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Spam Government The Courts News Your Rights Online

Judge In e360 Vs. Comcast Rules e360 a Spammer 156

Brielle Bruns writes "Yesterday, Judge James B. Zagel dismissed claims against Comcast by e360. In the decision, the judge says: 'Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.' This clears the path for Comcast's counter-suit." e360 is the spammer that got a default judgement against Spamhaus, as we have discussed on numerous occasions.
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Judge In e360 Vs. Comcast Rules e360 a Spammer

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  • CvE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2008 @10:50AM (#23037168)

    Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.' This clears the path for Comcast's counter-suit.

    Comcast vs. e360Insight: Whoever loses, we win.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Shadowland ( 574647 )
      > Comcast vs. e360Insight: Whoever loses, we win.

      Or is that:
      Comcast vs. e360Insight: Whoever wins, we lose.

      I guess it depends on if you are a "glass half full" or "glass half empty" kind of person. :^)
    • Re:CvE (Score:4, Funny)

      by misleb ( 129952 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @01:30PM (#23039148)
      At least Comcast offers services that people actually WANT. You may not like some of their policies, but they are what I would call a "positive" business. That is, as opposed to a negative business like e360 that acts more as a parasite offering "services" that consumers don't really want and quite often hate. They leech off the system.

      I say, "Go Comcast!"

  • I get snail mail advertisements all the time; to me they are spam. What's the difference between unsoliticed snail-mail marketing and unsolicited email 'spam'?
    • by DragonPup ( 302885 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @10:53AM (#23037224)
      The snail mail sender pays for the entire cost of the message(paper, printing, delivery, etc). The spammer shares his cost with the recipient's ISP.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by toleraen ( 831634 ) *
        Snail mail sender didn't pay their share of my paper shredder though.
      • by ZuG ( 13394 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:05AM (#23037394) Homepage Journal
        You know, it just occured to me that this is really false.

        The spammer shares the costs with the recipient's ISP, and ultimately the recipient (through increased ISP costs). The cost of any one individual spam is very low, but taken together they quickly become noticable.

        The junk snail mailer pays for all of the mailing costs, but each piece of junk mail he sends must be recycled or thrown away, creating a small effect on the cost of garbage for each individual user. The cost of any individual junk mail is very low, but taken together, they do have an appreciable effect on the cost of trash collection.
        • by hedwards ( 940851 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:25AM (#23037622)

          The spammer shares the costs with the recipient's ISP, and ultimately the recipient (through increased ISP costs). The cost of any one individual spam is very low, but taken together they quickly become noticable.
          That's not really correct. A spammer might have to pay as much as you or I do in terms of costs, but they're getting that amount times millions and millions for free. Since the biggest names these days generally are using bot nets and co-opting servers the cost to the spammer is in most cases essentially zero.

          It's sort of like paying $5 for a car and making somebody else pay the rest of the sticker cost for a luxury car. Yes technically they're both paying, but even street people around here can get their hands on $5 without too much trouble.

          Trying to fight spam with legislation doesn't have a chance without global cooperation, and the Russians in particular just don't care, as do a few other nations. It's difficult to deal with places like the US where most of the spam originating from here is doing so from compromised computers.

          Technical deterrents are difficult to get right, and while they do allow for some help, it's impossible to really fix it. It makes a difference, but with the current net architecture it's a challenge to stop spam and have anonymity as well.

          Ultimately what things come down to is making it less rewarding. What we really need is the ability to fine companies that are paying spammers to advertise for them. Admittedly it would be nice to see spammers drawn and quartered, but realistically, it's far easier to find Target, Walmart, Bestbuy and the other companies I've seen advertised than it is to find a cyber criminal that may or may not be located somewhere in southeast Asia. It's just so much easier to follow the money than it is to try and follow the spam.

