[ale] OT: pursuing spammers through the legal system

[ChangingLINKS.com]

The same thing happens to ChangingLINKS all the time. When I first saw it 
happened, I was alarmed. However, no one has yelled at me about this type of 
spam.

I would strongly suggest you ignore it. By the time to get to court and track 
down a particular individual, you will probably find 5 more emails from 
different senders that do the same thing. Are you going to sue them all?

Further, once you "go after" a guy, you really never know how far HE is 
willing to to go to defend himself, including but not limited to attacking 
you physically once he gets your address from the court sessions. Sounds 
strange, but just know that once you start a "fight" you have no control over 
the tatics used to "win" by the other party. If the guy is a really hardcore 
spammer (I know some) he may be a little more "colorful" than anticipate.

Moreover, I think that you greatly over-estimate the power of the legal 
system. Getting a lawyer, building evidence, taking the time to serve the 
individual, going to court for years - all takes away time and energy from 
_your life_. 

Even IF you were able to get a judgement against the individual, you will 
probably have to collect, and more than likely, the amount you will be 
collecting will *not* offset these costs of life (time spent) liberty (not 
having to worry about the case) and the pursuit of happiness (doing something 
productive and financially rewarding will probably bring you more cash in the 
same amount of time).

      Your energy and time is better spent finishing your web site.

-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
http://www.ChangingLINKS.com



On Thu April 10 2003 12:55, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> 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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> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale

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