The judgment announced by the
California District Court is yet another important victory in the war
against spamming.
The war on spamming got yet another notable victory with
popular social network,
Facebook, receiving a court judgment in its favor. In the last week of
October,
the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California ordered
noted
‘spam king’, Sanford Wallace to pay the social network $711 million.
The court found Wallace guilty on two counts; firstly, for the
violation of
the CAN SPAM act; secondly, for willfully violating a temporary
restraining
order and injunction that was issued by the court. Apart from imposing
a fine,
the court has also debarred Wallace from setting up accounts on
Facebook. He
may even get charged for criminal contempt.
During his heyday in the 1990s, Wallace headed a company
called CyberPromotions
and sent up to 30 million junk mails in a single day.
Wallace also got implicated with another defendant, in another
case similar
to this one, in May 2008, where he was asked to pay $234 million to
myspace.com.
Based on these two cases and his track record, it seems apparent that
Wallace
has not learned his lessons.
The judgment also reflects the willingness of the authorities
to leave no
stone unturned to deal with the problem of spamming. Court judgments of
this
kind through rigorous anti-spam laws, and vigilant Internet users are
the best
weapons to win the war against spamming. In a nutshell, deterrence is
one thing
which tends to work the best against such malpractices and their
perpetrators.
Spammers, hopefully, will realize that it may be difficult to
track them down,
but it’s not impossible by any means. Bad
email practices and scant regard
for online privacy will come back to haunt the initiators sooner or
later.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10387021-93.html
