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Forbes Sympathizes with Poor, Abused Fax.com 485

Posted by michael from the hanging's-too-good-for-them dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Forbes invites sympathy for Fax.com and other junk faxers who are apparently being victimized by 'a small army of plaintiffs, attorneys and self-appointed activists', and Forbes particularly takes aim at 'the high-tech ambulance chasers' whose offenses include providing 'step-by-step instructions on Internet sites, printable legal forms and names of attorneys who specialize in the trade' to individuals who've received illegal junk faxes and want to do something about it. Because of these nasties Fax.com is 'all but out of business' and Forbes seems to be worried that email spammers might share the same fate. Help, I think I've fallen into a parallel universe."
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Forbes Sympathizes with Poor, Abused Fax.com More

Forbes Sympathizes with Poor, Abused Fax.com

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  • Sneaking in on a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TempusMagus ( 723668 ) * on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:29PM (#8036838) Homepage Journal
    You know I hate spam more than just about anything. But here is my prediction: Tougher anti-spam legislation will be used as a power-grab by the US feds. I can't wait to see what privacy sucking, corporate loving "provisions" will be added. Everyone hates spam so much that I'm sure our government will try and use it to sneak in the most egregious legislation.

    • Re:Sneaking in on a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Misch ( 158807 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:40PM (#8036981) Homepage
      Too late. The spammers "CAN-SPAM" act has already taken away our individual rights to redress grievances through courts of law. Individual recipients of spam cannot sue spammers. The power is left in the hands of attorney generals.

      • Re:Sneaking in on a good thing. (Score:4, Informative)

        by jhylkema ( 545853 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @02:30AM (#8040726)

        Quoth the poster:

        Too late. The spammers "CAN-SPAM" act has already taken away our individual rights to redress grievances through courts of law. Individual recipients of spam cannot sue spammers. The power is left in the hands of attorney generals.

        (sigh) Yet another legal illiterate /. er. The sky is not falling, Chicken Little.

        The "CAN-SPAM" act, while a shitty law, specifically exempts [spamlaws.com] laws like Washington's that prohibit falsifying headers and subject lines. For those too lazy to RTFA, here's the relevant section:

        (1) IN GENERAL- This Act supersedes any statute, regulation, or rule of a State or political subdivision of a State that expressly regulates the use of electronic mail to send commercial messages,
        except to the extent that any such statute, regulation, or rule prohibits falsity or deception in any portion of a commercial electronic mail message or information attached thereto. (emphasis added for blithering /. conspiracy buffs!)

        What this means is, law's like Washington's [wa.gov] are untouched by CAN-SPAM. So take off the tinfoil hat and join the real world.

    • To play devil's advocate here, do you assume that every action by the government has the sole purpose of stealing privacy? I would be inclined to agree with you maybe in some cases, but spam affects everyone, so all these "power hungry" poloticians are probably having the same problems with spam that we are, so maybe they are just more motivated to get rid of annoying spam because it affects them directly and personally?

      Now if only poloticians were open minded, creative, pure and logical enough to see th

    • Re:Sneaking in on a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:12PM (#8037353)
      "Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither"
      ---Ben Franklin

  • Woah woah (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:31PM (#8036860) Homepage Journal
    Forbes Sympathizes with Poor

    I totally misread *that* title.

    • Re:Woah woah (Score:5, Funny)

      by djeaux ( 620938 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:37PM (#8036935) Homepage Journal
      Not just funny. This is a case where the grammar police should be flogging the editor with a soggy ramen noodle. I, too, read it as if Forbes was sympathizing with the poor & abusing fax.com.

      Must be time for bifocals & a cognitive transplant...

      • Re:Woah woah (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:50PM (#8037105) Homepage
        Not just funny. This is a case where the grammar police should be flogging the editor with a soggy ramen noodle. I, too, read it as if Forbes was sympathizing with the poor & abusing fax.com.

        Try reading "Eats, shoots and leaves", currently a top ten seller in the UK and due in the US sometime the colonials learn not to make tea with salt water.

        Forbes magazine is a pale shadow of what it was under the senior Forbes. Steve Forbes the son was the clueless google eyed loonie who ran against GW Bush for the GOP presidential nomination claiming GW would not do enough for the ultra-rich (like himself).

        It is somewhat rich to be given lectures in entepreneurship from a person who inherited every penny he owns. Come to that it was a bit much hearing the loonie prate on about 'familly values' and doing the standard GOP pander to the anti-gay bigots when Steve inherited his fortune from his gay father.

