[ale] OT: pursuing spammers through the legal system

[Benjamin Scherrey]

4/9/2003 3:20:22 PM, Fulton Green <ale at FultonGreen.com> wrote:

>I'm beginning to see quite a few bouncebacks from a spam campaign that
>surrepitiously generated, for the mail envelope and other origination
>address headers, random addresses based on my domain (e.g.,
>" f0ls53lfkj at fulton green dot com ").
>
>Obviously, this is an especially henious act, and I'd like to see justice
>served for this crime, whether through the criminal or civil avenues of
>the law.
>
>So here are a few questions:
>
>1) Who could I consider the perps in this case?  The ones actually
>   spamming me, or the ones paying that spammer (whether it's the
>   advertiser or a "middleman" "spam-broker"), or both?  The advertiser
>   is pretty easy to track down; the spammer will be more difficult
>   unless the advertiser cooperates in the investigation.

	Possibly both - certainly the ones who represented their content as coming from your 
domain. As far as the advertiser is considered, it falls under the question of plausible deniability and 
negligence. You will just have to prove that the advertiser "did or should have known" about the 
"Crime". Contracts between the advertiser and spammer may provide them some indemnity clause 
for protection but that can be overcome by demonstrating negligence on their part.

>2) Is there a good "e-attorney" in town that knows enough about situations
>   like this that could take on my case?

	Good question. Let me know if you find one.

>3) If the spam originated from a person living out-of-state (or even out-
>   of-country), how does that effect the viability of my case against the
>   perps?

	Georgia has "long arm" laws that bring such things under their jurisdiction fairly easily. 
However, it's questionable what Georgia laws have been broken here and you might have the 
opportunity to sue in a state with better laws if you can show jurisdiction (like physical location of 
servers, source of email, etc..). Otherwise you might have a federal case for wire fraud or something 
of that ilk. The big thing is that you won't get any enforcement help unless you can show a loss of 
over $5k and a good chance of finding the perps. Going civil will be quite expensive (not less than 
$10k - prolly close to $30 to get to trial) since I doubt any lawyer will take it on contingency early on 
(perhaps after the case develops) since these are new, somewhat untested laws. My advice is the 
be tenacious if you really want to do something about it but don't expect much beyond a pyrric 
victoriy.

	Good luck,

		Ben Scherrey




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