Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Spam Your Rights Online

Another Go At Making Spam Cost Money 242

Posted by timothy from the lawyers-are-involved-so-it-will-cost-money dept.
wario78 writes: "The BBC is running a story about the law firm Morrison and Foerster which is claiming damages against the spam company Etracks based in California. They are asking for $50 in damages for each spam they receive, up to the maximum of $25,000 per day. Nice to see a lawyer doing something community-oriented for a change (even if they are just trying to make a profit from it)."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Another Go At Making Spam Cost Money More

Another Go At Making Spam Cost Money

Comments Filter:

  • Repeat (Score:2, Informative)

    by user32.ExitWindowsEx ( 250475 )
    This is a repeat. It hasn't been more than a month since this was last on Slashdot.
    • I think I've mentioned this before as well.

      Right now, I'm using my state's anti-spam laws to choke it off.

      In Illinois, there is a civil penalty of $10 per offense as long as the server and the user are both in IL and you have never had a business relationship with the spammer.

      So far, it has worked successfully on a couple spammers. Now, I found out one is based in Chicago.

      At least it's easier to serve papers. :)

  • Sueing Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)

    by cmdr_beeftaco ( 562067 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:25PM (#3312321)
    I would like to announce that I am sueing Slashdot $50 for each troll post I read each day up to a max of $25,000.

    • Re:Sueing Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)

      by doooras ( 543177 )
      The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

    • You jest, however.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DiveX ( 322721 )
      Could this same idea be applied to actually suing slashdot for willfull destruction. For example if slashdots with it's thousands of readers had a big link to the lawyer's website that caused it to crash due to high load, could they turn around and sue. There is a solid history of websites being swamped by readers after following a link to the point in nearly every story in which it occurs, many people have to poin out a cache at some location (usuall google.com) and ask if slashdot could even provide their own cache. That history could demonstrate prior knowledge of the chances of damaging the web site just by the sheer display of the web link. A few years ago a local radion station hid several $100 bills in books at a local public library as a promotional thing to 'encourage' people to visit. What did not expect was the mob of people that rushed the dorrs tearing apart books in search for the free money. They ended up having to pay for several thousand dollars in damage to the property.
      • I'm I the only one who noticed this:
        The San Francisco office of Morrison and Foerster, also known as MoFo
        Sums up most law firms I know.

        Seriously, I think it's great that somebody is finally going after those crooked spammers. I especialy hate the scams. Those are blatantly illeagal. I'm sure this shitty spam company sends out pyramid scheme scams and shit, so they could be sued for that, as well.
        What we need is to have is a class action lawsuit against spammers on behalf of the people who fell for these scams. However, no matter what we do, there will always be spam. No way, no how, will we ever get rid of spam.

        But in my special email account, the spike hay at charter dot net adress above, I never have gotten one spam. I just do a few simple things. When I have to give my email out to websites, I give them my hotmail account. But then if they are obviously going to use it to spam me, and they don't need to contact me, I give them a phony address and leave the little "Yes. I would like to recieve information about special offers from 3rd parties" box checked. I do this just to fsck up the spammer's mailing lists. I also set Opera to not accept 3rd party cookies, like DoubleClick. And I also run AdAware regularly. Some spyware can get your email.

        Anyway, the golden rule for spam is to never, ever, ever, give out your email address. (except to colleagues, friends, family, of course)

        BTW, could someone explain to me how on earth DoubleClick is legal? They never gave me a privacy statement. And, it violates the Children's Online Protection Act or whatever because they collect information about children uner 13.

  • A quick search shows... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thrillbert ( 146343 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:28PM (#3312341) Homepage
    .. That Timothy posted the origial article.. maybe someone should lay off the booze before lunch? ;}

    Original story here [slashdot.org].
    • That Timothy posted the origial article.

      OMG! CmdrTaco-ism IS CONTAGIOUS! Run like the wind timothy, before you start reposting the same story to the front page in a 15 minute time-span! Get out before you misspell every third word in your "editorial blurb"! Hurry before you get bitchslapped by the legal dept. and made to change your sexist posts about Cisco chicks!

  • Truth in Advertising (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ellen Ripley ( 221395 ) <ellen@britomartis.net> on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:28PM (#3312342) Journal
    Morrison and Foerster's URL is www.mofo.com.

    B-),
    Ellen
  • Nice to know that they're going after a California Corporation. California Anti-Spam Laws [spamlaws.com] are based on the fax spam laws. Doesn't seem that MoFo [mofo.com] is trying to set precedence. Just make some dough...
    • Has precedence actually been set yet? I don't recall any cases where someone in CA used those spam laws and actually won. I hope MoFo wins, personally...
      • Earthlink won a $2 million judgment against a spammer, tho I doubt they collected any cash. Details of the case are buried somewhere on ELN's site.