        • Isn't Forbes an SCO-sympathiser? If memory serves, SCO even linked to opinionated anti-open-source articles at forbes.com from the front page of their website. Kinda shows you how fucked-up that particular publication is.

          Eats Shoots & Leaves is a hysterical read BTW. Doesn't seem to be available in the US yet, but here's the amazon page [amazon.com] where you can order it from.

        • Steve Forbes the son was the clueless google eyed loonie who ran against GW Bush for the GOP presidential nomination claiming GW would not do enough for the ultra-rich (like himself).

          It is somewhat rich to be given lectures in entepreneurship from a person who inherited every penny he owns

          You've failed to make it clear which phoney entrepeneur you're referring to. Please resubmit with requested clarification.

    • Re:Woah woah (Score:5, Funny)

      by mdielmann ( 514750 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:43PM (#8037027) Homepage Journal
      It gets worse. I was upset when I realized they hadn't abused Fax.com.
    • I love these!

      Here's one from the Houston Chronicle today:
      City cools jets of pedestrian dousing fountain


      I heard one one on the radio last night too:
      Come to our meeting tomorrow night. It will be held in the XYZ building which is located at 101 Brodway at 7:00 P.M.


      Q: Where will the XYZ building be at 8:00 P.M. and how fast is it moving?


      BTM

      • Re:Woah woah (Score:3, Funny)

        by Darby ( 84953 )
        Q: Where will the XYZ building be at 8:00 P.M. and how fast is it moving?

        Come on now, you can tell me either of those facts and I can tell you the other but I can't tell you both from a single place and time.
  • on a regular basis, but aren't they generally, more up on things than this?

    Or is someone paying them to be a mouthpiece?
    • They don't quite seem to understand why a law stands in the way of an ad-based business model...

    • Re:I don't read Forbes (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Walter Wart ( 181556 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:51PM (#8037119) Homepage
      I do, at least semi-regularly. You have to understand, these guys are Business Fundamentalists. If someone is making a buck off of it it is GOOD. Anything including laws, divine revelation or public opprobrium that interferes with this is BAD.

      Consider their audience. The people who read Forbes are business people. They like it when they and people like them are praised and dislike the people who get in their way, just like the rest of us. So Forbes prints articles which damn anything that is "bad for Bidness" (any Bidness).

      • Re:I don't read Forbes (Score:5, Informative)

        by pyrotic ( 169450 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:25PM (#8037485) Homepage
        Why do people read Forbes? There are good financial publications out there who actually have a clue - the Financial Times, The Ecomomist, Janes Defense Weekly, all tell it like it really is. Any business who takes what Forbes writes seriously is going to find itself in the position of Boeing. As the FT said last week:

        Boeing's 737, with almost 4,000 planes in the air, is the most successful commercial airliner in history. But the company's largest and riskiest project was the development of the 747 jumbo jet. When a non-executive director asked about the expected return on investment, he was brushed off: there had been some studies, he was told, but the manager concerned couldn't remember the results.

        It took only 10 years for Boeing to prove me wrong in asserting that its market position in civil aviation was impregnable. The decisive shift in corporate culture followed the acquisition of its principal US rival, McDonnell Douglas, in 1997. The transformation was exemplified by the CEO, Phil Condit. The company's previous preoccupation with meeting "technological challenges of supreme magnitude" would, he told Business Week, now have to change. "We are going into a value-based environment where unit cost, return on investment and shareholder return are the measures by which you'll be judged. That's a big shift."

        The company's senior executives agreed to move from Seattle, where the main production facilities were located, to Chicago. More importantly, the more focused business reviewed risky investments in new civil projects with much greater scepticism. The strategic decision was to redirect resources towards projects for the US military that involved low financial risk. Chicago had the advantage of being nearer to Washington, where government funds were dispensed.

        So Boeing's civil orderbook today lags that of Airbus, the European consortium whose aims were not initially commercial but which has, almost by chance, become a profitable business. And the strategy of getting close to the Pentagon proved counter- productive: the company got too close to the Pentagon, and faced allegations of corruption. And what was the market's verdict on the company's performance in terms of unit cost, return on investment and shareholder return? Boeing stock, $48 when Condit took over, rose to $70 as he affirmed the commitment to shareholder value; by the time of his enforced resignation in December 2003 it had fallen to $38.

        • Re:I don't read Forbes (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @08:39PM (#8038303) Homepage
          Why do people read Forbes? There are good financial publications out there who actually have a clue - the Financial Times, The Ecomomist, Janes Defense Weekly, all tell it like it really is.

