Spamming Gets Expensive in Utah and Ohio 307
bradipo writes "A large number of lawsuits have been filed against companies that have not complied with the anti-spam statute in Utah. I'm not sure how this will turn out, but it should be interesting nonetheless." And reader spoton writes "The governor of Ohio has signed into law a bill that allows internet subscribers to sue for up to $50,000 and ISP's for up to $500,000. It allows you to sue for $100 per email + court and lawyer fees incurred. Looks like the cost of spamming is going up."
It might catch on (Score:4, Insightful)
Laws are great when they are enforced (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Additional legislation is not the solution (Score:1, Insightful)
*EVIL LAUGH*
C//
SPAM is not Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because I have your cell phone number, does that give me the right to call you 20 times a day?
Beware the strawman! (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you sending them to people that you've never met in any way? If so, then how are they personal? Otherwise you are just sending email to someone you know. I am sure that they know how to ask you to stop, unless they fear offending you.
I don't think that we need to go into a definition of "spam" here. We all "know it when we see it".
Now on to my rant!
Sending thousands of unsolicedted emails (spam) is not "communicating freely". It is an electronic slap in the face. You don't respect me as a person to keep yourself from wasting my time and resources. You have no right to my time and resources. Telemarketers are nobler than spammers, at least they bother you on a one-to-one basis rather than vomiting their filth onto every person they can possibly find at once.
Finally, I at least get to play mind games with telemarketers!
Re:what about jurisdiction (Score:3, Insightful)
The spam may be from dial up European sources, but they are usually US spammers using services from there. Go after the people hiring them. If I tell you to break the law, I am still breaking the law.
Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
With email spammers are utilizing my resources (the bandwidth I pay for, the processor time my computer requires to handle them etc) to send me an uninvited message. They do not have any right to use my resources to disseminate that message. Nor do they have the right to use public resources to disseminate a message. If someone paints a message on the wall of the town hall, no one is censoring that person when they paint over it. People can use their own resources to say whatever the hell they want, but as soon as they start using my resources, they need my permission. Spammers automatically do not have my permission.
Regardless of the content of the spam, and regardless of the intention of the spammer, they do not have a right to send me anything. If they have a message, they can either pay to circulate it and then I will fight to the death to defend their right to do that - or they can rely upon agreed upon public forums. My inbox is not a public forum.
It isn't even a legislation issue. Spammers are trampling on other people's rights. The one thing that pretty much everyone will agree upon is that the government's role is to protect the rights of the citizen. Giving the citizen a legal recourse to go after people who use their resources without consent is exactly what the government should be doing.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Additional legislation is not the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
What's at issue is the attempt to transfer advertising costs from the seller to the potential buyer. Note the key words "seller" and "buyer" - this particular issue only applies when somebody is trying to sell something to somebody else when there's no prior sign of interest. Today it's annoying, but without other economic brakes put on this process it will become a real burden on consumers. Already we're hearing of people who lose mail because the spammers have completely filled their 5- or 10-MB mailbox in a short time, and at the rate of increase I wouldn't be surprised to see many people essentially knocked off of email (due to the sheer volume of crap) within a few years.
Then there's the legal issues involved with spammers forging headers, often criminally impersonating third parties. Nobody has the right to impersonate a third party for commercial gain. These victims can sue, but it's difficult and costly and many courts still don't understand how much damage it can cause (e.g., by harming reputations, or having domains added to simple-minded RBLs).
If that's not enough, there's the fact that spammers often bounce their messages off of servers owned and maintained for the benefit of third parties. That's no different than somebody deciding to borrow your car to run some errands since you're not using it. Even if they return it, undamaged, before you need it again it's not acceptable behavior in our society.
Finally (on the commercial spam side), there's the fact that most of the spam is sent out with fradulent names, through hijacked mail relays, etc., since it's flat-out illegal. In an ideal world we could have the FDA go after the diet/baldness/penis + breast growth people, the SEC go after the "sure stock" people, etc., but in the real world they have other priorities and jurisdiction is often unclear. These anti-spammer laws are te best way to get the illegal crap off of the network fast.
