
Man quits job, makes living suing e-mail spammers - iwh
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Man-quits-job-makes-living-apf-4229922732.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=
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ajays
You have to understand: Spam is about economics. It's not about morals or
freedoms or anything else. It's purely about money.

If the amount it costs a spammer to spam is strictly less than his earnings
from spam + profit, then he'll continue spamming. Every time Balsam wins a
judgment, it goes in the cost column, thereby eating into the spammers'
profits. Enough such judgments, and their profits evaporate, prompting a
search for a new means of livelihood.

While I may or may not agree with his methods, his actions are taking money
out of the pockets of spammers; which, given their model, can only be a good
thing.

If more people did what he's doing, we would definitely see much lesser spam.

~~~
ghshephard
If Balsam accepted donations, I'd be sending him $25 right now, hopefully
joined by 10 million other people.

~~~
lukeschlather
It doesn't seem like he needs donations. It sounds like he needs lawyers and
paralegals to expand to a proper firm, and it would be self-sustaining.

~~~
noahth
don't you think that a bunch of donations might be useful for this? call it
crowdsourced vc if that makes it easier to understand.

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A1kmm
If the companies he is suing genuinely are spamming people they have no prior
business relationship with, he is doing a service. But how often do people get
truly unsolicited spam from overtly US based companies? All spam I've looked
at recently has no connection to a business with any marketing model other
than spam - generally sent through an open relay or compromised computer, with
links with nameservers and HTTP hosted on a compromised system, and/or in
China or a former USSR country. Unless you happen to know a lawyer in one of
those countries, it would be difficult and prohibitively expensive to unmask
their identities and still make a profit suing them.

I suspect, however, it is not genuinely unsolicited mail that he mainly goes
after, but rather, solicited commercial mail which potentially fails to meet
the requirements under California law. Suing companies not based in California
who someone has initiated a relationship with on a technicality of Californian
anti-spam law is, in my opinion, unfair - the companies had no say in the
Californian law, and it is simply wrong to try to require every Internet
business to comply with the laws of every jurisdiction in the world.

~~~
rhizome
As with any business in the world of capitalism, the spammers are free not to
send their email to people in California. The difficulty of this is
immaterial, companies have to deal with the uneven landscape of state laws all
the time.

I would support a regulatory regime that would require all commercial email to
include the provenance of the sender's relationship to the recipient, whether
first-party or third, whether the recipient's address is rented, sold,
acquired via corporate acquisition, or otherwise. Also, companies would be
required to retain records of recipient acquision, such that if a recipient
actually _did_ create an account or other kind of direct relationship that the
sender should be able to supply proof of the existing relationship. This could
be implemented as simply as retaining all outgoing registration emails.

~~~
sbov
> As with any business in the world of capitalism, the spammers are free not
> to send their email to people in California. The difficulty of this is
> immaterial, companies have to deal with the uneven landscape of state laws
> all the time.

Note that this isn't always true. For instance, credit card companies in the
US can ignore usury laws of the state their customers reside in. Rather, the
laws of the company's state are applied.

~~~
rhizome
Generalizations always break down easily, but you know what I meant.

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bediger
Two things wrong with this article:

1\. By not using the harshest terms possible to denounce spam and the thieves
who spam, this article tends to promote spam as something we all "just hate"
but have to get along with.

2\. This article does not note that the Man who Quit his Job is actually
something of a meta-parasite, as he does no economic activity. However, Balsam
is a parasite on thieves who themselves produce no economic output, so he is
indeed a meta-parasite. It would be worth connecting this with research in
artificial life and with research in biology where parasites-of-parasites have
evolved.

~~~
fizx
> This article does not note that the Man who Quit his Job is actually
> something of a meta-parasite, as he does no economic activity. However,
> Balsam is a parasite on thieves who themselves produce no economic output,
> so he is indeed a meta-parasite.

That argument leads police to being meta-parasites as well. However marginal
Dan's efforts are, there is value in making negative activities more
expensive.

~~~
bediger
I make no judgments about the moral worth of parasites. After all, RNA
parasites may have driven the jump to cellular life.

I just want to see the similarity between Balsam and both natural and
artificial life hyperparasites noted and explored.

~~~
Helianthus16
immune systems.

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grav1tas
It's an interesting approach to spam. It's kind of like the way people dealt
with the tobacco industry in the 90's (and maybe still now? I haven't kept up)
by just suing them for damages, false advertising, misleading stuff, or
whatever else.

I think that this is one of those less heard of positives of having a
litigious society. Sometimes we can curb nasty behavior by making rules that
allow people to sue violators into submission.

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bretpiatt
IANAL but it sure seems by not fighting these early individual smaller cases
the spammers are setting themselves up for a huge class action case in the
future by establishing precedence.

Any lawyers here? How do no contest rulings in small claims apply to setting
precedence?

It looks like a fair amount of the time he's settling out of court -- I also
wonder if any of the companies settling have deep enough pockets to be worth
organizing a large class?

~~~
spolsky
IANAL either, but small claims court is a "court of no record" and does not
establish precedent.

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sirwitti
first i thought, thank god somebody is doing this. but a second later: it´s
not clear who the companies are he´s suing. i don´t think he sues the guys
behind the big botnets which cause most spam.

so perhaps some startups are sued because for some reason they sent emails to
the wrong person.

i´m not sure whether this is good or bad...

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iwwr
Considering he is suing many small companies, who prefer to settle rather than
pay for a lawsuit, it's not clear he is doing a net service. A serial
litigator has an economy of scale in terms of lawsuits. All but the largest
companies can afford to keep lawyers on staff or to hire them regularly.

So as much as I'd like to applaud people who fight spam, I think this guy just
found a legal niche to mess with small and legitimate companies. It's like the
crippled person going around suing shops for lack of legal amenities (ramps,
ramp angles, parking, toilets).

~~~
VengefulCynic
Except instead of suing for a lack of legal amenities, he's suing for
spamming. Or, to put it differently, he's not suing them for not doing
something they should, he's suing them for doing something they shouldn't.

It's much more like suing mom-and-pop stores for dumping trash in the back
alley.