          The common factor being that they are British publications. One could ask why anyone reads any US publication given that they are mostly devoted to reporting 'character' and 'personality' stories completely ignoring any political issues of any substance.

          If CNN were reporting in Iran today they would have reduced the power struggle there to a series of stories on who had the best looking turban.

          The FTs comments on Boeing are right on point. Boeing was once a great company, then they stopped being in the business of making planes and started to be about squeezing contracts out of the US federal government. What is most astonishing about this change in direction is the time it took place - right at the end of the cold war when it was pretty obvious to anyone but the Boeing CEO that military spending would be winding down.

          Sic transit gloria. If you read the decline and fall of the great powers what is astonishing is the fact that while eventual decline is inevitable there is no reason why the Roman empire could not with better management have survived a couple more centuries, the fall of the great powers was usually the result of hubris, of stopping the work of empire building and started waving flags, declaring empire days and generally lording it over everyone else.

          I believe that the greatest threat to the pre-eminent position of the US today is the folk who have adopted the Condit strategy, forget how the US became great - by leading the alliance of the free world and instead start lording it over folk. Forbes is merely one of the organ grinders who are playing the tune here.

        • Why do people read Forbes?

          It's like Seventeen for executives. Seventeen does pointless lists of the cutest boys and best dressed actresses, Forbes does pointless lists of the richest boys and totally awesomest briefcases.

          I know it sounds like I'm joking, but it's only funny because it's true.

      • Absolutely not! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:35PM (#8037597)
        I had a subscription a while back, which I let lapse for a variety of reasons, but Forbes as a whole most certainly does NOT take the position that anything profitable is good. Forbes was the first source I read about corporations who draft laws (like building codes) and then use copyright law to charge the public for access. Forbes was highly critical of the practice. Every second or third issue there'll usually be a profile of some kind of scam artist who's got a new (likely fraudulent) business.

        I agree with the submitter, Forbes standing up for a junk fax company seems quite contradictory to their usual position. Forbes is decidedly against the "nanny state," preferring to believe that people ought to be able to educate themselves and make informed consumer choices. Forbes is generally not in favor of outright fraud or theft (which is what junk faxes are).

    • Re:I don't read Forbes (Score:5, Interesting)

      by martyros ( 588782 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:41PM (#8037663)
      Seriously -- they don't even seem to realize that sending junk faxes is illegal. Is it any surprise that it's hard to make money doing that? What next, FBI puts mobsters out of business, and the NYPD puts drug dealers out of business?

      They call the lawsuits an "unintended consequence" of the 1991 law. But it seems to me that the problems fax.com is having are exactly the intended consequence. Exactly what other consequence were they talking about?

  • I'd be upset too. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dasein ( 6110 ) * <tedc@codebig. c o m> on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:31PM (#8036864) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    "Fax.com's Katz called the practice "blackmail and extortion," among other choice words. On the other hand, Fax.com didn't exactly help its cause when it sent 1,634 junk faxes in one week in 2001 to the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling, resulting in yet another successful lawsuit against the company."

    Wow, let's assume that each fax page takes about 6-seconds (because you want high quality) and that each fax consists of a cover page and one page of content. Further that each fax transmission requires a 3-second handshake - 15 seconds phone time per fax. That means that 15 * 1634 = 24510 seconds or 7.8 hours of tied up phone lines. Yeah, if someone, over the course of the wee decided to tie up one of my phone lines for an entire workday, I'd be upset too.

    If it were actually legal, there would be at least six other companies doing the same thing. With all that traffic, it would be hard for anyone to get a legitimate fax through.

    • Re:I'd be upset too. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by djeaux ( 620938 )
      Don't forget the cost of 3,268 sheets of fax paper, assuming the message was one page & had a coversheet. That's what? Over five reams of paper?

      It's almost the fax equivalent of a denial of service attack but in hardcopy.

      • 6.53 reams.

        Friday was code complete and I made it (after a hard push -- late nights, week-ends). So, my motivation is just low enough today to actually whip out the calculator.
    • It would be dirt easy to setup a PC with Fax software in your area, connect it to an unlimited-use local phone line, and feed it a list of fax numbers. Or, alternatively, have it call ***-**** until it receives a tone, and send the spam.

      You could probably send out those 1,634 faxes in a week the first time, and 1,634 more the following day. All for the cost (to you) of 20 dollars per month. Even if you only average 1,500 per week, get a .1% return rate, and make $5 per hit, you're still making money. I

  • war dialing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) * on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:32PM (#8036872) Homepage
    From the article:
    To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers.

