Spamming Gets Expensive in Utah and Ohio

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."

what about jurisdiction

[JPawloski]

for you to collect, the e-mail must have been sent FROM an Ohio company FROM an Ohio ISP TO an Ohio recipient. Obviously, no one is going to send spam from Utah/Ohio anymore. This serves to making their Spam-friendly ISPs uncompetitive, which ultimately only hurts the state.

Bounty Hunters

[DickBreath]

You can sue for $100 per message + lawyer costs. What is unclear is whether you can sue for the cost to track down the spammer.

If you could, then I predict a small industry would spring up of bounty hunters who would go to any lengths necessary to track down the origin of a spam message. Heck, they would even pay you (or other affected parties along the route) to put in necessary monitoring equipment/software, etc. in order to be able to track down the origin of a message without interferring with the operation of your mail server.

So this law needs to be ammended to allow you to recover costs associated with tracking down the spammer. Bounty hunters would be knocking at your door to offer to help track down spammers. After all their fee becomes part of your cost to track down the spammer, and therefore part of the amount you could sue for.

Excessive litigation?

[fermion]

Many in congress, particularly those of a conservative bent, complain about the costly litigation against the saintly American companies, allegedly brought by greedy and evil consumers and lawyers. They want to pass legislation that will limit rewards and otherwise protect companies from the liabilities of their products. In fact, few consumers actually bring lawsuits against companies due to the inherent expense and risk of such litigation.

The real reason to limit consumer is exactly these types of laws. Companies have been spamming consumers and ISPs to death. We have tried to establish voluntary laws to solve the problem. We have tried opt-in list and verified opt-in lists. We have begged web hosting companies to make sure commercial email sent from domains they host have real headers with valid email addresses, and clearly identify the source of the product and emailer. All has been to no avail.

So we are at a point where the only recourse is litigation. Is this the fault of greedy consumers or lawyers? Or is the fault of an industry that does not have the integrity to define and enforce rules that insure consumers and agents are treated with respect.

I am sure that conservatives have and are going to complain that this law and litigation are indicative of a decline in the basic moral fiber of the American consumer. At the same time, they will be raking in profits from the backs of those same consumers.

Not a good idea

[WCMI92]

I DESPISE SPAM'ers, but I despise the thought of the government and trial lawyers getting their greasy mitts into the net even more.

What irks me the most about some of the SPAM I get (over a hundred a day, so many that I've just started filtering whole domains, especially foreign ones) are the ones from LEGIT companies and sites, stuff I've signed up to get.

Such as news headlines from All Access, etc (I run a radio news site, and like to keep up on news items to post). Well, they, among others, have started using the lowball techniques that VeriSign's SPAMM'ers (easily the MOST obnoxious non-porn or scam SPAM on the net), in randomizing their e-mail sender.

The purpose of which is to defeat you inbox filtering (I use Agent) which I use to shunt mailing list e-mail, and news updates from All Access among others to their own folders so as to make the 200+ emails a DAY I get organized so that I MIGHT actually be able to make sense of them...

All of which is done, of course, because for some reson, marketers think they MUST be in your Inbox or else, they don't want you filtering.

In my case, getting into my Inbox makes you LESS likely to be read...

Also, I've pretty much had to make up folders and filters for the domains of all the popular "free" e-mail services, such as Yahoo! and Hotmail, so much SPAM arrives from those addresses daily. Which makes it LESS liklely that anyone needing to send me something using one of those services to get my notice, as 99% of the stuff I receive from those two domains are SPAM.

Anyone else resorted to this? I'm starting to get more and more SPAM from aol.com, as well, making me consider doing the same to them...

Re:I'd hate to be the poor bastard who

[Styx]

I've had that happen to me a couple of times now. Probably because I'm a pain-in-the-ass anti-spammer.
No one has complained to either me nor my provider,though.
The only reason I know of it, is that I got all the bounces. Fortunately, there's procmail for that.

It workes without legislation.

[cornice]

I live in Utah. Yea, yea, I know. Anyway, a few months ago one of the users on my network stopped me in the hall to say he had just sent an e-mail in reply to a spam requesting that he be removed from the spammer's list. I got all upset and explained (again) that all that does is confirm to the spammer that he has a live address. Then he explained that he had told the spammer that he would sue him under some bogus Utah law. He made up the number and title, etc. I was only mildly amused until the next day when he received a personal reply from the spammer. He apologized and said he would not use the address anymore. I was amazed. I don't expect this to ever work again but at least now we have the law behind us. Oh yea, I also find it typical that the Utah law has as much to do with stopping sexually explicit mail as it does with stopping spam in general. I guess that this is where the political support comes from. Don't you wish your state had it's own Porn Csar [usatoday.com]?

Sorta OT, sorta not (alleged "opt-in" spams...)

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

On the subject of spam and legalities, I've lately gotten a couple of those "blackmail" spams, you know the ones politely worded "we request your permission to contact you" in the subject, but with instructions that essentially boil down to "If you don't want us and our affiliates to spam you senseless, reply to us so we can confirm your email address and sell it to another spammer".

Is this even legal? Basically, they are asserting that if I don't actively decline their "offer", (and open myself up to be spammed by anyone they sell my "confirmed" address to), they claim I am "consenting" to be spammed by them and all of their affiliates.....

If I refuse to contact them and they spam me anyway, will that constitute harassment of some sort?

Ironically, BOTH of the last two spamming companies (both of them seem to be set up specifically to spam on behalf of others) that have done this claim on their websites that they only use "triple opt-in" addresses, which is obviously a falsehood considering they wouldn't be contacting me at all if they weren't harvesting my email address from some other not-opted-into spam list or a website or something...and only the twisted mind of a spammer thinks "refusing contact" is the same as "Oh, please, spam me!"...

mcafee spamming for anit-spam

[jimjamjoh]

The irony is that even companies ostensibly engaged in assisting end-users in the fight against spam are perpetuating the problem. Just yesterday, I was spammmed by McAfee with an advertisment for thier new "SpamKiller" product.

These guys are worse than insurance salesmen...