MonsterHut Jammed for Spam 286
DeAshcroft writes "Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lottie E. Wilkins has ordered MonsterHut, its CEO Todd Pelow and CTO Gary Hartl to stop behaving badly. The New York Post has a story on the ruling. The suit, brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in May 2002, alleges that MonsterHut sent over 500 million messages, fraudulently claiming that they were opt-in, and ignored at least 750,000 requests by consumers to be taken off their lists. Newsday also has coverage. The AG has an official release on the case. Penalty hearing is scheduled for Feb 11, 2003."
How long (Score:4, Interesting)
Very easy solution (Score:0, Interesting)
Ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
A Swing in the right direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Catching them on fraud (Score:4, Interesting)
The best of it is that they can put these guys behind bars while skipping right by the free speech issue. While normally I hold the first amendment to the highest standards, I favor suspending it for spammers.
Doesn't help (Re:How long) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How long (Score:4, Interesting)
A better question is, would it do them any good to move offshore? Skylarov (sp?) lived in Russia, and the American government still managed to yank him into their "justice" system.
"ignored" - hardly (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure they didn't ignore them - they use those responses to determine that they now have a confirmed live e-mail address which is worth more than a bunch of e-mail addresses that nobody checks.
so I'm sure they don't just ignore them - they likely instead do just the opposite and have much interest in those 750,000 responses and gave them a little extra attention... like logging them in their database as "live" or something like that.
All I have to say about this is 1) I wish I had thought of it all in 1995 - could have made a bundle and 2) SpamAssassin [spamassassin.org] rules!
I feel good but I would like a definition (Score:1, Interesting)
Is there a clear legal definition somewhere of spamming?
And what about regulation from where it's sent?
US law do not apply if I'm from Canada...right?
So I cannot be brought into a US court if I'm spamming from outside US! ?
datacommarketing.com (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I can't see their homepage because I have blocked their entire subnet in my router
How on earth can a company like that just continue act like they do?
Corporations want first amendment right too (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, but it will be soon [commondreams.org]
Neat, ain't it.
is it possible (Score:2, Interesting)
declare WAR on spam! (Score:2, Interesting)
I hear a case where someone started sending spammers bills for the time used to delete messages and investigate who sent the message, etc. The funny thing is, a large number of spammers actually paid or were forwarded to collections. I'm hoping this was not another urban legend -- I want to start doing the same.
Re:A Swing in the right direction (Score:3, Interesting)
it's quite too bad that we can't have engineers design and develop a communication method that doesn't allow this type of "abuse". these people are merely taking advantage of a flawed system and we want prosecution?
our freaking law makers are busy trying to figure out how we'll implement the "no child left behind act" from mr. gwb to spend their time making and implementing spam laws.
here's a wacky idea. educate the population. educate them A LOT. let them design a system which is secure, easy to use and easy to maintain. let them learn from our mistakes with telephone, email , cable tv and all the other failed communication mechanisms.
radio and over the air tv are about the only decent delivery mechanisms i can see. their major flaw is that they are only one sided in that you send a message and hope someone tunes it in. they're also highly regulated in that not everyone can get their messages out via those channels.
Re:How long (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you been to Grand Cayman? Would you want to actually live there?
Moving the data center operations of a spamhaus offshore does not prevent prosecutors charging owners living in the US. If the criminal activity takes place in the US they can prosecute in the US.
It is quite likely that the offshore havens can and will prosecute also. Hosting SPAM senders does not bring anywhere near the amount of revenue that the traditional offshore industries of banking and shipping do. Any country that is in the offshore game is anxious to ensure that it does not draw unwanted attention to its current scams by allowing high profile criminal activity. You don't get much more high profile than businesses that anoy millions of people an hour.
Offshore havens are not by and large lawless, in fact the cayman islands sells itself on the fact that as a result of its British administration it has a government and banking system that have very high integrity. Cayman is not going to do anything to threaten that reputation and its existing business. So that leaves the spam senders with places like Congo, Nigeria and Afghanistan where the civil government has collapsed (though few 'libertarians' seem to want to live inthose countries).
Moving data centers offshore is in any case a high cost and would be a significant barrier to entry for new spam senders. If you have to move to a jurisdiction where the civil government is corrupt costs are going to rapidly spiral out of control.
The 'regulatory arbitrage' stuff is all about ideological commitment rather than analysis.
Results (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:DON'T REALLY DO THIS (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't care how many spams I get and how much time it takes me to report / delete them, there is NO way to compare the inconvenience of spam to putting a bullet in someone's brain. That is taking a life. I'll stop using email if it comes down to a choice like that.
We (tinw) know that AlRal had some of his spam boxes hosted in China, and someone sent a Falun Gong-type message to the ISP that was hosting them... all of the machines related to that message were confiscated by Chinese officials and carted off, simply due to the Falun Gong reference. No clue what happened to the admins, but it wouldn't be a stretch to assume some sort of reprisal was brought down upon them.
Fscking around with a government like the one in place in China, one that ignores internationally established human rights policies, and forbids freedom of expression and freedom of religion, all for the sake of a funny, is NOT a good idea.
Re:Very easy solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The major backbones in the USA condone spam. What makes you think a Chinese ISP will condemn it?
Shove all of Worldcom, UUNET and Level3 into SPEWS, that's what I say!
dave "rot in Spews"
He should get 47 years in prison. (Score:5, Interesting)
15*100000000/3600/24/365 = 47 years.
