CategoryLegal

August 6, 2009

9th circuit ruling in Gordon v. Virtumundo

By laura

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06August

The 9th circuit court of appeals issued their ruling in Gordon v. Virtumundo today. The ruling was heavily in favor of Virtumundo. I have not had time to read the ruling, but both Venkat and Mickey have posts on the case and the ruling. This is another solid blow against anti-spammers suing spammers under state laws and CAN SPAM. The problem is that many of the cases are brought by people, and...

July 31, 2009

Spam judgment not covered by insurance

By laura

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31July

Earlier this month a judge ruled that two insurance policies held by Scott Richter’s Media Breakaway were not liable to pay $6M in damages awarded in a previous case. Myspace initially sued Media Breakaway in 2007 for allegedly using phished Myspace accounts to send emails advertising Media Breakaway websites. In summer 2008 and arbiter ruled in favor of Myspace and against Media Breakaway...

July 7, 2009

Aiding and abetting violations of CAN SPAM

By laura

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07July

The US DOJ announced today the guilty plea of David Patton. Patton was charged with “aiding and abetting violations of the CAN SPAM act. Software written by Patton’s company provided the ability to modify email headers and use open proxies to disguise the source of the email. The Ralsky convictions are, to the best of my knowledge, the first criminal prosecution for CAN SPAM...

June 23, 2009

Guilty of violating CAN SPAM

By laura

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23June

Al Ralsky has long been known as “the king of spam.” He has a long history of spamming, suing ISPs who block his mail and refusing to provide him with connectivity. He was profiled in the Detroit Free Press based on his spamming activity more than 5 years ago. He also has a history of convictions for fraud and other related crimes. Yesterday, he and some of his family and business...

June 1, 2009

CAN SPAM Checklist

By laura

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01June

Mickey has done a comprehensive checklist looking at all the things you should do to comply with CAN SPAM.

May 20, 2009

CAN SPAM pre-emption in the courts

By laura

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20May

Ethan Ackerman has a summary of recent cases where judges are splitting over rulings on CAN SPAM pre-emption.

May 12, 2009

Update on Canadian Law

By laura

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12May

Neil Schwartzman has an update on the status of the Canadian anti-spam law currently working its way through the legislature.

April 6, 2009

Privacy policies in court

By laura

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06April

Venkat has an analysis of a case where an individual provided a unique address to a vendor and that vendor released the address in violation of the posted privacy policy. The federal court rejected the suit due to the failure of the plaintiff to provide evidence of harm. I posted last week about privacy policies and how often they are intentionally or unintentionally violated and when email...

March 31, 2009

Supreme Court declines to hear anti-spam case

By laura

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31March

Yesterday the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal for Virginia v. Jaynes. This means that the Virginia state supreme court ruling overturning the Virginia anti-spam law currently stands. Jeremy Jaynes was a well known spammer who went under the name Gavin Stubberfield. He was pretty famous in anti-spammer circles for sending horse porn spam. In 2003 he was arrested under the Virginia state...

March 11, 2009

More on e360 v. Choicepoint

By laura

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11March

Venkat has a longer analysis of the e360 v. Choicepoint case I commented on last week. He’s predicting a quick finding in favor of Choicepoint. I’m not a legal expert by any means, but I can see both sides of this particular case. And I am not sure there is good case law to guide the judge. Definitely one to keep an eye on.