I agree with Kee. The prospective recovery from suits against spammers is
not high enough to make suits worthwhile--not only because the penalties are
too low, but also because many individual spammers are judgment proof. In
my view, this is why it would be helpful to have laws that could be enforced
against vendors of software that circumvents anti-spam technology.
----Original Message Follows----
From: Kee Hinckley <nazgul(_at_)somewhere(_dot_)com>
To: Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui(_at_)plaidworks(_dot_)com>
CC: "John Rumpelein" <jmr(_at_)jmrtech(_dot_)com>, <asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Thoughts so far
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 08:52:04 -0500
At 10:50 PM -0800 3/17/03, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
On Monday, March 17, 2003, at 08:12 PM, John Rumpelein wrote:
I live in Washington State, where we have already passed the legislation
you
propose. I can tell you, unfortunately, that I don't receive any less
spam
than you do. We can theoretically pursue lawsuits against spammers in
small
claims court to the tune of $500 per offense, but I have not heard of one
single spammer (not one) who has actually been forced to pay under this
law.
it's a problem of jurisdiction. Washington is simply too small.
Actually one of the speakers at the MIT Spam Conference described someone
who actually did take half a dozen spammers to court on the basis of one of
the state laws (either Washington's or one like it). The results sounded
pretty similar to the big suits. If you could get them to court, you could
find them guilty. If you found them guilty, they might have the money to
pay. And when you were done you found that the return on your time was not
worth the effort.
The problem with spamming is not that there is no legal recourse. There is.
The courts have held that spamming is equivalent to trespassing--it's an
unauthorized use of your equipment. (Can anyone site a case in which the
spammer won?) The legal problem is that the penalties are not great enough
to make suits worthwhile.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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