Serial Anti-Spam Lawsuit Filer Loses Appeal... And His Possessions

from the time-to-get-a-job dept

Back when CAN SPAM was passed, one of the (many) parts that annoyed anti-spam fighters was that the law was quite clearly limited in who could bring lawsuits. It was basically designed so that only the government or ISPs could bring lawsuits -- not individuals. This was done on purpose, as lots of marketing companies freaked out that they'd end up dealing with constant spam lawsuits from people upset about receiving their marketing messages. However, some anti-spammers worked on ways to get around this by setting themselves up as "ISPs," though only for the purpose of trying to sue spammers. This strategy backfired. A couple of years ago, one of the most fervent supporters of using this trick (his only "job" was filing these lawsuits against spammers) lost his case, and the court even told him to pay $110k to the firm he had sued.

He appealed, and the appeals court came down even harder on the guy for clearly abusing the law, pointing out that he was clearly a professional litigant, and not someone running a real ISP. But, perhaps even more fascinating is that the guy, James Gordon, didn't just lose the lawsuit, it appears he lost most of his possessions as well. Remember that ruling telling him to pay the $110k to Virtumundo? He refused. The company sent the debt to a collections agency, but told Gordon they'd call off the collections agency if he dropped the appeal. Gordon didn't:

When Virtumundo's collections lawyer showed up at Gordon's house with a moving van and a sheriff, Virtumundo again offered to stop its pursuit of Gordon's assets if he would drop his appeal, and he refused again, according to Newman.

Virtumundo's collections agency then cleared out Gordon's house, according to Newman.

He added that after seizing the contents of Gordon's home, Virtumundo offered to return Gordon's belongings if he would drop his appeal and again, Gordon refused.

As much as I thank anti-spam activists for trying to stomp out spam, that doesn't mean they get to ignore what the law allows, and set up what was effectively a professional anti-spam litigation service.

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MySpace Wins An Uncollectable $234 Million Award In Spam Case

from the sending-a-message? dept

Last month, we wrote about how MySpace had won its case against Sanford "Spamford" Wallace -- the infamous 1990s "Spam King" who (despite losing many court battles and owing millions in fines) simply can't seem to give up his obsession with scammy marketing techniques. The win was a default judgment, mainly because Wallace simply disappeared and stopped responding to court requests. Today, a judge ruled on the punishment, officially awarding MySpace $234 million from Wallace and his associate Walter Rines. Given Wallace's disappearing act (which he's done in the past as well) it's unlikely that MySpace will ever see a dime of the money, but that hasn't stopped the company from touting this as the largest ever award under CAN SPAM. Amusingly, the extremely short court ruling also bars Wallace from setting up any new MySpace profiles. It doesn't say anything about Facebook, though, so perhaps that's where we'll see him next...

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Court Tells Spammer That It's Not Illegal For An ISP To Filter Its Emails

from the in-no-uncertain-terms dept

If the name e360 sounds familiar to you, it may be because it was the company that sued Spamhaus for including it in its spam filter list. e360 insists it's not a spammer and anyone filtering its messages is somehow infringing on its rights. Of course, there seems to be ample evidence that e360 has been spamming, and the company has been sued directly as well. e360's latest lawsuit was against Comcast for filtering its emails, but as Slashdot lets us know, a judge has tossed that suit out of court while also declaring in no uncertain terms that e360 is a spammer.

Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.

The key in this case was that the judge relied on section 230 of the CDA -- a section of the law that we often talk about for shielding service providers against the actions of its users. In this case, it's a different part of section 230, which also shields ISPs from liability for "good faith" efforts to block objectionable content -- and then the court says that it's clear that Congress and the courts have determined that spam is objectionable content.

This isn't the first time we've seen cases like this. A few years back a series of courts all ruled against a spam company which claimed that it had followed the "rules" in CAN SPAM, so filtering its spam was illegal. It's nice to see the courts recognize that's simply not true.

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Guy Suing Spammers Under CAN-SPAM Told To Pay Legal Fees Of The Company He Sued

from the ouch dept

When Congress first passed the CAN SPAM law, they were very clear that it wasn't to be used by the everyday citizen to sue spammers. Instead, it was only for ISPs or the government. Of course, a group of anti-spam fighters quickly came up with loopholes, whereby they basically pretended to be an ISP for the sake of suing spammers. Back in May, we noted that one of the guys using this trick lost his case, as the judge pointed out that he clearly wasn't an ISP and was simply abusing CAN SPAM. Thus, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the same guy has now been ordered to pay $110k for the legal fees of the company he sued. The judge also blasts the guy for bringing frivolous lawsuits, noting that he basically set up an entire business whose only purpose is to bring lawsuits against those he accuses of spam. This ruling is likely to put something of a damper on these types of lawsuits. Many people may point out that it's unfortunate that guys like this can't sue spammers any more, but if you want to blame someone, it should be Congress for the wording of the CAN SPAM law (which was more intended to clarify what type of spam was legal, than to outlaw spam).

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