Anti-Spam Lawyer Loses Appeal, and His Possessions 237
Techdirt is reporting that one particularly rabid anti-spam fighter has not only lost his case, but most of his worldly possessions as well. James Gordon tried to set himself up as an ISP to get around the conventions of the CAN SPAM act in order to set up a litigation house designed to sue companies that spam. Unfortunately a judge did not take kindly to this trick and ordered him to pay $110,000 to the firm he was suing, a decision that was not only upheld on appeal but accompanied by some very unkind words trying to shut down litigation mills like his. "But, perhaps even more fascinating is that the guy, James Gordon, didn't just lose the lawsuit, it appears he lost most of his possessions as well. Remember that ruling telling him to pay the $110k to Virtumundo? He refused. The company sent the debt to a collections agency, but told Gordon they'd call off the collections agency if he dropped the appeal. Gordon didn't."
Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure who to be cheering for on this one: the barrator or the spammer. Who should we revile more? Dante reserved the fifth pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell for barrators, but he says nothing at all about spammers.
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Spammer's are level 10 vile which is why nothing was said....
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam isn't a technical problem, it's a social problem. EVERY communication channel that gets created, gets abused by people like this until the law comes down on them to stop it. Whether it's email spam or loudspeaker trucks, it's the same problem.
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Yes, indeed. However, you've got to pay for fuel, drivers, trucks, + taxes for all of them, operating the loudspeaker trucks. The spam zombies on the other hand are free as in beer, and the IRS doesn't get its lion's share either.
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam isn't a technical problem, it's a social problem. EVERY communication channel that gets created, gets abused by people like this until the law comes down on them to stop it. Whether it's email spam or loudspeaker trucks, it's the same problem.
The technical part of the problem is that there's no way to enforce a legal solution.
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And when all of the botnet operators are in Eastern Europe and China, then what? The problem here is that the law has national boundaries but the Internet does not. International law is more of a concept than a reality.
Even within your own borders, it can be difficult to find botnet operators.
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And when all of the botnet operators are in Eastern Europe and China, then what?
Well, in a Bush era, this would have been easy... 3. 2.. 1.... INVADE!
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:4, Interesting)
Tell the credit card companies (American, all of them) that if anyone pays for an item advertised by spam using thier card, they are toast.
The credit card companies totally control what their merchants sell, how they sell it, etc. and could stop spam on 30 seconds if the US authorities went after them. Unfortunately they probably own the US government.
In simple terms spam is there, because the US gvernment wont stop it
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
The technical part of the problem is that there's no way to enforce a legal solution.
Follow the lead of the TCPA and allow EVERYONE to take spammers to court, instead of this corrupt law that only permits ISPs to do so, and spam would stop in short order.
Remember Spam Faxes? (Score:2)
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You give implied consent for me to sleep in your house by using only a bit of plywood and some drywall to keep me outside.
And that unfenced lawn at your house? Implied consent. Enjoy the turd I left you.
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh come on, tell us how you really feel...
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This was sort of funny the first 47 times we saw it posted here. Now its just old and irritating. Like hearing a knock-knock joke over and over.
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It's funny for those of us who've never seen it before...
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny for those of us who've never seen it before...
For everyone else, it's just spam.
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I've never spammed
You, ironically, just did.
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If you leave a communication channel wide open, expect people to message you whether you want it or not. You give implied consent to fill your inbox by setting up a daemon that copies all incoming message data to your mail.
You argue like a spammer.
On the contrary, if you set up barriers and filters and approval systems to keep people you haven't invited, you destroy the usefulness of the communications channel. In fact the greatest damage spam causes is the fact that it breaks the system. Cowering behind a
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Interesting)
Spam doesn't break the system, it shows that the system is already broken. Building a robust system that actually works is better than building a broken system, hoping people don't exploit it, and then prosecuting people who inevitably do.
In computers, things that you aren't allowed to do you shouldn't be able to do. Processes shouldn't read each others' memory, so the operating system doesn't let them. Bob shouldn't read Alice's private files, so he can't. This is common sense design. We don't give the root password to some homeless guy, trusting it will be safe because he knows he'll be hung for high treason if he gives it away. OK it'll probably stay secret, but the whole affair was completely unnecessary as he didn't need the password. I call this a new design principle: Don't Randomly Give Away Your Passwords To Strangers That Are Good At Keeping Secrets.