As for the moral point that spammers have "the right to speak," you're absolutely right. But more importantly, I have the right to tell them to shut up. Every time I get a piece of mail with forged headers, fradulent subject lines, etc., all I see is some arrogant asshole saying that he's the center of the universe and I have no value other than being an easy mark. If somebody repeatedly knocks on my door, I can have the police arrest him for trespassing. If they repeatedly call me on the phone, I can have the state fine them many thousands of dollars for violating the DNC orders. Yet you would have me believe that I'm have no right to stop somebody from sending me, oh, an announcement of an exciting new insurance policy every single fucking day for close to six months now? Sure, I have the technical ability to filter that crap out (and I do), but because I don't run my own email servers I still have to absorb the bandwidth to get the damn message into the server *and* to get the damn message a second time from the server before it's deleted, unread.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Additional legislation is not the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Spam prevents personal speech by forcing the recipient to deal with it instead of communicating with an individual's email send to the recipient.
Technological methods of stopping spam will only require spammers to get better technological methods themselves. This is quite similar to copyprotection mechanisms, if you can hear the song, you can copy it. If you want to allow arbitrary people to send you email, they will.
While I concur that bureaucracy runs amok, this is perhaps a case where the government should give people legal recourse against something that is near universally abhored.
I've said it before.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam works simply because the marginal cost of 1 additional email is so low that the marginal gain of 1 additional email sent will ALWAYS be greater (which means that some kind of nation-wide policy like this stands a chance at fixing the situation by raising the marginal cost of email).
For example....
Suppose I do television advertising. As I buy more and more advertising, I come closer and closer to saturating my potential market with exposure to my advertisement. Say I'm buying advertisements during sitcoms. For each add I buy, I reach fewer people who have yet to be exposed to my advertisement than the last ad that I ran. Thus the marginal value of each ad I purchase goes down, while the cost remains equal (all other factors equal).
That means that eventually I will reach a point where the marginal cost of the ad is greater than the marginal value. At that point, I'll start losing money on the campaign, and quit running the ad.
Now, let's look at spam....
Each exposure still costs some finite amount of money. The difference is that the cost is TINY compared with television advertising. Suppose I spend $1,000 on a co-located server and the associated bandwidth (a totally arbitrary number). That server can probably send literally millions (if not billions) of emails in the month that my $1,000 paid for. It's obvious that the marginal cost of the spam campaign is TINY compared to the marginal cost of the television ad campaign.
That means that the spam campaign takes MUCH MUCH longer. Indeed, as the marginal cost of the spamming approaches zero (which it gets very close to), the number of mails it takes to reach the point where marginal cost = marginal value approaches infiniti (which means you won't ever stop sending mail).
It's simple economics. The only way to lessen spam (from a purely free-market standpoint) would be to increase the marginal cost of the email (or decrease the marginal value, but that's not going to happen, because there's always an idiot out there that can be scammed into sending you a $5 check). Increasing the marginal cost of the email could be done in lots of ways - but they mostly all involve giving up some of the freedoms which we're probably not willing to give up in exchange for freedom from some spam.
Re:Additional legislation is not the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies don't have a right to free speech (and this includes everything from mom-and-pop businesses to multi-national corporations).
Many of the personal e-mails which I send are unsolicited and, while I am certainly not a spammer, could violate anti-spam laws because the recipient did not specifically request to be sent e-mail.
No violation would exist, because you are not sending bulk unsolicited e-mail. The key word here is BULK. While I know that the definition of bulk is open to quibbling, most such arguments are disingenuous, and ridiculous.
Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon, and anti-spam legislation is just another example of an overly powerful government taking away the rights of its citizens. I, for one will not support any such law, or any lawmaker who supports such a law.
That statement is so rah-rah and flag-waving that it is cloying. Our country was presumably founded by individuals with common sense (remember Thomas Paine?). I imagine that if spamming would have been possible in their day, the spammers would have been summarily executed.
P.S.
