

Papa John's faces $250 million spam lawsuit - hornbaker
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/13/technology/mobile/papa-johns/index.html

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joejohnson
If they get fined $250 million, how are they going to be able to pay for their
employees health insurance?

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GuiA
The price of every pizza will increase by $10.

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citricsquid
Speaking of Pizza spam, Domino's in the UK do some sleezy things with their
ordering. After entering your order information and proceeding to the delivery
page you're asked to input your email, name and phone number (so they can
contact you if the driver can't find your address). The form has 2 check
boxes, before May 2012 this stated "Tick the boxes below if you want to
receive marketing material via SMS and Email" however sometime around May 2012
they changed this to state "Tick the boxes if you do not want to receive
marketing material via SMS and Email".

Any customer that has previously used Domino's pizza (probably most people
that order?) has gotten so used to their form that they don't think to re-read
every input. I got caught out by it and it's really really lame that they did
that. Not only are they going against the conventions we all expect (tick to
include, not tick to exclude) they switched it to trick customers!

I wonder if they're breaking similar laws.

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philip1209
I understand the immorality, but is there a basis for illegality? If I wanted
to cause trouble, I would randomize the appearance of the "do not" and maybe
even the syntax.

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DanBC
You can't go too far or the information commissioner will want a word.

Obviously that's hypothetical - the ICO is too busy to go after anyone
implementing your idea.

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woodchuck64
He's going to have no choice but to pass that cost on to his customers.

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beedogs
He could just blame the President again and cut his abused staff's hours some
more.

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saraid216
You got the order backwards. It's cut the hours _then_ blame someone else.

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ww520
SMS spam is worse than email spam since lots of people pay for each message
received.

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bonchibuji
Incoming messages are still charged?

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antsam
I'm waiting to see how they can blame this on employee health insurance.

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richforrester
Between $500 and $1500 per sms? Where's the justice in that?

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tlrobinson
That's nothing compared to the $150,000 or whatever per song downloaded the
RIAA was going for.

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tzs
In both cases where people ended up facing such large fines, the RIAA
repeatedly offered to settle for much much much smaller amounts, typically
around $2-4 per song that the person was sharing.

The defendants decided to reject these offers, even though the MINIMUM
POSSIBLE fine if they lost in court would be much larger than the RIAA was
asking for.

Typical numbers would look something like this. The person shared a couple
thousand songs, and the RIAA asked for maybe $5k. When the person refused, the
RIAA would sue over around 20 of the songs, and the RIAA would have an
airtight case. The best case realistic outcome for the defendant would be for
the jury to award the minimum possible damages: $750/song, so the defendant
would end up owing about $15k, which is about 3 times what they could have
settled for.

That was their best case outcome. In reality, the jury would generally opt for
something between the minimum and maximum, and so they got the big fines.

Then they would appeal. Incredibly, the RIAA would then offer again to settle
for a few thousand (total--not per song). And the defendant would refuse, get
another trial, and get a jury that opted for even higher up on the damage
scale. Oops.

Basically, these defendants were either idiots, or they were taken advantage
of by attorneys of questionable ethical judgement who put their desire to
argue novel dubious copyright theories in court over the interests of their
client.

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jlgreco
Offering several thousand dollars for _"several thousand songs"_ then
ultimately only bringing up a couple dozen is complete crap. It is plain, if
you can see through the legalese, what was going on. The RIAA was wielding the
legal system and an asymmetric power relationship _as a weapon_.

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tzs
You have a person sharing a few thousand songs illegally. The RIAA offers to
settle for a very reasonable amount--only a few dollars a song, which is far
far below what it would normally cost to license a song to make available for
free, unrestricted public redistribution. (And that is the correct license to
compare to, not the $1 license that one purchases to download a song and use
it privately).

If the person does not accept and the RIAA sues, it would make little sense to
sue over all the songs. For each song named, they have to ensure that certain
formalities have been taken care of (such as copyright registration) have been
taken care of for those songs, and make sure the necessary rights have been
assigned to them, and they have to submit into evidence documentation that
proves all of this. They also have to show that each song being shared is
really the song they are suing over (as opposed to a misnamed file of some
other song, for instance).

Why go to all that effort, when suing over a dozen or two songs is sufficient
to put the minimal damages at more than they have already indicated they are
willing to accept to settle?

I don't see how this is using the legal system "as a weapon". It's using it
exactly how it is supposed to be used--someone violates their rights, they
make a very reasonable offer to settle the matter out of court, the person
refuses, and then they take the person to court.

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jlgreco
They, with extensive legal resources, go after individuals, with next to no
legal resources, threatening massive lawsuits for a dozen or so songs, _or_
you can pay them several thousand dollars, "for many many songs", to make them
go away.

If you don't see the problem there by yourself, I don't think I can help you.
It should be self-evident.

Following the _letter_ of the law does not absolve you from ethical
wrongdoing.

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tptacek
It is hard to see how this comment wouldn't be arguing that the RIAA should,
if their concerns are bona fide, be suing for _millions_ of dollars instead of
single-digit thousands. All the empirical evidence available to you suggests
that when the RIAA takes someone to court who refuses to settle, they are
likely to be awarded 5- and 6- figure judgements. Set against that fact, it is
very hard to argue that they are being malicious when they offer a $5000
settlement.

If you are mugged in the city of Chicago, or if your lawnmower is stolen from
your garage, or your house broken into, the chances are very good that the
party who harmed you has far fewer resources than you do; in fact, your
economic relationship to your assailant is likely to be comparably dramatic to
the relationship between the RIAA and a defendant (it is probably more likely
that you could start a multimillion dollar business this year than that a
mugger will find a stable, successful career _ever_ ). And yet our system of
law does not then say, "you are so much better off than the person who stole
from your house, you should just shake it off". That's because the resources
at your disposal do not alter your fundamental rights.

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jlgreco
If they are interested in operating _ethically_ (I am not suggesting they are
doing anything illegal or even illogical) any proposed settlement should be
for what they are actually realistically going to sue for.

Offering a settlement for thousands of books, when in reality the settlement
is to avoid only a lawsuit for dozens of books, and then turning around and
saying how reasonable they are being, just reeks of shit. Perfectly legal I am
sure, perfectly logical, a sound business decision... ...but let's just say it
reminds me why I hate lawyers.

That the only rational decision a defendant/potential-defendant can make in
this situation is not avoid at all costs a trial just drives home to me that
any loyalty I feel towards the system is misplaced... but that is a separate
issue.

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__david__
I don't understand how franchises work. If there were a couple franchises that
were responsible for sending the texts, why is the main Papa John's company
getting sued, and not the responsible franchises?

Especially after the main company seemingly told all the franchises to knock
it off when they noticed...

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lotu
The little franchises that actually did this don't have millions of dollars
which limit the maximum payout of the lawsuit.

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__david__
So this is just a lawyer driven money grab instead of something actually
worthwhile?

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saraid216
The point of making a money grab is to disincentivize a repeat performance. In
this case, it's to get Papa John's to be stricter with their franchisees.

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webfuel
I wonder if some of those 500,000 messages were relationship or transactional
in nature since the FCC does not ban those [1]

1\. [http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-
em...](http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email)

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namank
I think it takes the same skill to discover cases with potential for class
action suits as it does to discover and flesh out great ideas.

Think I should start networking with these kind of lawyers and use their skill
to develop my ideas.

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circa
Better ingredients, better spam, Papa Johns!

