AOL Wins $5M Judgment Against Spammer

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/26/financial/f115613S84.DTL

A man who sent billions of junk e-mails hawking online college degrees, sexually explicit Web sites and "generic Viagra" must pay more than $5 million in penalties to America Online, a federal judge ruled.

Christopher William Smith, of Prior Lake, Minn., was considered one of the world's worst spammers, operating under the name Rizler. He is now in jail in Minnesota awaiting trial on criminal charges that he violated federal drug laws while operating an online pharmacy.

On Tuesday U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton issued a summary judgment against Smith ordering him to pay $5.3 million in damages and $287,000 in legal fees to AOL, which filed a civil suit against Smith under the Can-Spam act.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said Smith "was the poster child for the Can-Spam Act," which Congress enacted in 2004 to crack down on unsolicited junk e-mail.

[Radio_Lady]

1. Good news! My in-box is less full, but my hubby still has problems.

[Ian David]

2. Meanwhile, AOL still does business with the companies HOSTING the spammers

China Telecom, for example.

They sue the spammer, but then make multi-billion dollar deals with the companies that allow that person to conduct business.

Yahoo!, MSN and the others all do the same thing.

Feed the spamhaven, sue the spammer.

Meanwhile, Bush's CAN SPAM act took away the right of individual users to sue spammers.

But the big ISPs get to have their cake and eat it too.

[politicat]

3. As much as I hate spam, this sounds like a good way to shut down

free speech eventually.

What's to stop AOL from deciding Moveon.org or CodePink's action alerts constitute spam? Smith may have been sending unsolicited email, but in theory Moveon's mailing lists come from people who have signed up. What if, however, Organization X gives their mailing list to some other org with an associated mission, and AOL decides to call them spammers because there's no single direct link?

I hate to defend the guy, but the bigger implications of shutting down speech always bother me, and it's so easy to go after something as annoying as spam without thinking about the bigger picture.

[napi21]

5. I don't think that will be a problem.

Any ligitimate business includes an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of their email. Ane yes, I know some of those are used to confirm your address, but NOT the ligit ones.

I suspect this creep either didn't HAVE an unsubscribe link, or didn't use it for what it was intended to do.

We all get tons of spam emails, and every so often I take the time to unsubscribe all of them. For a while, the spam almost goes away, but then....others come to replace them!

[gtar100]

4. And why does AOL deserve this money?

Customers that have to waste all their time sifting through the spam crap, so it hurts them as much as the company's IT staff. Assuming they even collect on this judgment, are they going to divvy up the judgment money? Or will a bunch of lawyers get outrageous fees paid and a few executives get healthy bonuses?

Spam truly sucks. If you make a purchase from a non-solicited email...then shame on you!! Stop it.

[onenote]

6. 21 million customers; 5 million dollars

Do you think that it makes sense for AOL to give everyone a $0.25 credit? Whoopee.

onenote

[SurfRidem]

7. Alright, hammer the spammer!

[IDemo]

8. Attention AOL: your flood of "join now" cd's is spam as well,

in every meaningful definition of the word, whether the junk comes via email or postal. Knock it off.

[Hekate]

9. Good. And I hope some day they get the folks who spew sewage at my in-box

The promises to make my penis enormous are bad enough (don't have one), but no worse than the promises that I could become rich beyond the dreams of avarice if I would just write to Nigeria or follow this handy stock tip.

What really got to me last year were the dozens and dozens of pornographic sales pitches every day--and believe me, the subject lines were plenty graphic. Nearly all of them had a Yahoo address, although Yahoo customer service said the mail didn't actually originate with them. I finally had to block the entire domain.

The filter doesn't quite catch everything, but it is such a pleasure to Select an entire batch of 3 dozen or more and just hit Delete.

I really wish someone would put them out of business.

Hekate