As an aside, I consider the founding father's original intentions to be largely irrelevant. When they framed the Constitution, women and blacks were excluded from its protection. We are now going through a similar fight and readjustment with homosexuality.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, not trying to troll... (Score:2, Insightful)
When are we going to see law suits against junk mail? I'd love that.
False argument that ISPs need spam revenue (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Spam-needed-for-competition argument is true, then China and Korea would have the best hosting companies around.
Where do these laws pertain? (Score:3, Insightful)
My question is as follows: if the message originated in my own home state, Minnesota, I am sure I could bring legal action against the perpetrator. If, on the other hand, the message originated in another state, perhaps North Dakota, where there are no laws prohibiting spam, or even another country, perhaps Canada, would I have precedent to bring action against them? They cannot make a case that they do not know what state I am in, considering the fact that my email address is in the
I know these are a lot of questions, but I am surprised and delighted to learn that in my home state I can bring action (and get reimbursed) for each and every unwanted spam email message that I get, and I want to be armed with as much knowledge as possible. Thanks for your time if you have anything to add to this conversation.
Re:Laws are great when they are enforced (Score:4, Insightful)
I compare these to the current junk fax laws on record. They are part of the TCPA act passed in the early 90s that, among other things, made it against federal law to send unsolicited faxes. The penalty is $500. Yet the machine at work averages about 10 a week. Why haven't all of us retired with a bank of fax machines generating income from the junk faxers? Because it is up to us to file against the faxer and pursue them to collect. Some judges believe it is an abuse of the court system to try to collect on these. Others listen to the junk faxers and believe it is a free speech issue. Aside from that, the time and effort involved in tracking down the faxer aren't always worth the money.
Tracking down a spammer for $20 or $100 will be the same. Sure, it will feel good to collect that money from someone. You might even be able to track a number of spams to one company and make it worth your while. But it will be a losing game of whack a mole. 3 more will pop up and the tide of trash in your inbox will not abate.
Re:Additional legislation is not the solution (Score:1, Insightful)
All I'll add is this: I'd like to remind the next person that suggests that spammers have a right to force us to receive their mail that I spent my last Saturday at work implementing & testing Vipul's Razor, which is now adding even more load to our taxed mail servers, bouncing some 20% of our incoming mail. All this extra utilization of company resources just so our staff can get their stupid jobs done in peace and not have to deal with dozens of porn and viagra spams being crammed into their mail boxes each day.
This is as exactly as much "a freedom of speech" issue as it is when someone walks into your office off the street and takes a shit on your desk, then comes back in once every hour to fling it in your face again.
Re:Additional legislation is not the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Point is that I've been reading and posting to
No one faulted the MPAA etc for encrypting DVDs. That was fair and all. We cracked it, but it was fair. We faulted them for making it illegal to try to crack it.
Apply the same logic here. The answer to the spam problem is not legislation, it is technology. Now, I know that those spam filters in place on mail servers eat system resources. They have to... that's a LOT of mail. But I also know how easy it is to forge headers. I know that many programs and websites are capable of sending mail from accounts which don't exist.
Why do these holes in the system exist? Why can't they be patched? Sure... I know we're talking about a protocol which is on literaly millions of machines, but it seems to me that the best way to stop spam is to remove the walls that make it possible to hide behind annonimity with your email. Once that is done... well... it becomes easier to catch these people.
Secondly, micro-pay. We see this tossed around a lot. Now, I don't like the idea of paying for email, but perhaps that's what it will take to remove spammers. Could someone create a "premium" email service which would require that senders pay
I don't know what would or wouldn't work... but these seem like the ideas I see frequently here... why can't they be applied to email rather than just websites and cyphers?
Speaking from experience... (Score:1, Insightful)
Location of the spammer doesn't matter, as long as they are in the USA. Most state consumer protection acts state that if you do business in that state, you submit to the laws of that state. In my experience, most of the companies are in CA or FL.
It's more effective to go after the company paying for the spam (the debt consolidator, pill peddler etc) rather than the guy sending the spam, who is usually service and/or judgment proof. The company will often claim they didn't know about the spam, but 99% of the time they are full of BS. Sometimes I do run across someone who appears to have made an honest mistake, so I'll just tell them not to spam me again and I drop it (and then if they do spam you, nuke 'em).