    Yeah, real sophisticated. Call every damn number you can, sequentially, and listen for the whistle. Didn't mention the many millions more of non-fax numbers it called and hung up on.

  • Sent him information (Score:5, Informative)

    by draziw ( 7737 ) * on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:32PM (#8036873) Journal
    What an ass. slubove@forbes.com if you want to send this guy comments - a shame there isn't a easy to use fax number to send your thoughts - but e-mail can do. You can see his pic here: http://www.mayocommunications.com/1016mcq_lubove.j pg

    • Re:Sent him information (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:41PM (#8036991)
      This post is posted "as is". Don't do anything stupid or illegal. For educational purposes only.

      Forbes.com

      28 West 23rd Street
      11th Floor
      New York, NY 10010
      Phone (212) 366-8900
      Fax (212) 366-8804

    • Re:Sent him information (Score:5, Informative)

      by panaceaa ( 205396 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:58PM (#8037216) Homepage Journal
      Here is my e-mail to him:

      Your article, Fax and Friction (1/20/2004), gives the me the impression that companies illegally sending faxes should be allowed to do so without the threat of civil lawsuits. That's akin to arguing that murderers shouldn't be subject to civil lawsuits because the Feds already can prosecute them criminally. How does that make any sense?

      There are laws against junk faxes, and both the victims and the FCC can prosecute against perpetrators. Why should it be different because some financial institutions your magazine adores use Fax.com?

  • It just shows... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by barcodez ( 580516 )
    It just shows how out of touch Forbes is with technology and what people think.

  • Rewrite! Lead sentance should be... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:33PM (#8036876)
    Pity the lawbreaking travel agent or car dealer whose fax advertisement happens to appear on a fax machine belonging to one Ben Livingston of Seattle, Wash.

  • Duhhh.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fryth ( 468689 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:33PM (#8036885)
    "What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money..."

    And spammers/junk faxers don't?

  • Post Forbes Fax Numbers, PLEASE! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:33PM (#8036890)
    Someone really needs to post a list of Forbes fax numbers at their different offices so we can all start trying to sell them penis enlargement pills.

    64,583 faxes later they'll start to appreciate what we mean.

    I regularly get faxes at 2 AM on my home number, on a line that hasn't been used for faxes for 5 years!!! So I hooked up a fax machine to see who was sending them, but the remove requests don't work and there are to many to try and stop them...

  • Spin doctoring (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:34PM (#8036899) Homepage Journal
    How are they going to retract this? Are they going to follow this up with an "It was just satire" announcement, or an announcement that the responsible parties have been sacked? Any bets?

  • What?!?!? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zulux ( 112259 )
    I RTFA - it was a news piece that showed both sides of the issue. If anyhting, it had an anti-blast-faxer slant: all the quotes and stats from the anti-faxers were reasonable, and the quotes from the blast-faxers made the out to look stupid.

    • Re:What?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:55PM (#8037172)
      You could argue that what they were really opposed to was the kind of legalized extortion that a lot of small businesses get exposed to. What they failed to mention was that most businesses exposed to that kind of situation have it happen through no fault of their own, whereas fax.com brought it on themselves.

      Duh.

    • Re:What?!?!? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by happyfrogcow ( 708359 )
      You must be kidding. It seemed heavily slanted towards agreeing and being sympathetic towards the fax-spammers. It's so disgustingly biased that I fear for your critical thinking skills and wonder what mods where thinking when modding you insightful.

    • Re:What?!?!? RealityCheck! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Crypto Gnome ( 651401 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:14PM (#8037381) Homepage Journal
      it was a news piece that showed both sides of the issue

      Now hold on there a minute, big fella. What do you mean both sides of the story?

      There *is* only one side.

      The side The Law is on.

      What they're doing is equally as legal as selling heroin. (just to be clear not even slightly, not even for an instant, not even once)

      You don't see Forbes.COM publishing articles saying "pity the poor crack-dealers" now do you?

    • Re:What?!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:34PM (#8037584) Homepage
      "Both sides of the issue"... I know people today, most especially those who consider themseves journalists, think that presenting both "sides" of an issue results in a "balanced" article.

      But it is not balanced. A real journalist doesn't mutely present both "sides". A journalist also has to judge, and present, the motivations and past behaviors of the people involved as well. All sides are NOT equal. A journalist is not a debate moderator.

      Evolution theory is not the same as creationism. Creationism is not science, it is religion.