          Of course that's going to be fought tooth and nail, and I'm sure there are other problems with it. But it's a far easier solution to the problem than the others are. Of course, that isn't a license to ignore the other parts.
          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            Were the above the case, what's to stop someone concocting fake spam to cause financial damage to a company? You'd have to catch them red handed or they could just deny, deny, deny....
            • by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:53AM (#23037950) Homepage
              I am suing e360Insight for illegal spamming. http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam/e360/e360insight.htm [barbieslapp.com]

              In their failed summary judgment motion (asking the court to dismiss the case based on some evidence), they claim that the spam I tracked to them is not theirs, but it must be someone trying to make them look bad because: 1. They don't spam; 2. That it could have been created in a word processor using publically available information; 3. They don't format their e-mails that way; 4. That it did not come from their IP addresses.

              e360 ignored that they have used Atriks, which hides the true IP address by running it through a sort of legal botnet. They also ignored that they use anonymous domain name registrations, so I must have been a good guesser to get most of the domain names correct (their co-Defendant, Moniker, admitted that most of the domain names I identified to e360 were registered through them to bargaindepot.net -- their sister company/codefendant).

          • It's the USA that's the biggest problem. Get your own house in order.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The cost of 1 piece of mail is about 41 cents. The cost of an email is so small its a fraction of a traction of a cent. Big difference.
          • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

            by nuzak ( 959558 )
            Know how much bandwidth a mail server needs? Quadruple it. That's just to handle the spam. Is that free?

            • by Itninja ( 937614 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @01:29PM (#23039126) Homepage
              Sure is (or at least was). I knew a guy who got into the spammer business about 8 years ago (he's out now). I asked him the same question. He was sending a couple of million emails a day and I figured his cost for bandwidth must have been huge. But he told me it was all about the scheduling. He paid standard residential rates for ADSL and just scheduled his email server to send out no more email at one time than he could before the ISP caught on. Bascially he was just using 100% of the bandwidth he was paying for, whereas most residential users only use a small portion. Of course, as time went on, the ISP tightened their AUP and just flat out told him 'we know you running a mail server from your house and we won't allow it'. But at his peak he said he was making something like $1000/mo. He told me once he calculated his cost per ad was like 1/10000000 (one-billionth) of a cent.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          Contact the advertisers and tell them to take you off their list. Unlike spammers, junk mailers generally honor opt-out requests (they don't want to pay for paper and postage if you tell them there's no chance you'll buy something from them).
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          The junk snail mailer pays for all of the mailing costs, but each piece of junk mail he sends must be recycled or thrown away, creating a small effect on the cost of garbage for each individual user. The cost of any individual junk mail is very low, but taken together, they do have an appreciable effect on the cost of trash collection.

          I've read about some countires in Europe and other places placing a surtax on goods to handle the cost of disposal (for the packing materials only, IIRC). Maybe something si

          • Actually IEE directive from Europe is added to all electrical goods and the seller is obliged to recycle the replaced item
        • In Canada, you can place a sticker with the words "No Junk Mail" on the inside of the door of your mail box and then you won't get any. That doesn't work with email.
      • by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:06AM (#23037398)
        Every week I fill a 35 gallon trash bag with junk mail. I then pay to throw out (recycle) said bag of junk mail. Entire cost, my ass.

        In municipalities that provide trash collection, the government ends up paying that part of the costs of direct mail advertising.
        • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:33AM (#23037722)
          Well for me in my City Garbage is a fixed cost per year. So if I use it or not I pay the same amount... However junk mail helps keep the United States Postage Service running. And for relitivly low stamp prices for the level of service the USPS offers us. Daily Home Deliver and Pickup a close by location to get federal forms. Witout Junk Mail Stamps will be well over a dollar a stamp. Mail delivery will be much slower and a lot of other bad things...

