and they damned near got sued out of existence, or at least into irrelevance. Other lists have concentrated on listing single IP spam sources and have had only limited effect on the problem.

      It took the folks behind SPEWS to get ISP's around the world to sit up and take stock of their problems with hosting spammers, spammish websites and providing dns to spammers. Nothing hits home like listening to a customer tell you about how you're going to leave their service unless they clean up their network space.

  • Does this frighten anyone? (Score:5, Funny)

    by PD ( 9577 ) * <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:11PM (#6923757) Homepage Journal
    According to the article, there is an FTC commissioner named Orson Swindle.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:17PM (#6923819)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The most important part... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:19PM (#6923847) Journal
    It's not about the money, it's not about the individual spammer, it's about a little thing called precedent

    In the end it's about winning in court - and a $250,000 win in court would be would more than twice that in settlement. Spammers, time to duck and cover, because I see only more of this type of legal retaliation in the future.

  • Simple Solution (Score:4, Interesting)

    by freedomchild ( 180377 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:20PM (#6923857)
    Okay, It seems to me that there is a simple solution to all of these spam related problems.

    Instead of relying on a technological solution that will be circumvented sooner or later, why not follow the money?

    Going after the spammers themselves seems to be a losing proposition because they have become adept at being elusive. The people in this equation that cannot afford to be elusive are the ones that are actually collecting money from the targets of spam. The people that are paying the spammers for their services are the ones that need to be penalized. When the spammers are no longer useful they will die out.

    Making money from spam should be made illegal. I think it would be a lot more effective at reducing spam than the methods that are being used now.

    If my logic is in any way flawed, please let me know.

  • Good Guys 2, Spammers 0? (Score:3, Funny)

    by psiphre ( 454612 ) <psiphre@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:24PM (#6923899) Homepage
    it seems to me more like this puts the score at "good guys: 2, spammers: 93856299376591".

    maybe I'm just pessimistic?
  • Much as I'd love to see the guy's house taken away and then dropped on him, Florida's one of those wonderful states with an unlimited homestead exemption (used by any number of South Florida real-estate swindlers to cover their posteriors when the suckers, er, investors found out they actually HAD bought swampland...)

  • Earn thousands from the comfort of your own home! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Psyx ( 619571 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:31PM (#6923963)
    A new multilevel marketing business...

    Here's how:

    1) Move to Washington state.
    2) Set up an email account.
    3) Populate the web with your email address.
    4) Collect the spam.
    5) Sue for thousands.

  • Good Guys 1, Spammers 1 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gorbachev ( 512743 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @02:37PM (#6924013) Homepage
    Filthstein is trying to voluntarily drop the case against the individuals listed on his frivolous suit in an attempt to avoid paying for the legal fees in behalf of the defendants.

    If he gets his wish, he's won. The only purpose of that lawsuit was to cause as much cost as possible to the defendants in legal fees and otherwise. It was such a blatant attempt to stiffle free speech, that Filthstein should be disbarred for it.

    The lawsuit also exposed him as the quack as he is. He should be disbarred for that reason as well. You guys should read the motion to dismiss from the defendants' lawyers. It's absolutely hilarious on how it points out the glaring errors in Filthstein's suit. It's not just factual errors regarding the issue at hand, but procedural errors any competent lawyer would've caught before he would've filed the suit.

    For the "FUCK SPEWS" crowd out there, this suit had NOTHING to do with SPEWS. Filthstein and his buddy, convicted cocaine trafficker Eddy Marin, were suing the most vocal critics of Eddy's spam empire, that's all. They just wrapped it around the "we hate SPEWS" banner, because otherwise it would've been too obvious that the suit was nothing but a SLAPP suit.

    Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers
  • Because of its isolation and the army bases spam is a very popular food.. There are many recipes for using spam that are popular on the islands.
  • Like this guy's style. Keep going after them. I hope he kicks their butts.
  • Make the RIAA copyright "pen1s enlargement", "v14gr4" and stuff.

    Now, what will happen if they send (not share) thousands of copies of it

    Im all too happy with that

  • my new tactic for paying for college... (Score:3, Funny)

    by zorander ( 85178 ) on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @03:21PM (#6924455) Homepage Journal
    is to make my email as public as possible and hope to win a settlement...$250k should cover my $40k/year education plus a little grad school quite nicely....

    goaheadandtryme@elinxubox.com

    go ahead try...I'll see you in court

    Brian

  • How appropriate (Score:3, Funny)

    by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) <scott@alfter.us> on Wednesday September 10, 2003 @04:25PM (#6925171) Homepage Journal
    JoeJob writes...

    How appropriate, that an article about spam would be submitted by a user named JoeJob [catb.org].

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