$234M default judgment against spammers

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MySpace has won a 234 million dollar judgment against Walt Rines and Sanford Wallace.
“MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site,” [MySpace Chief Privacy officer] Nigam said in a statement. “We remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members.”
These are two of the spammers responsible for me learning to read headers and report spam. Both of them have previous judgments against them. Wallace sued AOL to force AOL to accept his mail. Eventually the judge ruled against Cyber Promotions and Wallace.

The Court declares that Cyber Promotions, Inc. does not have a right under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or under the Constitutions of Pennsylvania and Virginia to send unsolicited e-mail advertisements over the Internet to members of American Online, Inc. and, as a result, American Online, Inc. may block any attempts by Cyber Promotions, Inc. to do so.

This case was one of the first to declare that ISPs could block mail and is still cited in spam related cases. (Text of Ruling, AOL page on Cyber Promotions Case)
Walt Rines was less involved in lawsuits with ISPs, but after the demise of Cyber Promotions and his trade group (IEMMC), moved on to infecting PCs with spamware. The FTC put an end to that.
MySpace has now put an end to their account stealing and spamming through social networking sites.
I wonder what way they will discover to dump unwanted advertising on people next?

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  • “I wonder what way they will discover to dump unwanted advertising on people next?”
    Ah, this one is too easy… mobile phone spam will be the next plague. As the inbox goes mobile, so will the spam and soon SMS through services like Twitter I expect to be come victims.
    Stefan

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