          SPAM on the otherhand is advertising without the good. They dont support services that we want they are a burden on ISPs even the company who chooses to Spam reputation (albiet I havent seen a legit product being sold in years) will be shot. It really is a take-take indrustry that gives nothing back. At least tobaco comanies keep generations of farmers in business. SPAM operations run cheap make money without any benefit they are not a positive impact on the economy, they do no good.
        • by randyest ( 589159 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @12:03PM (#23038080) Homepage
          You should stop doing that. Instead, stuff all the spam back into the postage-paid business reply cards envelopes they send. With a little tape, you can really fit a lot of paper into one of those. They look like balloons when I mail them back. And the mail-spammer gets to pay the postage for the trash back to them! Free for me, helps the post office with a little revenue, and financially penalizes the mail spammers -- that's win/win/win!
          • by Thuktun ( 221615 )

            You should stop doing that. Instead, stuff all the spam back into the postage-paid business reply cards envelopes they send. With a little tape, you can really fit a lot of paper into one of those. They look like balloons when I mail them back. And the mail-spammer gets to pay the postage for the trash back to them! Free for me, helps the post office with a little revenue, and financially penalizes the mail spammers -- that's win/win/win!

            If you have a free source of bricks or stone around, you could also send them some samples [officeofst...luence.com].

          • This is actually a brilliant idea. I think I'm going to try this myself for a week and see what happens.
          • by nuzak ( 959558 )
            If you overstuff a reply envelope, they will simply discard it. To say nothing of dumbass things like taping it to a brick. They pay a first-class rate per-piece no matter what, so just send it back completely empty. Less effort for you, same expense for them.

            • I'm not sure what makes you think that, but my friend who works in the mailroom at Capitol One, from whom I got this idea, says he gets a few mega-stuffed business reply envelopes every week. Not only does the post office happily deliver them, they also charge extra for the weight and size. I have no information either way as to whether a brick would make it.
              • by nuzak ( 959558 )
                As long as you stuff it so it seals normally. If you overstuff it to where you have to use a bunch of tape like one poster suggested ... hell they'll probably figure it's full of anthrax.

                Basically it has to be in suitable condition for mailing as a first-class letter, even if it's overweight. Snopes has the links to the actual USPS regs on it.
                • The only mention I see of tape in this thread is my own post, which mentions "With a little tape," not "a bunch of tape."

                  Snopes has a thread [snopes.com] and a page [snopes.com] that mention this, but neither cites regulations or even suggests that the post office will not deliver it (because they will!) Snopes does say this won't reduce the amount of junk mail one gets, which is fine and not at all the goal.

                  Anthrax? What? Not sure what makes you think the PO would assume a large taped-up envelope or box would be full of an
          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by spacefiddle ( 620205 )
            Hmmm. Are you perchance related to this guy [bash.org]?
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Every week I fill a 35 gallon trash bag with junk mail.

          Wow. That's six gallons of junk mail every day! That's like an entire canvas mail sack daily. Or you're really fluffing it up before recycling it. Or you're in a more desirable demographic than I am (when filling out stupid surveys, I tend to claim that I am a 110 year old retired minister with no income). I get maybe a paper grocery bag (5 gallons?) in a month (or longer). Four or five pieces a day.
        • Have you considered opting out of their mailings? I have been been doing this lately and I have been getting a lot less junk mail. To actually opt you just call the 800 number on their mailing and speak with the representative.
      • The difference is, with snail spam, it's going to be delivered, and then you're going to have to deal with it. You're still going to pay the cost of throwing it away, recycling it, etc.

        With email spam, there are several stages where you can block the connection before the mail is delivered, thus reducing the cost to you. Not completely eliminating it, but reducing it. I know of no similar steps to take with snail spam.
        • by geekboy642 ( 799087 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @12:05PM (#23038092) Journal
          Careful, your ignorance is showing. Do you honestly believe there are no ways to block junk mail before it is delivered? Here's a helpful exercise: every time you find something you don't know, throw it into Google and skim the first five links or so. Here's what my 10 seconds of casual effort dug up:

          This will block 90%+ of junk mail, and I actually signed up months ago. The only junk mail I get is a local free newspaper that just gets stuffed into every box regardless.
          http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.php [dmaconsumers.org]

          This thing is pure gold. It will block ALL of those "pre-approved" credit card offers. You know the ones, they come with a 29.99% APR, a $650 limit, and yearly fees? Well, at least the ones my wife gets do. I signed up on this thing and I haven't had a single one since.
          https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ [optoutprescreen.com]
          • by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @12:51PM (#23038564) Homepage Journal
            For those who are skeptical (and i'm one) regarding the fraud or non-fraud of optoutprescreen.com, See this:

            One: Verisign signature.

