California wins anti-spam case

[Vincent]

From BBC's Technology pages:

California has won a landmark judgement with its first anti-spam ruling after a court fined a marketing firm $2m for sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails telling people how to spam.

The state's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, brought the case against PW Marketing of Los Angeles County and its owners, Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin in 2002, under a 1998 state anti-spam law.

The law was strengthened last month to make it easier to sue spammers.

PW Marketing, Willis and Griffin were charged with sending out millions of e-mails, including advertising $39 guides on how to spam, along with long lists of e-mail addresses of California residents.

Full story here

[XDelusion]

This is an example of how many people will favor convenience over rights. Allowing the Government to take any amount of rule in the internet world will eventually snow ball into a nightmare that will infringe upon many of out contitutional rights (as they always seem to be all to willing to do).

 Yes, it would be nice to have some way to get back at all those annoying spammers, but I am not sure that I want to rely upon the government for that conenience, Just like I do not want anything like martial law, or to give up the right to privacy (marijuana tests anyhow / XBOX Modding anyhow?) so that the government can protect me from terrorism, which by the way is something that has been going on all around the world for years, including the US. If your going to die, your going to die, and if you don't want Add-ware buy Amiga or download SpyBot or something. If you don't want Junk mail, then get a filter, and begin to block. Some things can not be fully stopped, but as long as you take the time to put up a few preventions yourself, the on-slaught of attacks will decrease.

 Same goes to all the libraries and ISP's out there, they NEED to take the responability themselves to put up porn filters and what not on there severs,rather than wait for the government to step into there and take there own form of action once again.


 now what would be NICE is to have a way to track down spammers and bombard the crap out of there servers or what not with ever virus known to man. Shut them down!

[AmigaHeretic]

Everything usually comes down to money.  I think one of the reasons for these new laws is that Email has become a large part of business (our economy) and Spam has the potential to/has already started to make Email unusable which has the potential to hurt the economy.  

Spam has gotten way past the point of being ridiculous.  At some point people are going to go in search of something to replace email, because it isn't going to be worth the effort of wading through hundreds of emails just to find out you didn't actually get any mail.

Maybe new laws and suing people aren't the answer.  Maybe the answer is some sort of new Email protocol that is more secure and won't let you send email as anybody you want.  I don't know.  All I know is that people want Spam to go away. And If Spam is going to cause business to lose money, then those businesses will somehow will find away to, either through innovation or through buying their congress man, make it disappear.

[lempkee]

i hope this is the end of spam! , they should be sent to deathrow for it! , i am serious!

spam has made me delete non spam email just because the name was abit weird.

I HATE SPAM!!

go to hell spammers!

[opi]

Get account where You have good antispam filters. Protect Your private e-mail adress (don't put it anywhere on page), use traps to fool spambots). And You're one, happy spamfree person. Don't point I have my e-mail listed below. It's ,,work account'' ;-) My home e-mail sits on my Linux box and You will not get it untill I decite. ;-)))

[DanDude]

Finally, a clear message to spammers out there!  I'm getting really tired of seeing them in my mailbox daily. :-)

[Acill]

I say good!!! For those that say keep your email safe it doesnt work all the time! I use my home email for only private use. I give it only to friends and family. Yet the spammers still seem to get it. It all about money. Someone out there sells your info someplace or someone refers your email. Its never ending. I agree though you need some good filters. The maiil programe on my Mac Powerbook has one of the best I've ever used.

[Bridge]

Hi folks

It is extremely good news to see spammers hurt where it counts, in the wallet. Large fines against companies that intentionally abuse a trust-based system such as the email "network" around the world are entirely justified.

On a side note, perhaps a way to stop email abuse like this would be to charge per email recipient sent to - "oh no!" I hear you cry. But think, if we were charged just £0.001 per email per recipient sent to, private users could happily send a thousand emails for £1 (or about $1.54 US for those across the pond), but a spammer sending 1 million emails would be charged £1000. Multiply this up and suddently sending SPAM may not be profitable anymore.

Do either of the above impinge on freedom of speech, creativity and other such traits that the internet fosters? No, absolutely not. £1 for a thousand emails is several magnitudes cheaper than the postal service, and no legitimate user of the internet EVER needs to send out a million unsolicited emails in the first place.

Happy Amiga times ahead me hopes
-Bridge

[Skippy]

What ever happen to PGP?

A valid point regarding the Governments involvement written above.

Spam will never go away, it will only get worst because how do you define an Unsolicited Email.

Even if the offender removes you from their mailing list it's too late becase you've already received the email you didn't want. And no sooner do you removed one offender another will take its place.

Spam has ruined newsgroups to the extent that they have become unusable, spam has had a detrimental affect on productivity through the shear time wasted ploughing through [in my case] 100s of emails a day.

Spam costs business' millions of pounds a year because mail servers are overloaded and workers waste time filtering through #### in their inboxes ever morning.

Spam is a menace to the internet society.

Skippy.

[D00kie]

These Kalifornia spam jockies should get a bit part with Gov. Arnie in the next Terminator sequel -- using REAL bullets. :-D

They are criminals. Use of someone else's computer to spread their junk and causing me to delete important messages is NOT CAPITALISM! It's theft and fraud. :-x