      Corporate sponsored anti-environmentalist screed is NOT the same as a global scientific consensus. The motivations of each side are wildly different, and should not be given equal weight.

      People who believe tax cuts are always beneficial are not as believable as pay-as-you-go fiscal conservatives: The tax cutters have twenty years of debt accumulation and other after-cut hangovers undercutting their position. Presenting them as equally believable as a pay-your-bills economist is misleading and does not serve the reader well.

      Presenting pro-war neocons' arguments, long after they were proven farcical, as equivalent to those who have actual on-the-ground experience in political matters is not fair, nor is it balanced.

      Life is not a football game! Everything is not an two-sided matchup of two noble teams!

      Presenting the pro-Fax.com side as roughly believable as the anti-fax.com "side" is disingenous on any level. It is not journalism; at worst it is Machiavellan manipulation of perception. In this instance, it rehabilitates the fax.commers as underdog victims of liberal trial lawyering bloodsuckers in the eyes of the readership of Forbes.

      A journalist has the responsiblity of weighing the credibility of the sources of arguments. And to inform the readership of the fact.

      Sometimes there just isn't a balance! Sometimes one side is just wrong. And a journalist must say why.
  • These spamming companies, whether it be via faxing, telemarketing, or e-mail spamming, will never go away unless we the concerned people of the world take it upon ourselves to act out against these vultures of communication!

    We need to be spamming the spammers, flooding the telemarketers, and faxing the faxers.

    I mean, I don't want to sound too harsh, but really, if we the affected people do not speak out against this, who will?

    Your beloved politicians? Please.

  • Not quite parallel (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScottSpeaks! ( 707844 ) * on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:35PM (#8036908) Homepage Journal
    Help, I think I've fallen into a parallel universe.

    So in your universe does Forbes usually champion the folks who are sick of intrusive marketing, instead of catering to the mindset that capitalists and business owners should be free to do anything they want to try to make money?

    It's different here.


  • Hey, did you guys check out the "Sponsored links" box on the right side of that page?

    Paralell Universe, indeed!

  • He Sounds Like he's Serious (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:37PM (#8036929) Homepage Journal
    Although it could be very dry sarcasm coupled with gloating. It could also be a call to arms disguised as a sympathetic article. Yanno, he wants to plant some seeds of ideas without actually coming across as a rabid anti-junk-fax Zealot kinda thing? He might also be on drugs. You know how it is... you go in for oral surgery, they give you some percocet and when you come down off the stuff you've run up a $10,000 pizza bill and published an article supporting one of the most detestable industries around?

    Yeah I'd say those are the most likely scenarios...

  • Fax.com founder Kevin Katz claimed that "all the lawsuits" are responsible for driving away most of Fax.com's business.

    Perhaps Kevin should get John to write a simpering, knee-jerk monologue about how the athletic lawyers are oppressing the junk-faxers because they are "different".

  • People should just stop suing junk faxers ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:38PM (#8036945) Homepage

    People should just stop suing junk faxers and start putting them in jail. Advertising should pay for the media it comes in through, not steal from it. Junk faxing, and spam, is theft, which is a crime, and should be dealt with as a criminal case (which in many jurisdictions can be brought to court even by average citizens).

  • <?php

    #
    # FSSRS: Forbes' Spammer Sympathy Reduction Script
    #

    print("<html>\n<head>\n\t<title>emai l adresses</title>\n</head>\n<body>\n\n");

    for ( i=0; i < 10000; i++ )
    {
    print("<a href="abuse@forbes.com">" . md5(microtime()) ."@forbes.com</a><br>\n");
    }

    print("</body>\n< /html>\n");

    ?>

    Link to this spam trap and wait for the fun to start!

  • If I read the article correctly, they are not saying they like efax.com. Rather they are saying that the rules are so broad that if you dial a wrong number, you could be sued too. That's why they mention, towards the end, about the FCC rule that you have to have written permission to fax someone (and how do you get the written permission? Hey fax it... oh wait) Maybe I'm being too soft of them though.
    • The FCC rule is against commercial faxes, not personal or other non-commercial faxes. If I'm not selling a product or service and I accidentally send my fax to you, I'm not liable.

      But if I am indeed selling penis enlargement pills, then I'd better be careful that I've got written permission from you.

  • I don't get it. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by forevermore ( 582201 )
    I mean, really, they're feeling sorry because a company that makes money by doing something illegal is going out of business?