  • lawyers (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by drDugan ( 219551 )

    Nice to see a lawyer doing something community-oriented for a change (even if they are just trying to make a profit from it).

    even if? I thought making profits was all lawyers ever did!

    take the enron shareholder lawyers, for example, who will rake in (conservatively) 50-100 Million US.

    • Re:lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:57PM (#3312519)
      I thought making profits was all lawyers ever did!

      Let's see how your opinion of lawyers changes after someone wrongs you and you have to take them to court.

      Lawyers are not all evil because they charge money for their services when they can.

      • Lawyers are not all evil because they charge money for their services when they can.

        Yes they are. If you charge someone an unusually high amount of money for a service they need and only you or someone who charges even more can provide, you are taking advantage of them and are being a bad person in the process.

        Anyone who charges more that $50 or so for their time, is not worth it and taking advantage of you.
        • "Yes they are. If you charge someone an unusually high amount of money for a service they need and only you or someone who charges even more can provide, you are taking advantage of them and are being a bad person in the process."

          You're welcome to go to (and pay for) law school and learn how to properly defend yourself/prosecute. You still won't have the experience more established have, but who knows, maybe after a few hundred cases, you'll have saved yourself a few bucks.
    • Public interest lawers -- those working for civil rights, the environment, public policy agencies, etc -- are generally paid very little compared to (evil) corporate lawers. I know one public interest attorney (my wife) who makes approximately one quarter of what her law school classmates who went to work for large corporate law firms are making these days.

      Public interest lawers have a lot more in common with your average Open Source programmer than you might think. It takes a pretty strong sense of values to give up 75% of your earning potential to work on the things that you think are "important to all of us", but there are lots of lawers who do just that.

      -Mark

  • Send this law firm all your spam from etracks. It's the least we can do ;-)

  • Spam? Not here... (Score:3, Informative)

    by carm$y$ ( 532675 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:34PM (#3312379) Homepage
    Rather than filtering incoming mails and taking the legal route with the spammers, I'd like to remind you 2 excellent services that can be used to avoid getiing your email address on spammers' list in the first place: www.spammotel.com [spammotel.com] and sneakemail.com [sneakemail.com]

    If you run your own mail server you can do this stuff yourself - I mean "one-time acounts" and so on. But sneakemail is just too convenient (or I'm too lazy and tired by the time I get home...)

  • As much as I hate spam (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ConsumedByTV ( 243497 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:34PM (#3312385) Homepage
    Disclaimer: I am not trolling, I really feel this way.

    The internet has always been self policing. Why should we treat SPAM differently than the rest of email? Yes it sucks, but we can always filter it. We do not need legislation to save the inbox. We need common sense. Legislation is only going to make the internet more of a 'policed state.' I feel as if it cannot be said enough, the internet is not owned by the US and it will only lead to problems if goverments are brought in for annoying crap like spammers.

    No I am not a spammer.
    Yes I hate spam with a passion.
    However, the more geeks want rules to govern the internet, the more the other laws (as well as shit like this) will be passed and upheld.

    Stop this crap now.

    • factual flaw (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jacobb ( 93907 )
      I agree that it is somewhat difficult and unsavory to legislate the internet, it's not possible to filter out all spam. And even if you magically succeed in filtering, spam is a very significant portion of overall net bandwidth. Figures I have heard range from 5% to 15% (ignoring ridiculous >50% claims). This is of course because filtering is done by the end-user (or very close thereto), not relays.

      This costs money!
      Spammers freeload, use other people's (usually) accidentally open relays, take up bandwidth and waste time. It's extremely offensive, not opt-in, deceitful (NEVER click remove, they just sell the address) and mostly false advertising.

      It is and should be legislated.

    • There are plenty of laws that restrict people's cyber-freedoms for the benefit of corporations. Why can't the reverse be done?

    • Re:As much as I hate spam (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bodrius ( 191265 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:55PM (#3312509) Homepage
      We should treat SPAM differently because it can, and probably will, cost the end-user a lot of money when he ends up paying for bandwidth use.

      When I get snail-mail spam (not in caps because it's slightly less evil) I may have the inconvenience of picking it up, and then throwing it away, but I don't pay postage.

      Unfortunately, in the Internet the receiver, and everyone in the middle, also pays in resources, and since most users pay for their bandwidth indirectly (and will soon pay directly), it increases the cost of Internet for the consumer. The consumer is paying to read ads he doesn't want to read in the first place and that are not subsidizing any service, and that's not good.

      Imagine if you were forced to accept collect-calls and every single tele-marketer in the nation took advantage of that.

