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Spammer prosecuted in New Zealand
Today (well, actually tomorrow, but only because New Zealand is on the other side of the date line) the NZ Department of Internal Affairs added a 3rd statement of claim against Brendan Battles and IMG Marketing. This third claim brings the total possible fines to $2.1 million.
Brendan is a long term spammer, who used to be in the US and moved to New Zealand in 2006. His presence in Auckland was noticed by Computerworld when a number of editors and staffers were spammed. When contacted by the paper, Brendan denied being involved in the spam and denied being the same Brendan Battles.
New Zealand anti-spam law went into effect in September 2007. The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 prohibits any unsolicited commercial email messages with a New Zealand connection, defined as messages sent to, from or within New Zealand. It also prohibits address harvesting.
The Internal Affairs department also appears to be investigating companies that purchased services from Brendan Battles.
Internal Affairs was still investigating businesses that had bought and used IMG databases some of which had been fined for breaching the act. Senior investigator Toni Demetriou said the sender of any commercial electronic message must have the consent of the recipient before the message was sent. stuff.co.nz
Poor Brandon. He moves to a country with no anti-spam law and then a year later they enact a law prohibiting any unsolicited email marketing.
Good.
I’ve spent
Just a minor point, but when Battles moved to NZ, they had yet to pass their current anti-spam law. He was quoted in the press at the time as claiming spam wasn’t illegal in NZ.
…I’ve spent the past five minutes wondering what it means that a country is on the other side of the date line. Not that I don’t understand what you mean. 🙂
(I clicked send by accident because I wanted to check if it could actually have been five minutes. Teaches me for being such a pedant.)