Hatrack River Forum: Judge Awards $1 billion in Spam Lawsuit

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :

Article in eWeek:

quote:
AVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A federal judge has awarded a Clinton Internet service provider over $1 billion in a lawsuit against companies that used the service provider's equipment to send spam, the Quad-Cities Times reported Saturday.

It's believed to be one of the largest judgments against companies accused of sending junk e-mails.

U.S. District Judge Charles Wolle ruled Friday that Robert Kramer's business, CIS Internet Services, was harmed by the unsolicited e-mails.

"It's definitely a victory for all of us that open up our e-mail and find lewd and malicious and fraudulent e-mail in our boxes every day,'' Kramer said.

Kramer is unlikely to ever collect the large judgment, which was made possible through an Iowa law that allows plaintiffs to claim damages of $10 per spam message, said his attorney, Kelly O. Wallace of Atlanta.

"We hope to recover at least his costs,'' Wallace said.

Kramer's lawsuit was originally filed in October 2003 against 300 defendants then known only as John Does.

Kramer's company, founded in January 1996, provides e-mail for about 5,000 subscribers in the Clinton vicinity. He started noticing an influx of spam being sent to his company's inbound mail servers in mid-2000. At one point, his Internet server received 10 million or more spam e-mails per day, according to Kramer and the judgment documents.

Not that they'll collect.

Dagonee

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

But still. Mighty cool. [Eek!]

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

Ah, default judgements and RICO . . . Hmmmm, I should start looking at my spam . . .

Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :

RICO = triple damages, forfeiture, and attorney's fees if you can pull it off.

RICO seems fishy to me here, but who knows? It's the most flexible criminal/civil statute on the books.

Edit: By the way, email qualifies as use of the wires, so any fraud email is used "in connection with" is likely actionable in federal court. And wire fraud is a big RICO predicate.

Dagonee

[ December 19, 2004, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]

Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :

0wned, n00bs.

--j_k