  • What Forbes fails to realise... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kotukunui ( 410332 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:41PM (#8036999)
    is that this situation is caused by FAX.COM breaking the law.
    Let me repeat that.
    FAX.COM is breaking the law.

    The people who have been on the receiving end of this lawlessness have been given a direct route by which to punish the lawbreaker. Eminently sensible in my opinion.

    To me it seems that this is the ideal application of sensible real-world law. Forbes sees it as an attack on a legitimate business. Bollocks.

  • Self appointed activitsts?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by teeker ( 623861 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:44PM (#8037033)
    what, am I supposed to apply at the bureau of activism before I can be a REAL activist??

  • This is exactly what is supposed to happen! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mlknowle ( 175506 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:46PM (#8037054) Homepage Journal
    At least from a techno-libertarian sort of perspective, isn't this what we're looking for? These stupid junk fax-ers are imposing a huge cost on buisnesses and therefore on everyone else indirectly. Instead of using government time and money to investigate, private citizens did the footwork, with the promise of a reward from the 'offenders.' And the whole thing went through small-claims type courts which kept legal costs down.

    I'm not shedding any tears over Fax.com.

  • *CRUNCH* ... goop. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GMFTatsujin ( 239569 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:46PM (#8037064) Homepage
    But by declining to hear the lower court's case and allowing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 to stay intact, the court has effectively sanctioned an unintended consequence of the law that has ensnared many businesses in a legal web of fines, threats and a lot of aggravation.


    Er... no, I'd say that was actually the point of the law. It's like the cockroches are shocked at the idea of having to scatter when the light comes on. "But-but-but... but the dark was so NICE!"

    Fine by me. Speak up loudly, guys, it makes you easier to target and squish. Fax marketer, meet boot. Boot, fax marketer. I'm sure you'll get along famously.

  • Fax.com Remove Form (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:47PM (#8037065)
    Get your phone number removed [fax.com] here.

    Does anyone know if this actually works?

  • War dialing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by miu ( 626917 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:48PM (#8037076) Homepage Journal
    To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers.

    So these are the obnoxious fuckers that leave empty messages, dead air, and fax tones on my voice mail?

    Why isn't this considered electronic trespass or hacking?

  • Is Forbes trolling us? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:49PM (#8037084) Homepage
    I've said it before [slashdot.org] and I'll say it again: Forbes doesn't get their profits from journalistic credibility, they get them from advertising dollars, and the most basic thing they sell to advertisers is circulation numbers. In the long run perhaps articles like these will erode their readers' respect and hurt their income, but that's in the distant future. For now, they may have just discovered that putting geek flamebait on the internet is a great way to get a lot of page views in a hurry.

  • Spam here to stay, conventional business profits (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:49PM (#8037091)
    I think this is the kind of leading edge proof that spam is here to stay and that despite its ridiculous, fraudulent, and often illegal or pornographic content, that big business has figured out how to make money off of spam and spammers and yet keep enough distance from it to not sully their hands with it publicly.

    The Star Tribune had an article in it a few months ago about how the email address you put on your product registration or other request to some otherwise legitimate company is getting bundled with your name and address and entering the direct mail list market where they ultimately filter down to the penis spammers and others.

    And then there's the banking (don't all spam businesses take credit cards?) industry, the ISPs selling the connectivity that keeps spammers in business, and so on.

    I'm kind of reminded of a scene from the end of some thriller movie where our naive but honest to the core hero finally has the horrifying realization that his superiors/hero/idol is behind the awful crime he's been trying to get to the bottom of all along.

    Big business doesn't want spam to end, they've figured out how to stay clean and make money.

  • small crimes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by happyfrogcow ( 708359 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:55PM (#8037178)
    A self-described "small-claims warrior," Livingston has made a side business out of suing these companies and many more for the sin of sending him unsolicited fax ads, better known as junk faxes.

    because only big crimes should be punished...? gg forbes.

    the court has effectively sanctioned an unintended consequence of the law that has ensnared many businesses in a legal web of fines, threats and a lot of aggravation

    No, those were the intentions. Change sentence to "ensnared many businesses providing illegal services" and you'll see the reasoning.

    The laws and stiff fines ranging from $500 to $1,500--applied to each fax rather than the mass

    Ok, i was under the assumption that the people at Forbes had some understanding of money. I guess not. If the fine was $1,500 per mass, that would be paltry. The faxes would get out, and a even if 1% reached a human eye the benefits would be reaped. The $1,500 would be recovered a hundred fold in fees from the client paying for the bulk faxing. Make it a per transmission fine and you might not be able to recover the fines from fees.