            SITE NAME: www.optoutprescreen.com

            SSL CERTIFICATE
            STATUS: Valid (28-Sep-2006 to 18-Oct-2008)

            COMPANY/
            ORGANIZATION: CONSUMER DATA INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
            Washington
            District of Columbia, US

                    Encrypted Data Transmission This Web site can secure your private information using a VeriSign SSL Certificate. Information exchanged with any address beginning with https is encrypted using SSL before transmission.
                    Identity Verified CONSUMER DATA INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION has been verified as the owner or operator of the Web site located at www.optoutprescreen.com. Official records confirm CONSUMER DATA INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION as a valid business.


            Two: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/prescreen.shtm [ftc.gov]

            FTC.gov page about the website.

            There are also some blog entries around the web where people have had the same feelings about the website and it's possibility of fraud. As always, do your own research. But it looks legit.

            ~Wx
          • But if I blocked all the credit card offers, how would my wife and I continue to float thousands of dollars at 0% for years and never pay a dime for the privilege???

          • Thanks, but even though this is legitimate, I'm NOT interested in handing my name, address, SSN, and so forth to a thousand marketing companies on a silver platter.
          • Do you honestly believe there are no ways to block junk mail before it is delivered?

            Yes.

            This will block 90%+ of junk mail, and I actually signed up months ago.

            Given that's not a .gov address, I assume what you are talking about is a service which politely asks those companies to stop spamming. This may work in the real world, because it actually costs money to send these things, and they are sent by human beings, not robots.

            However, it is not a way to "block" anything. I can't simply create my own filte

      • by kindbud ( 90044 )
        The snail mail sender pays for the entire cost of the message(paper, printing, delivery, etc). The spammer shares his cost with the recipient's ISP.

        That's getting dangerously close to an argument the carriers would use to justify charging content providers for delivery of their content to end users. If everyone is in agreement that no one should be able to force extra infrastructure charges on someone else beyond what was planned for, then what defense do we have against AT&T assessing a surcharge on Y
    • It costs nothing to anyone but the sender in snail mail, where as with email it costs all parties for the bandwidth. Similar to fax spam which cost the end user the paper & ink..
    • I'm not sure on this beacuse I haven't seen any documentation, but I was told by a company that does large mailings for other companies (like junk mail) that there are laws going into place that make sending mail to "Current Resident" (and the like) illegal and punishable by fine.
    • by Wuhao ( 471511 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:06AM (#23037412)
      If you were asking what the difference is in the context of acceptability, junk mail senders are forced to pay the carrier -- the postal service -- for every piece of mail they generate. When I want to send a package through USPS, I can, and the fact that the junk mailers are also using the postal service has only made it easier, since they carry their own weight financially.

      Spammers, on the other hand, force their carrier -- Internet mail servers -- to bear 100% of the cost while receiving no compensation. Thanks to this, mail administrators are now forced to spend an enormous amount of time worrying about keeping spammers out, instead of making sure that the mail of legitimate users gets delivered. When I want to e-mail someone, I am less likely to be able to do so successfully since it's possible to get caught up in the antispam measures that have been set up on the mail server, as well as the recipient's mail client.

      In sum: junk mailers pay their carriers, and contribute to the maintenance of the service. Spammers pay nothing to the mail servers, and are a significant detriment to the service.

      They're both annoying as shit to the recipient, though.
      • The only reason mail admins HAVE to keep spam out is that people expect it.
        There's nothing saying you can't contract another party to receive your mail for you and junk it, in real life.

        In any case, I still risk losing mail IRL because I tend to toss my junk mail, and sometimes I'll catch a random letter or bill in there... usually just as I toss it so I have to dig it out of the bin.
        • by Wuhao ( 471511 )

          The only reason mail admins HAVE to keep spam out is that people expect it.