      The Internet may be self-policing, but we still reserve the right to prosecute for "real world crimes". If a website systematically uses my credit card information for identity/credit fraud, I want them to be legally prosecuted, "filtering them" (not buying from them and spreading the word) is not enough.

      SPAM should be treated just like having someone stealing your cable connection, electricity, water or other utilities. There are real-world, monetary damages, which may be small or may accumulate to something significant over time, but either way it's not legal and there may be some penalties involved.

      The alternative is regulating through code, but redefining the email standard so as to avoid SPAM would be problematic and (at least the solutions that come to mind) possibly raise some privacy issues.
      • The alternative is regulating through code, but redefining the email standard so as to avoid SPAM would be problematic

        Hey maybe you're actually on to something. That just helped me brainstorm a crazy idea that might involve a GOOD use of software patents!

        Redefine the e-mail standard in such a way that is PATENTED. I'm sure someone could think of a way to do that.

        Then, grant everyone a free license to use the patent EXCEPT spammers! Of course, come up with a fairly good definition of spam that would include sending bulk e-mail to people you have no prior relationship with.

        Then, when a spammer uses the new standard, clearly violating the patent, they can have the crap sued out of them!

        What do you think???
        • It would be relatively difficult to redesign the email protocol and get everyone in the bandwagon at this point. Redesigning it so as to get something new to be patented would be more problematic.

          Of course, there is the big problem of prior art. I know this would be a "bad patent" on purpose, but "bad patents" without a lot of money behind them tend to be recognized as "bad" more quickly than is usual.

          On the other hand, if you're willing to ignore the issues of prior art and take your chances, why not patent spam itself too? That way you get to sue spammers for patent infringement, not the violation of a license (which, without "damages", is likely to be resolved by revocation of the license, something corporate entities can play with easily).

    • Re:As much as I hate spam (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:56PM (#3312517)
      There are many reasons to stop the spammers through legislation. People here have mentioned some good ones: Freeloaders using bandwidth and other people's mail servers. I have a friend who runs a small ISP in Mexico. Some spammer used his mail server (it was set for open relay) to send out a bunch of spam.

      This guy didn't want to run an ISP. He had to. He had an internet cafe and the only ISP in town shutdown, so he bought them out so he could keep his internet cafe going, his only source of income. He's not real technical. Enough to run the cafe, but the ISP was a big hurdle for him. I'm just trying to explain the reason for the open relay.

      Now, after this spammer used his open relay, his mail server (and all of his clients) suddenly became blacklisted, and he was unable to send ANY e-mail. He fixed the problem, but the incident cost him dearly.

      So, there's another reason. Here's another: I have TONS of stuff filtering spam. I still get tons of it every day that doesn't get filtered. So I'm constantly adding new addresses and stuff to my filters. This takes my time, not a lot, but let's say a few minutes a day. My work time. Time I could be using to be more productive at my job. This hurts my company. Multiply that by everyone in the world who has e-mail, and you start to get an idea of the scope of productivity that's lost each day because of this crap.

      What right do they have to use up the bandwidth and services we pay for? What right do they have to interefere with my productivity at work? If you can justify this and other issues that others have raised, you might have a case, but I doubt you'll be able to.
    • Unfortunately, there are a few (isolated) cases in which legislation would be nice.

      Spamming is one of those cases, and here's why:

      In any other advertising medium, from television to magazines to radio, the burden is on the advertiser to pay for the production of the ad, pay for the timeslot its played in. The medium through which we receive this ad (be it a radio station or whatever) sells space to the advertiser to balance out the cost of providing radio entertainment to the masses. If you don't want to hear that ad, you turn it off. It doesn't affect you.

      Now, let's turn to spam. The creater of a spam email generally uses free/cheap/cracked software. At most they're shelling out for a cheap dialup, or using one of the many 'free AOL for a month' CDs to not pay anything at all. The spammer then routes that email for free through open relays to hide where the email is coming from to make it harder for people to track him/her, passing on the cost of the bandwidth they use to the ISP. The ISP, who has to pay for that bandwidth, isn't going to take it out of their own pockets (this is a capitalist society after all), they're going to pass the bill on to the consumer, resulting in fee increases.

      The receiver of the email has no choice but to sort through email to delete it. We've all heard the argument that 'it only takes a few seconds to delete an email'. But what happens when you are deluged with hundreds of spam emails a day? Multiply that by 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and those seconds add up. Now, while some people might not think those few seconds are worth anything, I personally find it incredibly annoying when I have to take half an hour out of every week sorting through email to figure out what's crap and what isn't.