It's the system's responsibility to maintain order. "Spammers shouldn't send mass mail, so..." should end in "...they can't." just like the other examples, and unlike your version which is "Spammers shouldn't send mass mail, so..." "...we prosecute them".
So good night argent (18001). Go back to your cowering behind your OS's memory protection, which prevents more useful inter-process communication than overflows.
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It's the system's responsibility to maintain order. "Spammers shouldn't send mass mail, so..." should end in "...they can't." just like the other examples, and unlike your version which is "Spammers shouldn't send mass mail, so..." "...we prosecute them".
Except we might want to send or receive mass mail ourselves. Since I'm on several mailing lists that I want to keep aware of, including Slashdot; how do we stop the spammers without stopping legitimate mass mailing.
Don't say "don't do it", that's not a solution.
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If that person is someone you don't want to talk to, then you should be able to unregister that user to send you messages.
We already have this capability, it's called blacklisting, it doesn't work.
Say spammers create a server and start spamming people under different accounts. That server can easily be blacklisted.
We already do this, spammers create new servers faster than we can blacklist them. SO we blacklist whole countries.
allow users to create a web of trust between who they contact on a day to day bas
abuse of the obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
The fly in the ointment is that sometimes the obvious won't peacefully coexist.
Arrow's impossibility theorem [wikipedia.org]
With email, we want some semblance of anonymity, the ability to cold-call (write to someone you've never written to before, who hasn't written to you, either), yet no ability to churn poo in mass quantities.
This is surprisingly difficult to engineer. With voting systems, first past the post is known to have more flaws than average, yet we persist with it on the grounds, I suppose, that people deserve
Re:abuse of the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Imposing a cost on sending of email is not going to work.
You forget that many times spammers are criminals using botnets composed of hijacked machines, whose innocent owners would wind up paying the price while the spammer cheerfully pays his chump change to the botnet operator.
My favorite solution consists of the following:
1. Widespread adoption of SPF/DomainKeys to
2. Allow anyone to sue a spammer and not just an ISP
3. Make it illegal for credit card companies to process payments for spammed products.
On the whole, politics will probably make 3 the steepest uphill battle. I'm sure the credit card companies are well represented at DC.
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:4, Insightful)
Revile the legislators who caved to the direct marketing lobby and took away your right to sue those leeches.
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
I can answer the question on whom we should revile more: the politicians who passed anti-spam laws that effectively protect the spammers.
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:4, Insightful)
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Despite the jokes and such, lawyers are not universally evil. Only about 98% of them are. There are a few out there who do good work. This lawyer's work looks like it was an attempt to do good (and perhaps profit off of it, but that's OK if it means hurting spammers). If some lawyers could find other ways of improving society and profiting highly in the process, I'm all for it. There's plenty of possible targets: corrupt politicians, Microsoft, social services abusers, etc. Don't forget, there's lawye
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It's actually the other way around, 98% of lawyers ARE decent people. 2% are dirty evil rats who want to screw everyone as hard as they can, we just hear about them more because guess which type of lawyer most big litigation happy corporations are interested in hiring.
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I completely disagree. The entire adversarial legal system rewards people who have no ethics, and it's a field where sociopaths can excel, so the smart ones are drawn to it. I'm sure, once they figure out how to do a brain scan that conclusively proves someone is a sociopath, they could grab 1000 lawyers, and 1000 regular citizens, and find a far higher number of lawyers that are sociopaths. I don't know about 98%, but I'm sure the number of evil lawyers is much higher than your 2%.
We don't even hear abo
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We don't hear about good lawyers ever. Instead, we have to put up with bullshit posts like yours that don't even make sense. You say that district attorneys are evil. You also said that criminal defense lawyers are slimy. I guess you think the only decent people in the criminal justice system are the criminals. I know your retort already: the system punishes people for minor crimes like marijuana possession. Well, you're also siding with the child molesters and rapists. SOMEONE has to put them away, and SOM
Re:Morton's Fork (Score:4, Insightful)
We could have a legal system not so mired in procedure that it makes it next to impossible for the layman to defend himself, and this system has been perpetually perverted by those blurring the line between zealous adversarial representation and inhuman chicanery.
At this point, yes, we need lawyers, but, in my experience, I haven't found 90% of lawyers to be either good or evil. Maybe 10% are strongly either way. The rest are just like us, lazy, tired, mildly manipulative, and so busy doing the job that they've lost sight of any greater meaning of the work. The next time your doctor gives you Flonase instead of a chest x-ray because they'd rather turf you than fight with your HMO? Yeah.. same thing.