          Well, yes, of course they do. The volume of unfiltered spam coming into an e-mail inbox vastly exceeds the volume of junk mail coming into a postal mailbox. If I'm administering a commercial mail server, I'd certainly consider it to be my responsibility to ensure that the people it serves find it useful. In a corporate environment, that usefulness is pretty much nil if legitimate business e-mail is outnumbered by spam 50:1. If I were in charge of deciding my company's mail server admin, I'd absolutely insi

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 )
      Very little. Ultimately I guess it comes down to quantity. There are at least some practical limitations on junk mail (paper and postage costs money).

      If I had my way, junk mail would be opt-in only as well.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by doojsdad ( 1162065 )
      Snail mail spam is what keeps the US Postal Service in business. They aren't going to fight very hard to prevent it.
    • What's the difference between unsoliticed snail-mail marketing and unsolicited email

      Easy. With snail main the sender pays for it with a stamp. With spam the sender uses other people's resource to send the mail.

      Actually look at spam from your point of view as an end user spam is a bit like jumk mail. All yuo have to do is sort out the crap and toss it out. but from the ISP's point of view spam is very costly. What if the junk-mailers used fake stamps? the post office would be very upset but you would no
    • Parent was moderate flamebait? I guess there are some snail mail advertisers here
    • I get snail mail advertisements all the time; to me they are spam. What's the difference between unsolicited snail-mail marketing and unsolicited email 'spam'?
      Truth in advertising laws apply to junk mail - including that the actual letter has to actually identify who it's from. Failure to do so is a Federal crime -- with actual jail time associated with it. The CAN_SPAM act was partially an attempt to bring the e-mail & s-mail rules closer together.
    • The cost per message of sending junk mail through the post office is significant enough that there's an incentive for junk mailers to reduce the number of messages thay send, to the point where lists of good prospects can cost many times the actual cost of producing the mailings (which have to be printed, addressed, and physically mailed) and mailing them, because it's more profitable to send out 1000 letters to people who have responded to solicitations before than 100,000 letters to people who never even
    • I don't really pay for snail mail spam, I can easily filter it out with out incurring excessive costs. The cost for sending snail spam are also much higher than the electronic part. This helps limit it.
  • A pox on both your houses...

    This is like 4chan vs. The Church of Scientolog (except that in that case I have to clarify that it's 4chan I dislike, not the people joining their campaign as "Anonymous", and the Church of Scientology I dislike, not the people who simply believe in the underlying religious philosophy).

    Btw, why is it that spammers ever appear in court? Why haven't vigilantes already made it a practice to terrorize anyone who publicly acts in furtherance of spamming?
    • by CogDissident ( 951207 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:22AM (#23037592)
      Ever hear of "blue security"? They made a program which, when you got spam email, went to the website and filled out their application with tons of "remove me" messages and junk, making their data files unuseable.

      The spammers fought back so hard, they knocked the nation of Israel off the internet (where their offices/server was), for a few days.

      The lesson? Spamming is big business.
    • by esocid ( 946821 )
    • the Church of Scientology I dislike, not the people who simply believe in the underlying religious philosophy

      What is the actual underlying religious philosophy? You're saying you don't mind the members but you hate the organisation? Is that something akin to not liking McDonalds, but you don't mind speaking to people who are stupid enough to consider their food worth consuming?

      Note: I do like other fast food places, just I always seem to end up with stomach problems after going to McDonalds, last time someone convinced me to go, I was off work for a few days.. and he was off for a couple of weeks :p

  • by MadMidnightBomber ( 894759 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @10:50AM (#23037180)
    Sorry, but that felt very good.

    Where does this leave spamhaus v. e360 though?

    • by immcintosh ( 1089551 ) <slashdot.ianmcintosh@org> on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:58AM (#23038012) Homepage
      Leaves them right where they were before. e360 won default judgment against Spamhaus because Spamhaus didn't even deign come to court. This is, of course, because Spamhaus operates totally outside the jurisdiction of US courts, and they simply don't care. Not to mention I don't think any court will be inclined to do anything meaningful to actually enforce that judgment, so e360 has a nice big $11 million judgment that's effectively worthless. Especially considering Spamhaus is a non-profit, e360 will absolutely never collect a single penny.
      • by D'Arque Bishop ( 84624 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @12:51PM (#23038562) Homepage
        Leaves them right where they were before. e360 won default judgment against Spamhaus because Spamhaus didn't even deign come to court. This is, of course, because Spamhaus operates totally outside the jurisdiction of US courts, and they simply don't care.