      Filtering? Ok. as long as the spammer is kind enough to place a big "ADV" in the header. What about those that don't (which is the vast majority). How does one distinguish between a spammer and a friend who use re: your question as the subject?

      One could go all the way and only those who you know to email you, but that doesn't really cut it if you're using email for business purposes (like I do).

      If you follow these arguments to their conclusions, we can either a: track down each spammer in a sort of internet vigilante justice and disable them, which is illegal, time consuming, and wouldn't do a damn thing, or b: give those who are taken advantage of by spammers a lawful way to make these people pay for the bandwidth they suck up in their quest to bring penis enlargers and hot barely legal teens to the world.
    • Because when I go to an internet cafe that costs money for time spent, or if someone has Time Warner cable, then that spam costs money, not just time.

    • Why should we treat SPAM differently than the rest of email?

      Good question - easy answer. Spam is fraud. Spammers routinely "spoof" their messages, packets, and other information in their attempts to foist the costs of their advertisements onto other people. This is electronic fraud, plain and simple.

      I'd have no problem at all with Spam if each message they sent was clearly marked as an unsolicited advertisement. That way I could tell my ISP whether I wanted it or not. But clearly they're not going to do that because most people do not care to accept such ads.

    • Self policing worked while the clueless people were the minority. Now they're a huge majority, and unless the minority is allowed to decide for the majority, it won't work.

      Note that the same applies to most other things.. However, in democracy the majority gives the power to decide for them to a minority - parliament, congress, senate, president, and so on. And it'd be hard to prove that the clueless masses have given the academia the power to decide how internet should work.

      This leads to one logical conclusion: the power to decide and enforce has been given to lawmakers, police force, and the courts. Thus, it's up to them to decide and enforce the code of conduct in the internet as seen by the clueless majority. And if the reasonable people don't agree, they're free to set up a new network which doesn't allow clueless people in.

      For further reference, check out Abilene, Internet2, Geant, and so on. The academia is moving forward, leaving the old internet for the masses and setting up a new R&D/edunet.

  • mofo is like that (Score:5, Informative)

    by joe094287523459087 ( 564414 ) <joe@jo e . to> on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:34PM (#3312387) Homepage
    mofo is known (in the North Cali legal community anyway) as a very progressive firm. they go out of their way to hire people of color, women, and handicapped folks, and take on many pro-bono cases that require a large investment. they also take "principle" cases - those cases that can likely result in a beneficial precendent but may not be profitable for the plaintiff.

    so it's not surprising to me that they would expand that social-cause reach to technology too, in the legal realm.
  • Of course, some people or idiots. Fleishman-Hillard (a PR firm) is blocking all email from well.com [politechbot.com] because somebody couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe from the Politech mailing list. She reported them to her sysadmin as a spammer. Never mind the fact that Politech uses a double opt-in (You have to opt-in and confirm).

  • Sometimes success! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fuzzums ( 250400 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:37PM (#3312408) Homepage
    One spammer got my attention by sending me the same mail multiple times.
    It took me half an hour to track down and mail the free web provider, the free mail provider, the free scripts provider, the (possibly) abused mail-relays etc etc.

    Now the web-site is off-line and one by one (I hope) all his services will fail. Scripts will return errors, mailboxes will close and so on.

    I guess that will p*ss that spammer off :)
  • And then give them 90% of any money they get from suing over the spams sent to it. But how do I send them this proposal without it being a spam? Im serious!!!

  • on re ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:39PM (#3312422) Homepage
    OK

    it seems to me that we all just accept ads as "part of the way we live"

    Each time I try to get education, entertainment,
    or travel anywhere, I am bombarded with
    unsolicited ads. ads that generally fuel the
    out-of-control cosumerism all around us.

    Read a magazine, get ads.

    Watch the news on TV, get ads.

    Walk down the street, get ads.

    Read the newspaper, get ads.

    Watch entertainment TV, get ads.

    Even if I want to, I am FORCED to see ads. To be
    programmed. (don't tell me to go live on an
    island -- I don't want to do that either).

    The thing I think is that we don't have to have it this way. I know its radical but imagine for a moment a world where there were no unsolicited ads . This is a real stretch -- many of the assumptions about normal life start to break down if you take this assumption and go with it. We DO have the technology to provide everyone all the information they could want whenever they want to buy something, yet we don't. We make all the businesses compete for visual and auditory bandwidth, annoying the he!l out of everyone.

    thoughts?

    • considering the majority of ads are used to pay for services. Tv would not be avail at the price your pay without ads, newspapers, magazines, the same.

      last time i checked, spam was not reducing my internet fees, they are raising it due to the large amount of bandwidth that is being wasted, the ISP has to pay for how many megs of absolute crap a year that no one wanted in the first place
      • I agree with you. Spam is a particulaly bad form of ads. However, if they were taxed and used to pay for my Internet service, they would simply fall into the bucket of all the other ads driven drivel out there.