Maybe he should have 47 years of his time wasted.
(No, I'm not actually serious. But that's a lot of wasted time.)
Re:A Swing in the right direction (Score:5, Interesting)
It's too bad we don't educate our kids to learn how to use the Shift key.
But back to the topic at hand, if nobody can build a general purpose secure OS, how the fuck do you expect anyone to create a messaging system which the main purpose of is to allow any-to-any communication that is invunerable to spam and still a viable system to be used by businesses and the masses in general? Do you REALLY think that spammers won't find a way around technical limitations?
Imagine a society with no laws. You can be killed by anyone, have your stuff stolen, your daughter raped and no laws to stop it. Only the strong survive. Warlords control everything. This is essentially the internet as it is today.
Back in the "good old days" before AOL invaded Usenet, laws were not really needed. The community for the most part policed itself. This is no longer possible.
We now need laws to enforce proper behavior. Will this stop all spam? No. Do laws against shoplifting stop all theft? No. Do they discurage most people from shoplifting every time they enter a store? Yes, they do. They provide a way for shop owners to protect themselves.
The bottom line is that we KNOW anti-spam laws will not stop all spam. It will however reduce it significantly.
Re:A Swing in the right direction (Score:3, Interesting)
first off, i can't quite see how the "antisocial" person had committed thievery? they haven't taken anything concrete. only given something that wasn't asked for. it's up to you to accept or reject the offer, correct? you pick up the phone or you don't. it could be a student loan consolidator who just wants to talk to you for a minute, or it could be mom calling to talk about nothing (either way it might be better not to answer
secondly, yes, i do believe that the system should be designed as robust as possible and as flexable as possible. trust should also be inherant in any system. pagers for instance have a level of trust. the pager company doesn't generally publish your number so it's a pretty trusted environment for communication. you give people a pager number and they can page you. you know when you get a page that it's needed to be returned.
it's not the gov'ts job to play playground moderator telling people how to play nice together. their job is to protect the borders and uphold the constitution. your constitutional rights are not being infringed on by email spam or phone spam. your right to "privacy" is not infringed since you elected service from that particular company, and probably in the small small print was disclosed how the system works and weather they'll give your number/address to others, or weather it's just a guessing game. in a true monopolistic market there needs to be governement rules (they created the monoply after all) otherwise the rules will be created by the market and consumers. if someone doesn't give the consumers what they want, someone else will come along and do it.
Re:DON'T REALLY DO THIS (Score:4, Interesting)
An understatement. There's no impartial court, so no opportunity. Still, a friend's band is called "The Nail Nippers," with some samples on an mp3 site. They keep getting e-mails from China and elsewhere in Asia offering to supply them with nail nippers. These letters are written in good enough English, apparently by someone using data mining software to find every e-mail address on every Website that mentioned "nail nippers" - since if a human had read my friend's site it's just obvious it's the band's name.
So, is every factory in China staffed by people who write sophisticated data mining software? Or is there some quiet central government program that is helping facilitate spam in order to build China's export businesses? There's a certain likelihood that really doing this (replying to the spam with dangerous keywords) would really be tripping up the Chinese government, not some innocent little factory spam manager.
Of course, if you don't share my view that the legitimate government of China sits in Taiwan you may still consider this a bad thing. Those of us who favor armed insurrection on behalf of Tibet, Fulun Gong and freedom generally might even welcome it if the illegitimate government got more involved in chasing its own tail, rather than focusing effectively on suppressing and killing Tibetans and those with unauthorized spiritual faiths.
Sure, the innocent could suffer the worst fates; but the innocent already do. It's the sort of tough ethical dilemma where a choice may spare two innocent lives, but take another.
Differences between speech (free and protected). (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly people, please look this stuff up. IN the US Constitution, there is a difference between free speech and protected speech.
Free speech is a more nebulous term, it allows for the rights to freely congregate and express opinions about anything. If you use that to hawk wares with people that is fraudulent, then you may be prosecuted for your behavior. If you are falsely yelling "fire" in a theatre, then you may be prosecuted for injuries in the stampede. However, protected speech is a little different.
Protected speech in the US is Political Speech. Meaning that you cannot be restricted from standing in a public place and protest an event within reason. All political opinons are considered protected, and part of the democratic process. But even this has limits. You cannot disrupt or cause a public nuisance with this, like say blast a recording of the Communist Mannifesto every day with 1k watt speakers at the White House Lawn. That would disrupt the political process, and infringe on others rights to a working government.
In a word, we do have free speech, but these are solicitations... not political speech.
Also, corporations should not have free speech, because they are not citizens, do not vote, cannot be jailed for disruptive behavior, and do not pay any real taxes compared to their earnings.
Either way, free speech is not a license for fraud.
Re:A Swing in the right direction (Score:2, Interesting)
Hold on a minute.... (Score:1, Interesting)
How do "we" know that? If you're gonna say that you saw it in the Detroit Free Press article, I believe that quote came from AR himself. I'd sooner believe the Moon was a cube than anything he said.
I have my own suspicion about the likelihood of my email being a deadly weapon to everyone in China. Not that the govt. isn't a bunch of SOBs, but I kinda doubt they're going to randomly frag people based on spam complaints, no matter what's in them. I'm not going to take the chance, though.