        IANAL, but actually, that's not QUITE accurate. If Spamhaus had said to begin with that the US courts lacked jurisdiction, that would have been the end of it and e360 would not have won anything. However, Spamhaus claimed in state court that the suit belonged in federal court, thus acknowledging that the federal courts had jurisdiction. THEN they didn't bother to show up in court, and lost a default judgement.

        Now, whether e360 can get anything out of them is another matter entirely, but they probably could have avoided the whole mess by denying the US courts had jurisdiction in the first place...
    • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )
      That leaves e360 on the Spamhaus RBL the way things should be.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:13AM (#23037486)
    But... (and IANAL)

    It sounded like the judge said, basically, that the stated claims were invalid, but that the unmade claim of bad faith action by comcast may have a chance.

    I've had several cases where comcast has silently blocked e-mail sent to me, where I specifically wanted to receive those e-mails.

    If this is one of those companies that sends an advertisement with that little opt-out link at the bottom which is more likely to get you even more spam, then I'm all for Comcast blocking them. If this company (and I have not researched it, so I don't know much about it) does indeed require response to an opt-in e-mail prior to sending additional material, then comcast shouldn't be blocking them.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11, 2008 @11:15AM (#23037514)
    Everyone knows they are merely a 'high volume email deployer'.
  • Sure, spam sucks and it's nice to see ISPs raining down lawyers on spammers - but if Comcast wasn't such a collection of corporate asshats, I would feel infinitely better about them winning in court.

    It's like seeing the grade school bully ace a math test.
  • Is it wrong for me to hope that a meteorite falls on that courtroom and takes out both parties (but spares everyone else)?

    • Your desire would not result in sufficient suffering for either Comcast or to e360.
      • It could be a very small but radioactive meteorite, that doesn't kill them immediately, but gives them cancer. Of the balls.
    • your post advocates a

      ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante (*) act of god

      approach to fighting spam. your idea will not work. here is why it won't work. (one or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

      ( ) spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
      ( ) mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
      ( ) no one will be able to find the guy or c
  • Finally a swift competent decision from the legal system on an obvious case. If only the silly patent cases could be dismissed as quickly.
  • by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Friday April 11, 2008 @12:06PM (#23038104) Homepage
    Monday (4/7/2008), I had two motion hearings against e360. One was their summary judgment motion to kick their my case against them, the other was my anti-SLAPP motion against their counterclaim.

    Entire details at http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam/e360/e360insight.htm [barbieslapp.com]

    Their counterclaim is for calling libel (calling them a spammer and liar) and abuse of process (asking for their domain names in discovery). At the hearing struck/dismissed their abuse of process claim, and said that their paying my attorney fees for the motion is mandatory. The tentative did not strike the libel claim, but she said she would look into that further as the court needed to investigate if the supplemental request for judicial notice, containing articles quoting Linhardt in the press (Cnet and NY Times, DirectMag.com) is sufficient for limited purpose public figure status.

    She denied their summary judgment motion on my claims against e360. Mostly because e360 refused to provide discovery to me, but relied upon that information in their motion. On the my libel claim against them, she denied that, except the portion saying that he implied that I hacked into his system.
  • It's not often I'm in favor of Comcast these days (and yes, I am a subscriber to it due to lack of other available options, despite the FCC's contention that there's ample competition in broadband), but this time I'm happy that they've won. Spammers, along with Phishers, Virus/Trojan Writers, and 'Bot Herders are the true scum of the Internet.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    After all these years, very few people seem to recognize or understand the obvious nature of the spam problem.

    Why make this so complicated? It's very, very simple folks:

    1. Email spam comes from hijacked computers
    2. The only practical way to end spam is to either charge for sending too many emails, or to recognize hijacked computers sending too many emails and take them off the net until their behavior stops or is validated as legitimate. If the low level ISP fails to take action, the next ISP up the chain m

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