AOL to Give Away Spammer's Porsche 140
A user writes "CNN is reporting that AOL is giving away a spammer's Porsche. As part of a settlement with a spammer, AOL took the spammer's Porsche Boxster S, and they're running a sweepstakes (already ended) to give the car away."
Late! (Score:5, Insightful)
Remove this item (Score:1, Insightful)
the useless posts.
THE AOL PR FORCE IS STRONG LUKE (Score:5, Insightful)
Unusual punishment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he got a better deal by giving away his car rather than an equivalent amount in money - but how'd they reach the settlement amount? Had the spammer's actions caused enough damage to AOL to justify the $1million settlement claim? My guess would be that the spammer's actions cost them bandwidth and diskspace - but are they justified in charging him the amount just because their users didn't delete the junk soon enough or their filters are lame?
Not I'm justifying spam or spammers...but if they reach an out of court settlement for a million dollars, on the grounds that they won't pursue a lawsuit against him - it sounds an awful lot like extortion to me. I would like to see the damages of $1million justified in public - otherwise every crook company (we have plenty of them - RIAA/SCO/etc) could go around threatening people with lawsuits (which the individuals couldn't afford) and demand out-of-court settlements and the people being sued would have no choice but to pay up unless they had resources to pursue their case in court.
~The Essence of Slashdot~ (Score:3, Insightful)
Why the Porsche you say? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speaking of March 30th, let me just say... (Score:2, Insightful)
That will be a scary day, incidentally. They own a big chunk of 'land' in cyberspace already...
Re:Old article - but it is an update (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hang on a minute (Score:1, Insightful)
Junk mail isn't illegal. Spam is. Junk faxes. Junk emails. Things where the spammers dont pay for the medium - where YOU pay for the medium - those're the ones that're just plain wrong.
Don't blur that line or you can have it used against you. Next thing you know, people think it's all the same and junk'll come with no recourse.