        My statements were a bit outside just spam on the Internet.

        My point was that we are unwillingly forced to view ads by participating in daily life. The fact that they are used to pay for the service is important, but not essential. There could be lots of other ways to pay for services instead of progrmming masses to buy stuff.

    • (your sig)

      -jD
      YOU ARE A CULTURAL SLAVE
      [newslavery.org]

      (end of your sig)

      Hey, what is this, some kind of advertisement for a website or something? How the hell did THAT get there?

      (BTW, check out my own ad for my website in my sig)

      Ads are everywhere. Can't avoid them. They are free speech, so what you are objecting to is essentially having to listen to others. It's a lot of trouble to ignore people, true, but it's even more trouble to outlaw the transmission of ideas.

  • Spam laws collection, US States (Score:4, Informative)

    by Seth Finkelstein ( 90154 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:44PM (#3312453) Homepage Journal
    If you'd like to join the fun, take a look at the collection of

    Spam laws [spamlaws.com]

    Especially

    Summary of US State spam laws [spamlaws.com]

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

  • Is it too much to ask? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @05:48PM (#3312473) Homepage
    Nice to see a lawyer doing something community-oriented for a change (even if they are just trying to make a profit from it)."

    Is it too much to ask for people to drop the incessant lawyer bashing? Lawyers as a group spend a lot of time working on "community-oriented" work. They are expected to devote at least part of their time and effort doing pro bono work, i.e. representing cases in the public interest, frequently for people who otherwise couldn't afford representation. The law is one of the last careers where this is an ordinary expectation.

    • s/expected/forced/

      Seriously, in the same way that the auto insurance industry, (in MD at least) is forced to handle a portion of MAIF clients. I think the analogy holds both groups are money hungry greedy bastards.
    • But lawyers are the reason why the law is so complicated that people cannot defend themselves adequately without professional help from the lawyers. <rimshot>

      How about doing some real community service and take on a case here and there that might get bad laws struck down? How about getting your bar association to support tort reform? Why not do something useful, instead of all this self-aggrandizement lawyers are famous for?
      • Yeah, and computer programmers are the reason computer programs cannot be used without going to professional training courses on how to use the program. :)

        Complication has mostly arisen from the fact that somewhere a bias arose that the system attempt to genuinely reach the "right" result a very high percentage of the time, say 99%. Simpler rules would probably result in being right 90% of the time. As a people, so far, we haven't been willing to swallow that 9% difference.

        Odds are even the really complicated system that aspires to 99%, is far less good than that, but the tweaks continue and continue. Take a look at the length of the US tax code as a function of time, and ask yourself -- is the tax code now 100 times better than a century ago? Is Microsoft Word 2000 that much better than Wordperfect 5.2? Is THE PHANTOM MENACE that much better a movie than CITIZEN KANE? I don't think any of the above, but the futile search for perfection through complexity continues.

        So yeah, the law is bloatware. But what isn't these days?
        • Yeah, and computer programmers are the reason computer programs cannot be used without going to professional training courses on how to use the program. :)

          I totally agree. I am constantly amazed at how unobvious and frustrating most computer interfaces still are, after all this time. Have you ever tried using Microsoft's online troubleshooting wizards? Absolutely pathetic. Gnome and KDE are no better, Aqua is merely shinier, but they are all the same clumsy drag-drop windowing paradigm. Bleh.

          So yeah, the law is bloatware. But what isn't these days?

          I was going to make a crack about your Mom, but decided not to.
    • Yes, it IS too much to ask. The US has become a nation ruled by lawyers and a little verbal bashing is the best they can expect. From patenting hyperlinks through lawsuit "slamming" to frivolous civil suits, the lawyers are the only ones profiting and they continue to push for laws encouraging even more bullshit lawsuits.

      The legal system in this country is directly contributing to people learning that they are not responsible for their actions and that if they are careless or stupid, all they have to do to feel better is sue the person or corporation that pointed it out. Not all lawyers are bloodsuckers but a great number of them ARE, and it's about damn time people realize it's OK to call a leech a leech.

      Heinlein put "The year they killed the lawyers" into his future history for a good reason. People are a hell of a lot more polite to each other when there aren't any lawyers around egging them into a fight.

      If saying that makes them feel bad, I don't give a damn any more than I feel sympathy for a rat on a sinking ship. Too many of them are just along for the ride and don't deserve any consideration at all.
  • How long before Bernard Shifman [petemoss.com] gets sued by Morrison and Foerster [mofo.com] ?

