Earthlink Files Four New Lawsuits Under That “Miserable Failure”, CAN-SPAM

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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.

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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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2 thoughts on “Earthlink Files Four New Lawsuits Under That “Miserable Failure”, CAN-SPAM

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

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