Ban the Spammers!
Mood:
cheeky
Topic: Tech
Sung to the delightful tune of: stop the oppression!
NEWS FLASH
In what is believed to be the first of its kind in the world of consumer protection law and the first trial and verdict under California’s Anti-Spam Law, a state court judge awarded a plaintiff $7,000 against a spammer.
It marks the first law suit brought by a consumer plaintiff to go to trial against a spammer.
I think we all deal with the annoyance and will likely grow to appreciate a tide turning against unsolicitied advertisements.
Now I dont know if this company was selling prescription drugs, personals ads memberships or eboook kits on how to make money on e-bay. But this is the point of spam: we dont care.
Of course the idiot is going to appeal. He is already arguing that the law for spam should be used only by consumers who are actually "injured" by the e-mails. And no, that is not a misprint/keystroke error.
(He also contends that California is overstepping its jurisdictional boundary and this is a job for CAN-SPAM.)
But, apparently where this spammer gets put back on the hook instead of off is where it intentionally undertook efforts to impair the recipient’s ability to identify, locate, or respond to the email as the initiator of the e-mail, and that it intended to hide itself from identification by recipients as the actual sender. (Harrumph, then.)
California’s anti-spam statute sits at $1,000 per violation for sending e-mails to recipients without consent that misrepresent either the source or the subject of the message.
In this case, the “from” line in eight e-mail messages used a nonexistent source – such as “Paid Survey” or “Your Promotion” – and none of them named the company as sender. Of the eight messages, seven were sent from senders that did not exist or were otherwise misrepresented so the plaintiff in this case was awarded damages of $7,000.
A cautionary tale for anyone thinking about sending spam messages to residents of California.
© Copyright 2006-2010
Globe Business Publishing Ltd
As for our country, recently, an official announcement was made, concerning new legislation in Canada that would seem to indicate we moving in the same direction. On the surface, this should help drive spammers out of Canada and further deter them from setting up shop in the first place.
See also:
http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2010/05/25/4808823.htm
And as far as legal marketing front goes, theres news on "Online behavioral advertising" which as a practice is still in infancy. Apparently there are " growing privacy threats" related to this online business as practiced by such online giants as Google and Yahoo.
I mean what other word instantly comes to mind for you when business's engage in this type of activity, tracking with cookies your online "behavior"?
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100525-707736.html
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Now if you'll all excuse us, I believe we all have more important things to consider and get along to. :)
Like what does this mean for the general diet of the population?
Posted by mach1231
at 9:42 AM PDT
Updated: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 10:55 AM PDT
a-ok
suave
quizzical
not sure
accident prone
chatty
rushed
caffeinated
