One beeelion dollars

One Beeelion dollarsFacebook won another round in their court case against a Canadian spammer last week. Their $873,000,000 judgment was upheld by the Quebec Superior court. At today’s exchange rates, the judgment translates to over CDN$1,000,000,000.
In fine spammer style the defendant, Adam Guerbuez, is flouting the judgment and claiming he won’t pay a dime. In fact, he’s already filed bankruptcy and is reported to have transferred a number of assets to family members. From what I’m hearing from some of my Canadian colleagues the courts up there take a very dim view of his behaviour. Like many things that go through the court system, though, it is unlikely that the process will be rapid.
This is one of the largest, if not the largest, fines levied for violations of the CAN SPAM act. I don’t think Facebook will see much, if anything, of the money. But, hey, maybe the Canadian courts will throw this spammer in jail for flouting their ruling.

The hard sell works
Mail that looks like spam

Related Posts

CAN SPAM compliance information in images

A fellow delivery specialist sent me a question this morning.

Read More

You might be a spammer if…

… the best thing you have to say about your email practices is “They’re CAN SPAM compliant.”
… text to .gif is a vital part of your email generation process
… you have to mail from multiple ESPs in order to get good delivery
Please contribute your own in the comments.
I’d also like to thank Al for guest posting 2 days this week. Thanks, Al!

Read More

Defining spam

This is a post I’ve put off for a while as the definition of spam is a sticky subject. There are online fora where the definition of spam has been debated for more than 10 years, and if there isn’t a working definition after all that time, it’s unlikely there will ever be a definition the participants can agree on.
This came up again recently because one of the comments on my “Reputation is not permission” post took me to task for daring to call the mail “spam.” I’m going to assert here that the mail was unsolicited bulk email. I did not ask for it and I know at least 4 other people that received it.
The commenter, and a few marketers, argue that if the mail is sent without any forgery and the mail contains an opt-out link then it is not spam. It is a definition I have only seen folks who want to send unsolicited bulk email use, however. What they are really arguing is their mail isn’t spam because they provide a valid return address and a way to opt-out. Few people actually agree with this definition.
Here are 10 of the many definitions of spam that I’ve seen.

Read More