Hi Folks,
I thought I would give a brief follow-up about the CA spam suits mentioned in a prior thread. The trial happened on June 18 as scheduled and the judge rendered his decision in the beginning of July. Four Defendants showed up, one did not (and defaulted) with three more having settled earlier, raising almost $40,000 for the Darfur Cookstove Project and the local chapter of Second Harvest (a food bank).
In short, we* won: Small claims court maximum judgments jointly and severally in all case against all remaining Defendants. For my cases that was: Azoogle, OfferWeb, SubscriberBASE (a.k.a. AdDrive), Livemercial and (via default) World Avenue USA (a.k.a. TheUseful, f/k/a Niutech).
All of these ad networks were sued because they were advertising using illegal UCE, specifically spam with false ‘From:’ lines were sent under multiple domain names by a spammer with a penchant for registering hundreds of throw-away domain names, using fake names and addresses to conceal their identity.
It is _legal_ in the US to advertise with spam. However, when Congress legalized spam, it did so with a bargain to the country -- spam was legalized but with the mandatory requirement of transparency and accountability. If one can't identify the sender of a Commercial Email (solicited or not), it's illegal, both under CAN-SPAM and California law. It is illegal to use spam sent with false or anonymously registered domain names. Using third party spammers will not get you around the law. You can delegate who clicks the "send" key, but you cannot delegate the duty to obey the law.
Joe
(*)I used "We" because in addition to myself there was another plaintiff with his own suits heard that day that also received judgments jointly against ValueClick and Media Breakaway (f/k/a OptInRealBig), who were also served at Ad-Tech. All of the appearing Defendants have filed appeals.
I thought I would give a brief follow-up about the CA spam suits mentioned in a prior thread. The trial happened on June 18 as scheduled and the judge rendered his decision in the beginning of July. Four Defendants showed up, one did not (and defaulted) with three more having settled earlier, raising almost $40,000 for the Darfur Cookstove Project and the local chapter of Second Harvest (a food bank).
In short, we* won: Small claims court maximum judgments jointly and severally in all case against all remaining Defendants. For my cases that was: Azoogle, OfferWeb, SubscriberBASE (a.k.a. AdDrive), Livemercial and (via default) World Avenue USA (a.k.a. TheUseful, f/k/a Niutech).
All of these ad networks were sued because they were advertising using illegal UCE, specifically spam with false ‘From:’ lines were sent under multiple domain names by a spammer with a penchant for registering hundreds of throw-away domain names, using fake names and addresses to conceal their identity.
It is _legal_ in the US to advertise with spam. However, when Congress legalized spam, it did so with a bargain to the country -- spam was legalized but with the mandatory requirement of transparency and accountability. If one can't identify the sender of a Commercial Email (solicited or not), it's illegal, both under CAN-SPAM and California law. It is illegal to use spam sent with false or anonymously registered domain names. Using third party spammers will not get you around the law. You can delegate who clicks the "send" key, but you cannot delegate the duty to obey the law.
Joe
(*)I used "We" because in addition to myself there was another plaintiff with his own suits heard that day that also received judgments jointly against ValueClick and Media Breakaway (f/k/a OptInRealBig), who were also served at Ad-Tech. All of the appearing Defendants have filed appeals.