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Re:Morton's Fork (Score:5, Insightful)
How many lawyers do you personally know? I'm curious. I am currently working as a summer student at a law firm, and before that I worked as a clerk at an Insurance Defence firm, and when I go to school in the fall, all my teachers will be lawyers. So I'd say, guessing roughly, that I've met and talked to maybe 30-50 real, live, practicing or teaching lawyers (some practice as well as teach), and I have to tell you, out of all of them, there's only one that I suspect is possibly a sociopath. The rest are hard-working, honest people with varying degrees of ethical awareness, mostly fairly developed senses of ethical awareness. They take legal aid cases because their clients can't afford representation, or they mount Charter challenges to challenge overzealous cops or bad laws, they draw up wills, guide clients through divorces, and do the paperwork for your house sale. They teach business law, commercial law, and yes, ethics. Only a small portion do what you think of as "unethical" lawyering, and most of those know that there is ethical value in the work they do, and they care about that value, a great deal.
I think you don't understand the ethics of lawyering very well. The lawyers who chase ambulances are also the lawyers who keep corporations from completely neglecting quality control, and who keep insurance companies paying out settlements. Also, you mentioned criminal lawyers who defend clients that they know are guilty. You look at this and you see a lawyer who's protecting a criminal from being punished, and you think the lawyer is a slimeball. But that lawyer understands that when you have an adversarial system, every single person accused of a crime deserves a vigorous defence. Good criminal lawyers keep prosecutors honest, and they protect people from the much greater power of the state. If someone is guilty of a crime, but they get off because the prosecutor didn't build a good case, or because the cops roughed the guy up too much down at the station, then next time, the cops will know not to beat the shit out of prisoners, and prosecutors will know to do a good job instead of a sloppy mess of a prosecution.
As for the DA who prosecutes showy cases to help him at election time: well I'm a Canadian and I can't get over that you people in the US elect your prosecutors (and judges, for that matter). That seems wrong to me. You elect your government officials, as you should, a democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms; but there's room in the system for unelected professionals whose job is to protect people from the tyrrany of the majority, and lawyers, prosecutors and judges can fill that role well. But whatever, that's the system you have chosen for yourselves, and it works best when "slimeball" criminal attorneys can go all-out for their clients. It doesn't look pretty, but for the most part it works, and the people who make up the system know that what looks unethical to most people may be necessary to preserve the best parts of the system.
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A better system is one in which there is no adversarial process. You might want to look into it: it's called French Civil Law, and it's practiced in just about every country on the Earth which wasn't a British colony.
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Civil law systems aren't necessarily better than common law systems, just different. And the point is moot, because civil law systems are evolving to incorporate features of the common law, and common law systems are evolving to to incorporate features of the civil law.
Also, you should be more careful with your distinctions. The opposite of the adversarial system is the inquisitorial system, which can exist in either the civil or common law. Inquisitorial systems have problems of their own as well.
Civil law
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Spam doesn't use a lot of resources (Score:2)
Sure, spam is 97% of email, but email's a small fraction of the bits on the Internet, most of which is the web. It doesn't consume anywhere near the resources of Youtube.
If you're in the mail-handling business, it's one of your largest problems, along with storage, reliability, etc. and burns most of your internet bits, but if you're in the general ISP bits, the spam's still not much of your bandwidth compared to the regular web traffic.
What spam really consumes is the attention span of its recipients, and
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most of which is the web
Last statistics I saw showed that peer-to-peer file distribution services used over 50% of the Internet bandwidth. That doesn't tell the whole story, however. Something like a bittorrent client or a web server or client uses a tiny amount of CPU power per byte of data transferred compared to a spam filter. One of the big advantages of OpenBSD's spamd is that it's got a very lower overhead per message, so it makes a good first line of defence. Even then, moderately large sites need a powerful machine or
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The Arch-Traitors(Judas, Brutus and Cassius) go in Beelzebub's mouth. Spammers, on the other hand, have already been through the mouth and are now located somewhere in the rectum. That's where true suffering is at.
Now that is truly cruel and unfair... No being should ever be forced to stomach something so vile as spammers in their depths forever and ever with no hope of any relief whatsoever.
He should have set up a company to sue for him (Score:4, Interesting)
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He should've used legalzoom.com to set up his "ISP"'s right hand as an LLC.
