Spaming company sues ordinary bloke

[sjau]

I was just listenting to the radio (JJJ, a non commercial Australian radio station) this morning, and a story came on about a bloke who is being sued by a spam email marketing company. Here is a synopsis:

Apparently this bloke, Joe McNichol, didn't like receiving spam in his inbox, and tracked some of it down to a certain marketing company in Western Australia.

Apparently after contacting the company and getting nowhere, he submitted the name of the marketing company, t3direct, to an anti-spam group, called SPEWS (Spam Prevention Early Warning System).

SPEWS submitted t3direct's IP addresses to a number of ISPs, which then blocked email from them.

In the past, direct marketing companies have sued the owners of anti-spam sites, however, SPEWS were clever enough not to include contact names, etc.

So, in a world first, the company is now going after the Joe McNichol for submitting them!

He is being sued for $43,750 AUD (roughly US$24,600) for damages and loss of income. McNichol is contesting the action.

To say the least, this case will prove interesting to follow, as it will set a precedent. Can you imagine if the company is successful? Will that open the floodgates for a plethora of legal action by spammers? I will be keeping an eye on this one!

For more info, check here:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/communications/story/0,2000024993,20265640,00.htm

http://list-news.com/articles/02june/20020603.html

In German:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hps-31.05.02-000/

McNichols own website:

http://www.vtgts.com/auspam.htm

and SPEWS:

http://spews.org/

[Vienix]

Hi,

I hope the guy wins, and there will be new laws to stop spamming.

Those spam company's are run by the scum of the earth.

I use spamcop to report spamming , I hope this helps.

Now I can handle everything with my 1.5mb connection, but soon I will move to a country were, when I am lucky, I have a 28k8 connection and then spam will be quite horrible...

( and updating or restoring a 4images database with soon 100mb of images impossible, but thats an other story )

[VnxDragon]

Well actually these other countries come with a standard 3kb per second d/l and upload if you are using modem, and it's extremely slow, however if you are willing to fork over 50 bucks a month you can get about an 100 kb per second connectoin