Tracking them down isn't that hard. You can forget about technical methods - focus on social engineering. I respond to the offer with a madeup name and my voicemail number. Keep the voicemail for use in court, and take a screenshot of the form you submitted. Also, remember to take local copies of any websites or other HTML that might disappear.
When you get a response, call them back and ask for their company name and address. I always google on their info to see what else I can turn up as well. Look that up their corporate info at the respective Secretary of State, then send their registered agent a demand for damages by certified mail, and offer to settle for a reasonable amount. If they don't respond, file suit and serve them the notice of the suit.
Many companies won't turn up to court, or they will turn up, lose and then ignore judgments. No problem - once you get the judgment, send it to Dun and Bradstreet collection services (sbs.dnb.com) for $25 and they will try and collect it. If the company doesn't pay, their D&B credit record will be littered with comments about 'unpaid court judgment'. Obviously this works best with larger companies.
Cost for filing a case in WA Small Claims $25.
Cost of service via certified mail $5.
Dun and Bradstreet debt collection service $25.
Total cost $55.
The look on a spammers face when he just ruined his companies credit: Priceless
I have thousands of spams archived (learn to save them) and 70 separate cases I am tracking. I've won or settled every one of the cases I have filed, and the proceeds have paid for a new P4 laptop and a bunch of other cool toys.
Lots more info at smallclaim.info
Oh great, more litigation (Score:1, Insightful)
The solution to spam is technology, not litigation.
We need a better e-mail transport technology to eliminate the source of the problem. Why? Because laws can be re-interpreted and misused to screw the people who own less lawyers.
Maybe you're all breathing a sigh of releif, that those nasty spammers are finally going to get what they deserve. But soon, there will be an incident where the big corporation uses the anti-spam laws against the random jaded consumer, to slap them down for daring to e-mail a complaint about poor service. And we'll all say "but that's not what the law was intended for," mouths agape, incredulous that we've been duped once again by the oh-so-reliable American judicial system.
Ludicrous? How about the time we all bitched about cybersquatters, got a law created, and then watched as innocent people get taken to court by companies with deep pockets [eff.org]? In an age where hyperlinking is made a criminal offense [2600.com] I do not consider myself safe from any law's misuse.
Just wait, you'll see. Dance with the devil (a.k.a. lawyers) and you're going to get burned. Technology is the solution.
California's first case is still being litigated (Score:3, Insightful)
California anti-spam cases are mostly stuck waiting for this case to be finally decided. But I think that once there's a win in this case, the floodgates will open. Not many spammers are in Utah, but there are lots of them in California.
The next big issue that has to be litigated is whether you can sue the beneficiary of the spam, not just the spammer. It's probably not a valid defense that the beneficiary hired a third party to spam for them. It can probably be argued that the actual spammer was acting as their agent. It gets complicated, with discovery needed to force disclosure of the transaction between the spammer and the beneficiary of spam. But that's how to go after the deep pockets, big companies that use others to spam for them.
Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech (Score:1, Insightful)
And how do you distinguish the value of my employer's time, money and resources as being something to protect versus my time, money and resources as not being worthy of protection? How is it I become valueless outside the context of my working life?
Coming to my door is fine, I have no problem with that because it's personal, it isn't something someone can do at the click of a button to a million people and most of all, it doesn't cost me anything.
Again you argue my time is of no value outside of a workplace. Telemarketers and JWs are both a waste of my time. I'll cut the JWs some slack because they only show up a few times a year. Different telemarketersucks have called me five times within fifteen minutes. If the JWs were joined by Christian Scientists, penis enlargers, replacement window contractors, insurance agents, Viagra peddlers, mortgage brokers, Catholics, Jews for Jesus and the rest, all day, every Saturday, then yes, I'd like all of the bastards banished from my property, under heavy penalty of law, just as you do. So it also becomes an issue of the total time devoted to dealing with them. I don't mind missing the crucial part of a mystery on tv to talk to a friend, but I damned well don't extend that right to every self-important shit who wants to call me by my first name and sell me something.