Re:He should have set up a company to sue for him (Score:5, Informative)
Stone v. Frederick Hobby Associates II, LLC, 2001 Conn. Super. LEXIS 1853,
Superior Court, judicial district of Stamford-Norwalk, at Stamford, Docket No.
CV000181620S (July 10, 2001) (Mintz, J.),
Using an LLC to shield yourself from fraud doesn't necessarily work. As always, YMMV, IANAL, subject to jurisdiction, etc.
Because you don't like it doesn't make it illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
the appeals court came down even harder on the guy for clearly abusing the law, pointing out that he was clearly a professional litigant, and not someone running a real ISP
The spammers are violating the law by spamming. Is protecting your right to not receive spam abusing the law? Is there something illegal about being a professional litigant? I thought we called them lawyers.
Re:Because you don't like it doesn't make it illeg (Score:2, Insightful)
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I empathize with the pain you describe, but place the blame where due - on the stupidity of those that actually respond to the spam, or the shady fly-by-night viagra and penis pump outfits, or botnet operators. (there will always be idiots in legit companies who are just trying to make it, and
Re:Because you don't like it doesn't make it illeg (Score:4, Insightful)
It can be. Going against people with no regard for the law doesn't give you permission to ignore or misuse the law yourself.
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This makes no sense.
Cops do *exactly* that all the time - setting-up nonexistent businesses in order to catch criminals. They do it with prostitution rings to catch johns, fake child pron chats to catch sex offenders, pretend drug deals to catch users, and so on. This judgment means one of two things:
- Lawyers can not entrap people, but cops can, even if their actions are in violation of the law.
-or-
- Cops are forbidden from setting-up a fake ISP to "sting" spammers. Won't that make enforcement of CANSPA
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Of course, there's the question of the spirit of the law. If you really believe that this guy was setting up the "booby trap" ISP in order to help end the scourge of spam, then the outcome seems harsh. However, if you deem--as the judge apparently did--that
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Of course, there's the question of the spirit of the law. If you really believe that this guy was setting up the "booby trap" ISP in order to help end the scourge of spam, then the outcome seems harsh. However, if you deem--as the judge apparently did--that he's just in it to make profit and that the people that he entrapped were being sucked into arbitrary litigation, then the outcome will seem quite appropriate.
I'm sorry, but it's exactly the same. If a lawyer can figure out how to use the courts to end
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Despite the name, entrapment doesn't have to do with being tricked, it has to do with being forced to do something you wouldn't otherwise have done. It's not "I wouldn't have done it if I'd known it was a trap" but "I wouldn't have done it if they didn't have a gun to my head".
One difference that I could see with a cop catching a spammer this way is that the money, if any, wouldn't be going into somebody's pocket.
But let's be honest for a second...policeman routinely act as if they are above the law. People
Standing (Score:4, Informative)
For the court to be able to act on this assumption, it needs to make a finding of fact to that effect. Before such a finding of fact can be made, other aspects of the complaint must be evaluated. For example, the plaintiff needs to actually be entitled to pursue the complaint they are making.
So basically, in this case, the law says that to pursue a case against a spammer, the plaintiff must be an ISP. Before the court can decide whether the party being accused is actually spamming, it must determine whether the plaintiff is an ISP. The plaintiff failed that requirement, according to the court, case closed.
This may sound annoying to you in this one case, but really, this needs to be the case, in order for the legal system to throw out bad cases quickly. Read up on standing [wikipedia.org].
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No. A litigant is (in the context used here) a party to a lawsuit, not the attorney representing them.
Surprise Surprise (Score:2)
idiot thinks they can apply "well technically" tricks in the legal system and gets smacked down by judges.
Who would have thunk it?
James Gordon? (Score:5, Funny)
He'll be fine. Bruce Wayne will bail him out.
The appeals court made a really biased decision. (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the decision, it is clear that the appeals court was biased.
On the issue of the Washington law preemption, the Court referred to the complaint regarding subject lines and from lines as being "vanity domain names" that were not deceptive. The use of From lines of "Free IPOD" or "Free 50 inch Plasma TV" is deceptive. Just because, after opening the e-mail, and doing whois lookups, that you can determine that it is from Virtumundo, does not mean that the from is deceptive.
