From: Jonathan Gardner
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 2:43 PM
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On Thursday 05 August 2004 03:29 am, Michel Bouissou wrote:
ourcooloffers.com
If these guys send spam, you can file a lawsuit against them here:
$ whois ourcooloffers.com
...
Glowing Edge, Inc.
Post Master (postmaster(_at_)glowingedge(_dot_)com)
+1.7274902251
Fax: +1.7274902251
4501 Shore Acres Blvd. NE
St Petersburg, FL 33703
US
...
You may also want to forward the spam they sent, the
information you have,
and the crimes they may be committing to you local DA.
Sorry to spoil the jovial mood here, but our Federal CAN-SPAM Act
rescinded any right that an individual U.S. citizen had to sue for
damages as a result of spamming. Only ISP's, State Attorneys General
and the Federal Government can bring civil action against spammers.
My ISP, with only 30,000 customers, is far more concerned with staying
in business than suing a moving target in another state. My state
government does not have the money to pay for police, firemen, teachers
or tax auditors, so it is very unlikely they will go after white collar
criminals in a state that is very permissive of that type of activity.
At the Federal level, the agency charged with enforcing the new law, the
FCC, stated prior to its passage that it neither had the budget nor,
incredibly, the _expertise_ to go after any significant number of
spammers. Though they _do_ have the expertise to allocate spectrum
usage, rule on cellular phone infrastructure, adjudicate disputes over
HDTV standards, make rules concerning the amount of electromagnetic
radiation a product can radiate and the level of electrostatic discharge
immunity a product must have, they apparently cannot read an email
header. That's a credible position.
As for criminal prosecution, the DNSBL's collectively have sufficient
evidence to prove violations of the law in thousands of cases, but how
many injunctions have been handed down by the Federal Government since
the law took effect in January? Exactly two. If I were a spammer, I
don't think I would worry about legal action.
Exactly who is going to bring all these lawsuits once we "identify" the
spammers? The largest ISP's have gone after a few dozen spammers in
high-profile cases. While it is certainly the right thing to do, these
few companies cannot by themselves win this fight. SPF will make it
easier for us to blacklist spamming domains and do so more quickly, but
let's not kid ourselves about there being legal consequences for most
spammers - at least in the U.S.
--
Seth Goodman