    Forbes makes it sound like a $1,500 per bulk would be more than adequate. So are they saying that they don't care if it is still illegal just as long as the fines aren't restrictive enough to stop someone from making money?

  • contradictory assertions in article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @06:58PM (#8037205) Journal
    1) To further humiliate the businesses, Livingston posts all the court documents and letters he sends, in which he typically demands a standard $500 fine, or $1,500 if the fax was sent knowingly. In all, he says he's collected about $6,000 in three years.

    2)"What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money," says Wolfe & Wyman attorney Stuart Wolfe, whose Irvine, Calif., firm is defending several clients accused of sending junk faxes.

    Given the limited $500/fax fines, and the admitted total of $6000 over three years of work earned by Livingston, just what business (even legal) would attempt to exploit such tiny earnings potential? I mean, who is Wolfe (and the reporter) kidding? You want to argue free speech rights for fax and email spammers, fine - fight it out in the Supreme Court and let the chips fall. But that argument is so ridiculous that I can't believe the reporter included it with a straight face. Never mind the fact enforcing financial penalties against civil wrongdoing is how tort law is supposed to work.

    (shakes head in astonishment at the absurdity of it all)

    --Maynard

  • Advertizing... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mbbac ( 568880 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:00PM (#8037230)
    Don't you guys know what happens without advertizing?

    Nothing.

    That's right. If it weren't for advertizing nothing would ever get done. Fax.com is providing a valuable service to humanity.

  • Attorney Bites a Lawyer. (Score:3, Funny)

    by leoaugust ( 665240 ) <leoaugust@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:07PM (#8037304) Journal

    "What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money," says Wolfe & Wyman attorney Stuart Wolfe (who is defending junk faxers).
    Let me get this right.
    "What's happened is there's a whole cadre of lawyers who want easy money," says Wolfe & Wyman attorney (who himself is a lawyer) Stuart Wolfe

    Looks like Attorney Bites Lawyer to me. What irony !

    "What's happened is there's a whole cadre of
    lawyers and attorneys who want easy money," says ...

  • I was a faxer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danec ( 8876 ) <dane@carlsoncarlson.com> on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:30PM (#8037526) Homepage
    I was never a spammer, but I used to run a advertising supported newsletter of humor and inspirational stories that was faxed to local business five days a week. Each newsletter was one page long, and faxed in the dead of the night.

    Everyone we faxed the newsletter too subscribed by placing their business card in one of our card bowls placed at restaurants around town. We didn't offer a prize or anything else with the subscription, so we weren't tricking anyone into anything.

    At the bottom on the newsletter were unsubscribe instructions: write unsubscribe on this newsletter and fax it back.

    Everyday we'd get unsubscribe requests, and everyday we'd process them. Many times someone would call from a business and unsubscribe one day, and then a couple days later a receptionist or something who sat near the fax machine and depended upon us for her daily chuckle would call wondering what happened to us, and we'd resubscribe them. Then, a week or two later someone from the business call and unsubscribe again, ad nasuem.

    One day, without any notice, I was sued in small claims court by a local attorney who claimed that I was sending him unsolicited faxes, and as such owed him $500 for each of three faxes that he'd received unsolicited from me. The faxes weren't unsolicitied, and I had recorded in my files that someone from his office had called in to request the fax. Also in the files were notes detailing that someone had canceled, then restarted, then canceled the subscription of the course of a week and a half.

    I took this information with me to court, but the judge explained that unfortunately his hands were tied and he was bound by the statute that required that I pay $500 for each of the three faxes -- no matter what the opinion of the court might have been about the excessiveness of the award.

    That night, I removed every attorney and legal aide off the list, and within a year I totally ceased operation.

  • FYI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Metaldsa ( 162825 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:36PM (#8037607)
    My brother who works for a hedge fund tells me how they have bought articles, not ads, articles in forbes. So perhaps fax.com gave forbes some money to show both sides of the argument. Not that it should help them. Fax.com broke the law, the case was so obvious the higher courts refuse to hear it, fax.com keeps getting sued for breaking the law.

    Its terrible that fax.com is all but broke. "At its peak, the company boasted of a database containing 16 million fax numbers and 30 million "untouched" fax numbers, and that it could blast out as many as 3 million faxes a day on behalf of Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), Mail Boxes Etc. (now a unit of United Parcel Service (nyse: UPS - news - people )) and other customers. To find fax numbers, the company used a sophisticated automated "war dialing" system that randomly called and recorded millions of fax numbers."