The appeals court refused to rule who is an IAS, but said that a well known IAS (ie. Hotmail) does not have to show harm from spam because it is obvious, but a little guy does. The Court went further and said that harm under can-spam can't be the ordinary business expense of carrying e-mail, but one can argue that any mail provider must filter spam and carry spam, therefore there can never be harm from spam, illegal or legal. Any good IAS must provide extra capacity so that if there is spam, they will not crash.
Do you feel sorry for the professional spammers that get harmed by the professional anti-spam litigation service? Of course, if Virtumundo itself in the from line, their spam would have been deleted by most filters.
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How are they biased? You do not seem to have proven any specific bias.
The Court may have come to what you consider an incorrect decision; that is not bias. The Court may have come to a decision found ultimately to be incorrect on appeal: that is not bias, either.
Bias requires a specific partiality to one party or another, and you have not even mentioned any sort of bias here.
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Reading the decision, it is clear that the appeals court was biased.
Uuum, that would be a physically inevitable fact, because it's made of humans, living in a reality in which everything (even time) is relative, with senses that filter everything a thousand times, and a brain that processes things based on past experiences.
What you meant, is that they did not have a bias that was compatible to yours.
I happen to myself have a bias that is (in this things) compatible to yours, so I am able to agree on your actual criticism.
But I hope you can now make better statements about t
Re:The appeals court made a really biased decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Spam can really cost someone money even if they aren't an ISP. I eventually had to change hosting companies just to kill that email address. To this day I can't use that address. Even with modern email filters, enough crap would get through to make it not worth using. I'm now using a gmail account.
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My hosting company couldn't figure out how to close the email account without closing the my user account (same name)
The magic incantation to tech support is "Alias it to /dev/null". If that hint doesn't turn the light on, you need a new hosting company.
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A violent miscarriage of justice and an assault on everyone that uses email.
Which reminds me, anyone know the judges email address? I'm guessing he's a dinosaur that cant use email though - profit motive or no, I have a hard time believing anyone that actually uses it would make such an idiotic decision.
People do this for Faxes too (Score:5, Interesting)
The anti-spam-fax law allows for individuals to sue for damages and so many people have set up fax lines and started collecting faxes and collecting money. I don't know if that is still going on or not, but I heard some people made it a full-time living.
The CAN SPAM act is another problem in that individuals are not allowed to sue. The ISPs are the ones who are eligible for that. This part of the law needs to change. While allowing individuals to sue might be a bit too much for some litigation-happy individuals to resist, I think it might be fair enough to allow domain holders and mail hosts to sue under the CAN SPAM act. I say this because I own three domains and would be happy to file a legal action or two except for the fact that the amount of spam I receive is pretty low at the moment... and by low, I mean one or two every two or three days. (Thank you greylisting! Say that "it won't work" all you like, but the results speak differently.)
Should setting up shop in order to take advantage of a law against spamming be allowed? HELL YES it should! The opposite is certainly true and acceptable -- for business to have laws written to their advantage. Is the a provision in the CAN SPAM act that says you can't do this? Is there any law, federal or state, that says you can't do this? The bottom line is that someone set up a "honey net" for profit via the judicial system. Perhaps its the perceived abuse of the judicial system that is the issue?
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I agree. And, if Mr. Gordon had actually set up shop as a mom-and-pop ISP he probably would have gotten away with it. Alas, he forgot that if he wants to be taken for a duck, calling himself a duck isn't enough; he has to waddle like a duck and quack like a duck, neither of which he did.
Re:People do this for Faxes too (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if a "real" ISP would be able to partner with a spam-fighter to allow them to fight the good fight. I'm sure within half a dozen phone calls, you'd fine one that was willing to lend you their name. I'd suggest looking at the list of registered ISPs at the Copyright office - http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/index.html [copyright.gov] as they're likely to have all of the other bases covered already.
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Why not? Just hire the spam fighter as a consultant to "look into" the problem of spam and to both suggest and implement policies designed to reduce the company's spam-load.
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Should setting up shop in order to take advantage of a law against spamming be allowed? HELL YES it should! The opposite is certainly true and acceptable -- for business to have laws written to their advantage. Is the a provision in the CAN SPAM act that says you can't do this? Is there any law, federal or state, that says you can't do this? The bottom line is that someone set up a "honey net" for profit via the judicial system. Perhaps its the perceived abuse of the judicial system that is the issue?
Well, either that or the fraudulent court filings where the guy claimed he was an ISP, but he wasn't. If you seek to use a "honey net" in the judicial system, you have to make sure you're acting completely above board.
