Earthlink Files Four New Lawsuits Under That “Miserable Failure”, CAN-SPAM - 1,271 Views, 2 Comments
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You know, for a law which people with no legal clue, but a lot of public mouth, continue to claim has been a miserable failure, ISPs like AOL, Microsoft, and Earthlink sure are getting a lot of mileage out of CAN-SPAM. In fact, Earthlink just announced today that is has filed four - count ‘em - four new lawsuits against spammers under CAN-SPAM. And these are four separate and distinct lawsuits, against four separate and distincts sets of defendants, each in a different state, each responsible for a different flood of spam. On the business end of the double-barrels of Earthlink’s lawsuits are Gregory Lars Alsing of California along with Impression Media of Las Vegas; Craig Brockwell and BC Alliance of Florida; Christina Reese, Angela Nickerson,and YamboCS of Redmond, Washington (gasp!); and Peter Moshou of Florida. The charges against each set of defendants include much of CAN-SPAM’s entire arsenal, including falsifying headers, deceptive subject lines, sending email to automatically generated email addresses (such as dictionary attacks, and even failing to include opt-out links and physical addresses. Prohibition. Now there was a law which was a miserable failure. The law against murder…how many murders does that actually prevent in the first instance? CAN-SPAM? Only a miserable failure if your expectations were totally out of touch with reality.
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Earthlink Files Four New Lawsuits Under That “Miserable Failure”, CAN-SPAM
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Previous Article « Phishing Victim Sues Own Bank
Read Next Article » Mugu Marauder: Windows Users Asked to Target Nigerian 419 Scammers - Don’t Do It!
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» Top Four ISPs Wrap Lawsuit Noose Around Spammer’s Necks
» What is a Splog? Splogs Explained
» How to Go from Spamming to Prison in 6 Short Months
» Earthlink Slams “Alabama Spammers”
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My expectations were that it would be enforced, that action would be taken against major spammers.
During Prohibition, bootleggers were arrested, tried, and convicted. Murderers are arrested, tried, and
convicted.
“You-Can-Spam� has been in effect for over 13 months, what has it accomplished?
How much spam is “CAN-SPAM compliant�? According to MX Logic, 97% of 2004 spam did not comply. (http://www.mxlogic.com/news_events/01_03_05.html)
How much spam has You-Can-Spam stopped? From the looks of my mailboxes and logs, none. It has, in fact, increased. However, I am getting more spam with “unsubscribe� links and hashbusted physical addresses.
How many arrests have there been under You-Can-Spam? Googling shows 5.
How many convictions? 1, and that was a guilty plea from the “Warspammer�, Nicholas Tombros.
How many civil judgements? 0 to date.
Still getting spam from Atriks, Neomill, Wholesalebandwidth, and other “majorâ€? spammers. Still receiving spam to harvested addresses, includinig “You-Can-Spam compliant” spam. If I didn’t ask for it, it’s spam, whether it includes an unsub link and/or physical address or not. All “You-Can-Spamâ€? does is attempt to legitimize *some* spam.
“Miserable failureâ€?? It’s hard for a law to fail when all it does is lower standards and expectations. “Meaningless, toothless waste of timeâ€?? Oh yeah.
Comment by Timmer — 2/10/2005 @ 8:51 am
If a law is passed against an activity, and that activity increases after the law goes into effect, then yes, I think it can be called a failure.
Maybe a year isn’t enough time to judge it, but so far CAN-SPAM has been about as effective as blocking a fire hose with a teaspoon. At best it may have slowed the growth down a bit, but not only are we getting more spam, a lot of it flagrantly violates the law, sending junk to harvested addresses via abused proxies while using forged headers, with no reliable unsubscribe method.
If CAN-SPAM manages enough convictions and enough long sentences, maybe it will start acting as a deterrent. Or maybe they’ll just start sending “compliant” spam. But given the disrespect many spammers have shown to existing laws (and to society in general), it’s hardly a surprise that so many are ignoring it now.
Comment by Kelson — 2/11/2005 @ 12:39 pm