    Hmm sounds like the beginnings of a /. poll...

  • I think this would be better with $1/mail to a maximum of $100, because then they could do it in small claims court. The thing about spam is that individual ones aren't a problem; the problem is the total volume. If everybody takes a spammer to small claims court, the individual ones aren't a problem so much as the fact that the spammer will have to pay $5 to a ton of people on a number of occasions, which means that it's a pain to be a spammer.

    Besides, it's a lot easier to say each email caused you $1 of damage, making you have a bad day overall, than it is to claim the each email caused you $50 of damage.

    Plus, if someone works out exactly how you do the small claims suit, and publishes the information, it's easy for anyone who feels annoyed or wants to see how the legal system works or just has to go be the courthouse anyway, and the tactic of spamming everyone who hasn't tried suing anyone won't work.
    • You can sue in small claims, that is true.

      You can win, in fact if the spammer fails to show you will win by default. That's usually the outcome you will be hoping for.

      So now you have a judgement for $5.00. What do you think will happen next? Think the court will enforce the judgment? Think again. Think the court will garnish the spammer's wages? Think again. Small claims court has not the time nor the resources to enforce the judgments they render. You still have to run around with your piece of paper signed by the judge and try to get the system to enforce it. Eventually, after many months of trying, you might be able to get an arrest warrant for your spammer. Then you can begin trying to get the police to arrest him. How high on the list of priorities do you think warrants for delinquent $5 judgments stand?

      Not very.

      On the bright side, in states with anti-spam laws, you do not have to prove that spam has damaged you in order to prevail in court. The anti-spam laws generally make it easy to win your case, but they do nothing to help you enforce the judgment.
      • But won't it be so much fun when the spammer gets pulled over for rolling through a stopsign on his way home and finds himself behind bars in the county jailhouse with no idea of how he got there?
      • If it's easy enough to get the judgement, lots of people will get them. If someone has a thousand delinquent $5 judgements, it'll probably start to be a pain for them to deal with. It'd probably wreak their credit rating, and interfere with renewing their license.

        Of course, you're unlikely to get your $5 if nobody else joins in. But if someone isn't bothering anyone but you, they're not really a spammer, anyway.
    • Considering how much lawyers charge, they could probably claim that $50 of their time was wasted just reading the title.
  • (even if they are just trying to make a profit from it)

    I think it is very difficult to see what someone's motives are. It is even worse when the only way to penalize someone is monetarily.

    Until someone does this successfully, spam will continue.

    I just wonder what they might do with the money....
  • Even if the US passed the most draconian email laws imaginable, it wouldn't make a dent. I know that personally most of the spam received orginates from Russia/Asia, and the legal entity sending it is an obscure, off-shore company. The Net has largely proven to be unregulateable, and probably will be for a while now. Legislation is largely useless, and by and large, ANY new laws attempting to govern the Net can bring no good.
    • But how hard would it be to block all offshore mailings?
      • Well, a previous /. article talked about sysadmins of by mail servers blackhole-ing Chinese servers that are open relays. It works... still, it seems like you'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face. You'd lose some potentially real email, too.
  • Sue everybody you can? :D

  • Make $1000s from the comfort of your own home! (Score:4, Funny)

    by PsiPsiStar ( 95676 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @06:17PM (#3312668)
    ... by suing spammers.

  • How about a different spam story? (Score:4, Informative)

    by jonesvery ( 121897 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2002 @06:19PM (#3312681) Homepage Journal

    Third time's the charm, right?
    While I have enjoyed this story every time that is was posted...

    1 Another Go At Making Spam Cost Money by timothy with 81 comments on Tuesday April 09, @04:23PM
    2 Class Action Lawsuit Against Spammer by CmdrTaco with 299 comments on Friday March 15, @04:24PM
    3 MoFo Sues Spammer by timothy with 17 comments on Thursday March 14, @07:36PM

    ...there's a lot of other spam news out there that we could be reading. Check out http://spam.abuse.net [abuse.net] for a variety of exciting, spam-related news and information, such as:

    RULINGS IN INTEL V. HAMIDI BULK-EMAIL CASE [politechbot.com] (California Supreme Court agrees to hear Intel V. Hamidi).

    Or you could read this story again...whatever... =)

  • Ben Livingston is a WA man that rountinely takes spammers to small claims court...and, get this...actually wins consistenly.