The CAN SPAM act is another problem in that individuals are not allowed to sue. The ISPs are the ones who are eligible for that. This part of the law needs to change. While allowing individuals to sue might be a bit too much for some litigation-happy individuals to resist, I think it might be fair enough to allow domain holders and mail hosts to sue under the CAN SPAM act.
Also, this is an interesting thing I'd like to point out. You're in favor of suing spammers, but are opposed to litigation-happy individuals doing it, because... we'd have to read about all those spammers facing trials on Slashdot? Seriously, why? It seems, from your reference to "litigation-h
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I have mixed feelings on the whole thing. And frankly, if it weren't for the fact that I'm not getting that much spam I'd probably be trying the same sort of thing... if it were allowed and I'm not entirely sure that's not the case.
But we know that "he should lose because he's a troll" doesn't usually win the argument. We see this with patent, copyright and trademark trolls all the time. Perhaps it would have helped if the plaintiff filed in a certain East Texas court...
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Also, this is an interesting thing I'd like to point out. You're in favor of suing spammers, but are opposed to litigation-happy individuals doing it, because... we'd have to read about all those spammers facing trials on Slashdot? Seriously, why? It seems, from your reference to "litigation-happy individuals" and suggestion that it be limited to people in your situation, your primary complaint is that some people might make money for their time and efforts suing spammers, and that those people aren't you. This is a bit disingenuous.
The reason I would be reluctant to allow individuals to sue spammers is because of all the people who would try to bring a suit for email they signed up for and forgot about (sometimes they might not even have realized they were signing up for it). I'm not entirely sure that would be a bad thing, but we should try more carefully targeted approaches first to see if they work before flooding our courts with this sort of thing.
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Should setting up shop in order to take advantage of a law against spamming be allowed? HELL YES it should!
Maybe so, but CAN-SPAM makes specific provisions for who can sue and who can't sue.
Is the a provision in the CAN SPAM act that says you can't do this?
Yes, it says that only "Internet access providers" are allowed to sue for damages, and that they need to illustrate that the damages are the result of the spam and not simply the cost of normal network operation.
Is there any law, federal or state, that says you can't do this?
Many states set up their own anti-spam laws after CAN-SPAM (which CAN-SPAM was specifically trying to preempt), the judge in this case ruled that CAN-SPAM does in fact preempt the Washington State laws that Gordon was
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You know what? Spam doesn't affect my life. I don't care to sue a spammer any more than I care to sue a homeless man on the subway or the chinese restaurant that slips a menu under my door. It shocks me that this is such a big deal. If everyone ignored it, it would go away.
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Phishing is one small step away from spam. Just as soon as you give your bank account details to a spammer, you can bet it will affect your life...
And don't try to rant about how everyone should be smarter than that... The differences between a real and fake website are minuscule, and even the most knowledgeable can let their guard down for just a moment in some routine activity, and get scammed.
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Thank you greylisting! Say that "it won't work" all you like, but the results speak differently.
I don't think anyone says that greylisting doesn't work because it does. The problem is that it's not a good idea for most email users. There are far too many (poorly configured) mail servers out there that will not attempt a second delivery -- mostly automated systems such as Delta's itinerary mailer, various online retailers, etc. Sure, you could reject their messages out of principle, but that doesn't work i
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I don't think anyone says that greylisting doesn't work because it does. The problem is that it's not a good idea for most email users. There are far too many (poorly configured) mail servers out there that will not attempt a second delivery -- mostly automated systems such as Delta's itinerary mailer, various online retailers, etc. Sure, you could reject their messages out of principle, but that doesn't work in the real world where people expect email delivery to be 100% error-free.
The very few mail doma
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There is a certain symmetry in getting rid of spammers by subjecting them to a zillion junk suits by people out to make a quick buck.
The unfortunate part is there would probably be too many mailing lists sued by the same idiots that click the report spam button on AOL rather than unsubscribing from the email they opted in to and confirmed. Or would sue their bank, or whatever unfortunate person gets the Joe job that day.
Reminds me ... (Score:2)
Spammers vs Litigators = Alien vs Predator
Who ever wins, we lose!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Wait, why 'haha'? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait, why is this tagged 'haha'?
If I understood the summary properly, an anti-spammer's life is being ruined by a spammer?