    What a sleezy business.

  • How to DOS a fax (Score:3, Funny)

    by StrandedOrg ( 664681 ) <matthew@NOspam.stranded.org> on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:37PM (#8037611) Homepage
    I take the original fax and tape it to a few blank sheets of paper. On the blank sheets I write something like "remove me from your list". Anyways, insert the first page, hit paper feed and tape it to the last page so it forms a loop. Dial the offending number and let it run all night. Kills their ink, paper and phone line all in one. It may not be effective but it makes me feel better.

  • A little math... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Flower ( 31351 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @07:44PM (#8037693) Homepage
    Fax.com claims they can pump out 3 million faxes a day. Make the following assumptions.
    1. Each fax eats a sheet of letter head. That means each day companies receiving unsolicited faxes from this one entity have consumed 6000 reams of paper.
    2. Assume that each ream of paper costs on average $5. That's $30,000/day industry pays. 52 weeks in a year, 5 day workweek minus about 10 holidays is 250 days. So the annual cost is $7.5 million dollars.
    3. This does not include cost of toner, maintenance of fax machine, lost productivity, etc., etc.. I figure my estimate is conservative.

    Yeah, it's a huge pity that they can't exploit their business model and wound up out-of-business. Tito, hand me a tissue.

  • Forbes.com also ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DVega ( 211997 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @08:07PM (#8037952)

  • My response to Forbes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot@stanTWAINgo.org minus author> on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @09:50PM (#8038972) Homepage Journal
    ----------
    Junk faxing is an illegal business. Junk faxers are in violation of the law. They are being paid by a third party to present me with advertisements using my paper, my toner, my electricity, and my phone service-- basically, they're making money at my expense. Since that's the case, I have absolutely no problem with making some money at their expense, and in fact I am currently pursuing a civil action against one of Fax.com's customers, who sent me one junk fax about every two weeks for almost all of 2003.

    The very thought that you are attempting to coax sympathy from your readers for people engaged in an illegal business is laughable, and so is the sense of indignation over consumers getting fed up and using the legal system to fight back.

    Drug dealing is another illegal business where some people are trying to make money in violation of the law and at the expense of other people. Are you sympathetic toward drug dealers? Are you indignant when they are penalized in accordance with the law?
    ----------

    ~Philly

  • It just goe$ to $how you (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BiOFH ( 267622 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @10:17PM (#8039169)
    how much money spammers and junk faxers made. Enough to get in good with Forbes. Perhaps Bush will step in if these guys have enough money.

  • Here's a copy of my letter to Forbes after reading that outrageous article:

    For you to mourn Fax.com or even imply there was *anything* unfair about their demise is completely outrageous. To even suggest they have a 1st Amendment right to send junk faxes is preposterous.

    Let's talk about the First Amendment. If the cops come by your party on a Saturday night and tell you to turn it down or they'll cite you for disturbing the peace, I'll bet you a billion dollars that no judge will accept your argument that the First Amendment allows you to play your music as loud as you want late at night in a residential area. And you're just being loud. You're not doing doughnuts on your neighbor's lawn or puking in his bushes. But it's well established that a city can make and enforce a law that says your free speech rights stop at a certain decibel level in the evening hours.

    But what fax.com was doing was like not only playing their music too loud, but puking in the bushes too.

    They claimed to have 46 million fax numbers (16 million in general use and 30 million "untouched"). If they sent each of those numbers just one junk fax, and we can agree that paper and toner costs per fax were 1.5 cents (half penny a sheet for paper, 1 cent a page for ink/toner), the cumulative paper and ink/toner cost of that one junk fax per machine would be $690,000.

    Now imagine there wasn't a TCPA to outlaw junk faxes. Imagine there were no activists who could sue, no fines the FCC could impose, no class action causes to attract the sleazy lawyers.

    Do you think you'd just get one junk fax? You'd get 5 a day, even on weekends and holidays. Cumulatively across 46 million fax machines, that 5 a day would eat up $3.45 million *DAILY* in paper and ink/toner... over $1.25 BILLION a year.

    That's $1.25 ***billion*** (you know, with a B) in printing costs that the fax marketers wouldn't have to pay. Instead everyone they were faxing would have to pay a share of it. That's 83.9 billion pieces of junk mail being delivered postage due every year and the recipients have NO choice about paying.

    For Forbes to do anything but celebrate the demise of Fax.com or support the TCPA shows a complete departure from any semblance of logic or morality.

    You can consider me an ex-subscriber when it comes time for me to renew this year.

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