    Check out his site [smallclaim.info] that includes court documents, a FAQ on how to successfully sue spammers, and his past/current cases.
  • [yotta@foo yotta]$ telnet localhost smtp
    Trying 127.0.0.1...
    Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
    Escape character is '^]'.
    220 foo ESMTP Postfix

    senders of unsolicited bulk/commercial email to or through this system will
    be billed at a rate of one cent (one one-hundredth of one dollar) per byte
    of data with a ten dollar per message minimum to cover storage, bandwidth,
    time and personal annoyance costs. such billing does not apply to personal
    messages or double-opt-in (in which the user requests a subscription and
    is sent a confirmation message that must be responded to before further
    mailings take place) mailing lists. sending any data other then 'quit'
    constitutes aggreement to the aforementioned terms.

    heh, spam sux
    502 Error: command not implemented
    QUIT
    221 Bye
    Connection closed by foreign host.

    (loercased to avoid lameness filter, newlines added for readibility

    I'm seriously considering making my mail server display this. Comments on enforcability/improvements/loopholes?

  • Todd is the owner... I caught him sending a ton of spam to a bunch of my domains, traced down all their company info and there is nothing I can do about it. No lawyer will take the case unless I can prove at least $3000.00 damages. Any suggestions?

    If any of you would like to tell them how you feel about spam, here's their contact info.

    DialCentric Inc.
    3A Professional Park Dr.
    Maryville, IL 62062
    618-288-6661

    Here's one of the pieces of proof:

    SpamCop version 1.3.3 (c) Julian Haight, Joel Martin 1998-2002 All Rights Reserved

    Saved email:
    This page may be saved for future reference:
    http://spamcop.net/sc?id=z35256178zd54 9318d4f44a23 a0ff844b17b2a8e4dz

    Parsing header:

    Received: from vica.4nsys.co.kr ([210.112.61.2]) by linux.thoughtprocess.net (8.11.0/8.11.2/SuSE Linux 8.11.1-0.5) with SMTP id g3954C000481 for ; Tue, 9 Apr 2002 00:04:12 -0500
    Possible spammer: 210.112.61.2
    [show] "nslookup vica.4nsys.co.kr" (checking ip) ip = 210.112.61.2
    Taking name from IP...
    [show] "nslookup 210.112.61.2" (getting name) no name
    Received line accepted

    Received: from HEWLETT-A6C5B34 (unverified [24.242.162.14]) by vica.4nsys.co.kr (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83) with SMTP id ; Tue, 09 Apr 2002 13:59:55 +0900
    [show] "nslookup 210.112.61.2" (getting name) no name
    Possible spammer: 24.242.162.14
    Taking name from IP...
    [show] "nslookup 24.242.162.14" (getting name) 24.242.162.14 = rrcs-sw-24-242-162-14.biz.rr.com
    [show] "nslookup rrcs-sw-24-242-162-14.biz.rr.com" (checking ip) ip = 24.242.162.14
    Chain test:vica.4nsys.co.kr =? vica.4nsys.co.kr
    vica.4nsys.co.kr and vica.4nsys.co.kr have same hostname - chain verified
    Possible relay:210.112.61.2
    [show] "nslookup 2.61.112.210.relays.ordb.org." (checking ip) ip = 127.0.0.2
    210.112.61.2 is an open relay - saving header for proof.
    Received line accepted

    Tracking message source:24.242.162.14:
    [show] "nslookup 24.242.162.14" (getting name) 24.242.162.14 = rrcs-sw-24-242-162-14.biz.rr.com
    [show] "nslookup rrcs-sw-24-242-162-14.biz.rr.com" (checking ip) ip = 24.242.162.14
    Paranoid reverse DNS passes
    abuse.net biz.rr.com = abuse@rr.com

    Possible open relay: 210.112.61.2
    [show] "nslookup 2.61.112.210.relays.ordb.org." (checking ip) ip = 127.0.0.2
    [show] "nslookup 210.112.61.2" (getting name) no name
    [show] "whois 210.112.61.2@whois.arin.net" (Getting contact from whois.arin.net)
    Redirect to apnic:
    [show] "whois 210.112.61.2@whois.apnic.net" (Getting contact from whois.apnic.net)
    whois.apnic.net redirects to krnic
    [show] "whois 210.112.61.2@whois.krnic.net" (Getting contact from whois.krnic.net) (old krnic) [show] "whois 210.112.61.2@whois.ripe.net" (Getting contact from whois.ripe.net)
    [show] "whois IANA1-RIPE@whois.ripe.net" (Getting contact from whois.ripe.net)
    nothing found
    whois.ripe.net 210.112.61.2 = bitbucket@ripe.net
    Whois found:
    Falling back on IP addressing:postmaster@210.112.61.2
    Reducing redundant links for 63.172.198.105

    Found email address:l1l12345a1@btamail.net.cn
    [show] "dig btamail.net.cn mx" (digging for mail exchanger) Found mailserver:btamail.net.cn. = 202.106.196.70
    abuse.net btamail.net.cn = postmaster@btamail.net.cn, spam@btamail.net.cn
    [show] "nslookup btamail.net.cn" (checking ip) ip = 202.106.196.70
    abuse.net shortcut:postmaster@btamail.net.cn, spam@btamail.net.cn
    spam@btamail.net.cn bounces (1 sent : 99 bounces)
    Using spam#btamail.net.cn@devnull.spamcop.net for statistical tracking.