What the hell? Surely this is a bad thing! Coincidentally, virtumondo is a very nasty piece of Windows adware/spyware too!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
this is the same reason goosestepping
Re:Wait, why 'haha'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant. There's two ./ hot buttons here: spam and abusing the courts. It's a tale of a bunch of shitty people being shitty each other, and we're the one's footing the bill for the judge who has to oversee it all, and the courtroom and clerks they're using.
Not many ./ers are capable of understanding that sometimes bad people (Gordon) do good things (fight spam) for the wrong reasons (personal profit) at a cost to us all (tying up the court system). It's 'haha' because someone who thought he was gaming the system got busted.
Thank you (Score:2)
Thank you for explaining that. I have mod points but cannot mod you up obviously. Your sig is so true, too.
98% of lawyers make the other 2% look bad?
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I actually worked with lawyers a couple jobs ago, and found them to be very likable people in general. They're very pragmatic, they tend to have thick skins, and have a very healthy scepticism about everything. And for the vast majority of them, it's simply a job that interests them, not a vocation that consumes them. They're usually the ultimate realists, and don't kid themselves about what they're doing.
So I'd reverse your ratio there, and say 2% of the lawyers make the other 98% look bad. You just do
Re:Wait, why 'haha'? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant.
Why do I give a shit if the man profits from it? Good for him. You sound like one of those guys on the freeway who lets nobody merge just because you don't want anybody to get ahead of you. I was not aware that it was a race or competition.
sometimes bad people (Gordon) do good things (fight spam) for the wrong reasons (personal profit) at a cost to us all (tying up the court system)
How is this tying up the court system? I suppose you'd prefer if everybody sued individually, multiplying the case load by thousands of times? I really am not following this logic.
If they do the right thing who cares why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because, like a patent troll, Gordon wasn't trying to eliminate spam, he was trying to profit off laws against spam that might allow him to sue--a professional litigant.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing at a profit."
Why shouldn't somebody doing a public service get rewarded for it? ... we're the one's footing the bill for the judge who has to oversee it all, and the courtroom and clerks they're using.
Actually, the payer of the "court costs" is footing the bill. That's what court costs are about.
Not ma
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you know what Gordon's motives were? I bet he wants more than anything to eliminate spam. You label him a professional litigant, but he's got some serious integrity for a shitty person. I can't believe that standing up against the courts was a calculated decision to maximize personal profit. How does he profit from not settling with an evil party? It's civil disobedience. When the laws are broken, good people will break the laws.
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whoa whoa, comparing him to a patent troll is going a bit far. He's the good guy trying to stop the spammers, where trolls are trying to make a quick buck off of inventing nothing and by patenting the obvious to steal money from real creators. If anything the spammer is the patent troll and he's the legit company.
I say anyone fighting spam
Re: (Score:2)
cwd
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f I understood the summary properly, an anti-spammer's life is being ruined by a spammer?
Try reading more than the summary:
When Virtumundo's collections lawyer showed up at Gordon's house with a moving van and a sheriff, Virtumundo again offered to stop its pursuit of Gordon's assets if he would drop his appeal, and he refused again, according to Newman.
Virtumundo's collections agency then cleared out Gordon's house, according to Newman.
He added that after seizing the contents of Gordon's home, Virtumundo
Three times he was offered (Score:2)
Three times he was offered his possessions back but he said no. He sounds very stubborn. It sounds like they didn't really want to completely screw him over, they were not vengeful.
Re: (Score:2)
This guy is not quite right in the head.
How ironic (Score:3, Funny)
Argh, Who to Root For? (Score:2)
Why not the same for the MAFIAA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Extortion? (Score:2)
According to TFA, the spammer offered three times (at judgment, at collection, and after seizure) to drop the judgment or return the possessions if the anti-spammer would drop his appeal.
If I understand the law correctly, by doing so the spammer committed extortion.
IANAL. Could somebody who IAL comment please?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
According to TFA, the spammer offered three times (at judgment, at collection, and after seizure) to drop the judgment or return the possessions if the anti-spammer would drop his appeal.
If I understand the law correctly, by doing so the spammer committed extortion.
IANAL. Could somebody who IAL comment please?
IANAL
However, as I understand it, that general type of situation being legally considered "extortion" typically only applies if the "extort-er" is some normal everyday person or small business, and the
The Final Solution (Score:2)
Re:You can lead a horse to water... (Score:4, Insightful)
The jackass had numerous chances to settle and he just wouldn't do it.
Maybe he has something called PRINCIPLES.