Massive Spam Lawsuit
Project Honey Pot files a $1B+ lawsuit against spammers.
Comments
sooth_sayer • May 3, 2007 6:21 PM
FAQ on the site:
What happens to any money you win in the lawsuit?
We’re a long way from that, but we’d like to help out the people who have helped us. Obviously a large chunk would go to paying legal fees. Intriguingly, though, since we will know what Project Honey Pot members provided the data that ends up winning the case, maybe we’ll be able to send them a little bonus. 🙂
Sounds like the ultimate Scam to me… scamming everyone to scam the scammers and scram.
The CEO of UnScam is a lawyer !!! what chutzpa
Dylan • May 4, 2007 12:33 AM
I’ve got some MX records tracking junkmail for project honeypot. It was simple to set up, and gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling since Bluefrog got wasted.
My most succesful anti-spam strategy to date has been hosting my domain mail via gmail. Since then I have received an average of 1 spam per 500 sent to me, with a false positive rate of <.01%
I like project honeypot. Take the time to look around their info, and consider signing up to help out. Especially if you have a website.
Dylan • May 4, 2007 12:37 AM
Regarding this action, this is one of about 5 different major initiative that project honeypot has been announcing this week.
Take a look at their announcements page.
another bruce • May 4, 2007 4:06 AM
@david robarts: at least in california, many lawsuits are filed against unidentified “doe” defendants. once you have an open case file, you can issue subpoenas to their isp’s to find out who they are, then amend your complaint accordingly.
since only isp’s are allowed to sue under can-spam, and not ordinary peons like ourselves, i’ve been long tempted to set up my own isp, not hard to do, and be a one-man vigilante, but i’ve been too busy so far.
John Davies • May 4, 2007 4:45 AM
Interesting, but the FAQ seems to be missing the question “What happens if the spammers are based outside the USA?”
Fred Flint • May 4, 2007 6:32 AM
If spammers are anything like fraud artists (and they’re probably the same type of people – if not the same people) the money will all be gone and they’ll just go out of business, then go back in business with a different name and location the next day.
Still, I wish the project well. Perhaps this approach will be more effective than the criminal courts – where you can get a one-time $100,000 fine for defrauding people of millions of dollars a year.
greg • May 4, 2007 6:55 AM
@Fred Flint
Yea, I get the funny feeling that the only winners in civil court cases are the lawers.
Matthew Skala • May 4, 2007 7:48 AM
“I don’t see how filing a lawsuit against unidentified defendants helps anything.”
I wish the RIAA also didn’t see that.
Pseudo Anonymous Coward • May 4, 2007 8:36 AM
I see a DDOS from Pharmamaster in their near future
Fred Flint • May 4, 2007 9:19 AM
@greg
“Yea, I get the funny feeling that the only winners in civil court cases are the lawers.”
The lawyers write the laws, so of course the lawyers always win. I have a low opinion of lawyers and I’m not sure if it irritates me more when the crooks get to keep the money themselves or when the crooks are forced to hand the money over to the lawyers.
I guess, unless you’re the crook and/or the lawyer, there’s really not much difference.
another bruce • May 4, 2007 11:30 AM
i’m proud to be a lawyer (retired now) and my take on fred flint and greg is that these are the guys who were too stupid to get into law school and have been saying sour grapes ever since.
Anonymous • May 4, 2007 1:58 PM
@another bruce: “once you have an open case file, you can issue subpoenas to their isp’s to find out who they are, then amend your complaint accordingly”
Hmmm… isn’t this what we object to the RIAA doing? Isn’t what we used to object to under the 4th amendment? It would be nice if they were required to get some evidence before walking in and appropriating people’s equipment and data.
Terry Cloth • May 4, 2007 2:03 PM
Oops—forgot to fill in the field. The previous comment (“…RIAA doing? Isn’t what…”) was mine.
billswift • May 4, 2007 4:37 PM
@ anotherbruce
Maybe you’re one of the 3% of lawyers Robert Ringer talks about, the ones who get the bad name earned by the other 97%.
Fred Flint • May 6, 2007 9:36 AM
@another bruce,
“I’m proud to be a lawyer (retired now) and my take on fred flint and greg is that these are the guys who were too stupid to get into law school and have been saying sour grapes ever since.”
No, I wanted to do something productive with my life, so I got into police work and then computer security (wrong again!) but I’m also retired now, so I guess we ended up in exactly the same business, irrespective of our relative intelligence.
As a brilliantly intelligent comet, streaking through our dark, cloudy nights, of course you appreciate ad hominem arguments – because you simply can’t lose an argument when you ignore the substance of an issue and substitute personal attacks for intelligent discourse.
Of course, you can’t win either but then again, lawyers get paid win or lose, neh?
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ARM • May 3, 2007 3:54 PM
Smacks of tilting at windmills to me, but I’d love to see it suceed.