    Found link:http://63.172.198.105/Fax%20Marketing%20Syste m.htm
    Unescaped: http://63.172.198.105/Fax Marketing System.htm
    [show] "nslookup 63.172.198.105" (getting name) no name
    [show] "nslookup 63.172.198.105" (getting name) no name
    [show] "nslookup 63.172.198.105" (getting name) no name

    Tracking ip 63.172.198.105:
    [show] "nslookup 63.172.198.105" (getting name) no name
    Routing details for 63.172.198.105
    [refresh/show] Cached whois for 63.172.198.105:noc@sprint.net
    noc@sprint.net: abuse.net sprint.net = abuse@sprint.net
    abuse.net sprint.net = abuse@sprint.net
    Using best abuse.net reporting addresses:abuse@sprint.net
    Whois found:abuse@sprint.net

    Please make sure this email IS spam:
    From: ecitnf311510@yahoo.com (e-mail & fax marketing programs 31151076543332222211111)

    View full message

    Report Spam to:

    Re:210.112.61.2 (Administrator of network with open relays)
    To: postmaster@210.112.61.2 (Notes)

    Re:210.112.61.2 (Automated open-relay testing system(s))
    To: Internal spamcop handling: (testrelays) (Notes)

    Re:24.242.162.14 (Administrator of network where email originates)
    To: abuse@rr.com (Notes)

    Re:http://63.172.198.105/Fax Marketing System.htm (Administrator of network hosting website referenced in spam)
    To: abuse@sprint.net (Notes)

    Re:l1l12345a1@btamail.net.cn (Administrator of network hosting email address referenced in spam)
    To: postmaster@btamail.net.cn (Notes)
    To: spam#btamail.net.cn@devnull.spamcop.net (Notes)
    Additional notes (optional - will be the first paragraph of standard report):
  • For doing something ethical and morally righteous?
  • While I support people going after spammers, I have to question the price of $50 per email. It seems all the time there are people screaming over the price of cds or dvds or how much the RIAA and MPAA say they are losing/sue for. Now that someone is suing spammers for an equally ridiculous amount, where are these people? I think suing for inflated unreasonable damages is wrong, even when your suing spammers.
    • There's a notion of punitive damages. Basically, for suits to be a disincentive to spam, it needs to cost the spammer enough that they lose on average. In other words, unless they get taken to court 100% of the time, by 100% of the recipients, the penalty should exceed compensation. I'm OK about this suit, because the fact is that the firm probably can't and don't sue all spammers, and probably don't make a lot of money on spam overall.

      • Punitive damages are given by the court. They are a decision of the court. These people are actually suing for $50 an email, which means they claim that is what cost each email had to them. This is just an absurd number. If they were suing for even $5 an email (which is still outrageously high) I could at least support it (and the court may well decide to give punitive damages). But there is no way on god's green earth that each email cost them $50. This is no different than the businesses that get their webpages defaced and claim it costs them a million dollars to fix the damages. It's just an outrageous claim hoping to make money without any actual work involved.

  • i_uncontitionally_agree_to_pay_one_cent_per_bit_in _this_message@cosand.org

    Simple. I see Subject: Are You Getting the Best Rate on Your MORTGAGE? 10121 5K, I send a bill for $50.
  • Let me hijack this a bit please...
    We recently installed Sendmail Server (from sendmail corp.) on our systems, along with the Switch and the mobile messaging server. We have 7500 users.

    We moved to sendmail (from iplanet) because of 2 things, spam and support.

    Yesterday, after continuing to get spam that I *thought* I had filtered, we learned that sendmails subject filter has a 2048 character limit (half taken by / chars, so an actual 1024 limit).

    Sendmail corps. recommendation was to use either BrightMail or milter to 'fight spam'...

    Does anyone have experience with either? Will milter allow me to have a flat text file that I can add subject lines to, to reject those messages?

    Ideally, I would have a [reject "No spam accepted"] section that I could simply paste subject lines into, or even wildcards like "young hot teen".

    Also, I have added spamcops rbl to my config, but as of yet, I don't notice a difference. Is it worth paying Maps? Is there a better way to get a current/valid rbl?

    What's the answer guys? What do we do to protect our users?

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Close