Spammer received record fine
Via the Quad-City Times: CIS Internet Services, won an $11.2 billion settlement from spammer James McCalla. The judgment also prohibits McCalla from accessing the Internet for three years. Other defendants named in the lawsuit, including Cash Link Systems of Florida, AMP Dollar Savings Inc. of Arizona, and TEI Marketing Group Inc. of Florida were ordered in 2004 to pay judgments totaling more than $1 billion to CIS Internet Services.
John Mozena, co-founder and vice president of CAUCE, said Tuesday that the judgment against McCalla is the largest one he has heard."By a couple orders of magnitude,"? he said. "And we're happy Mr. Kramer is holding spammers accountable."?
But the spamming problem remains huge, he said.
"Large judgments have not discouraged spammers as a whole,"? he said. "There have been regulatory actions and even criminal actions against spammers, but it has not made much of a dent in the total volume of spam we see. Spam is still roughly two-thirds of all e-mail on the Internet."?
Maybe if they'd hand down justice Moscow Style we wouldn't have such a problem with spam.
"the spamming problem remains huge." How can that be?
Almost two years ago (Jan 26 2004) the remarkably successful Bill Gates said the following at the Davos forum: "Two years from now, spam will be solved," (For links, google for "Gates Davos 2004 spam problem".)
And just over two years ago, the US Congress passed the Can Spam Act of 2004 and President Bush signed it into law. It's been in effect since Jan 1 2005 and gives ISPs but not end users the right to sue. The first ISP lawsuit under the act was against that horrible spammer Bob Vila (sarcasm). But the main problem with Can-Spam is that it punishes commercial mail instead of bulk mail.
Bill Gates promised a solution, so how about this? Why would you ever buy products from someone who is so horribly mistaken? And Congress legislated a solution, so how about this? Later this year, vote the bastards out of office that brought you Can Spam.
SPAM, btw, is a registered trademark of Hormel. Apparently the US Congress can violate this trademark with impunity.
Posted by: postmaster at January 7, 2006 01:14 PMI apologize for the errors in my previous response. The Can-Spam Act of 2003 (not 2004), went into effect Jan 1, 2004 (not 2005).
Posted by: postmaster at January 7, 2006 01:18 PM
