Spam today ... gone tomorrow

Everything else
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I have no real love for AOL but this has to be a good thing :

DECEMBER 17, 14:54 ET
AOL Wins $7 Million Spam Lawsuit
By ANICK JESDANUN
AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - America Online has won a court judgment for nearly $7
million in damages against what it termed a ``spam ring’’ that
bombarded AOL members with junk e-mail pitching adult Web sites.

AOL said the damages awarded by the U.S. District Court in Alexandria,
Va., was the largest ever from one of its lawsuits against spammers.
AOL has filed some 20 of such lawsuits over the years.

``This sends a message to both members and spammers that we take spam
seriously on this service,‘’ AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said
Tuesday.

One of the defendants in the latest case was CN Productions, a company
AOL successfully sued in 1999. AOL had won $1.9 million in damages
against CN Productions and an injunction barring the company and its
president, Jay Nelson, from sending junk messages to AOL members. AOL
later asked the court to hold them in contempt, saying spamming from
them had continued.

Graham said the new award, issued in October and unsealed in late
November, was on top of the $1.9 million, some of which has not yet
been collected.

Joseph Peter Drennan, a lawyer for Nelson, said his client was driven
into bankruptcy by the lawsuit and thus was ``not given an opportunity
to deal with the specific allegations on an even playing field.‘’

In the complaint that led to the most recent award, AOL said CN and
its associates transmitted more than 1 billion junk messages,
accounting for a quarter of complaints AOL received about spam
promoting adult sites.

AOL and other larger Internet service providers routinely take
spammers to court and win hefty judgments, often because defendants
fail to show up. But the service providers often are unable to collect
damages, and injunctions against specific spammers generally have
little effect in stopping the flood of junk e-mail.

Nonetheless, Graham said, such rulings help deter ``those currently
spamming and those thinking of setting up spamming operations.‘’

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Hearing something like that makes me yearn for the good ol’ days of debtors prisons… Of course, after the thread on credit card debt, that might not be such a popular view!

ASJunk