Top E-Mail Providers Sue
Spammers Under New Law
Wed
Mar 10, 2004 05:21 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- Four of the nation's largest e-mail providers said on
Wednesday they had sued hundreds of online marketers under
a new federal law that outlaws the worst kinds of "spam"
e-mail.
The lawsuits -- filed by
EarthLink Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Time
Warner Inc. unit America Online -- mark the first time the
law has been tested since it took effect in January.
Six suits were filed in
federal courts in California, Georgia, Virginia and
Washington state. They claim the defendants obscured their
identities and used other deceptive tactics to send out
hundreds of millions of pitches for get-rich-quick
schemes, pornography and other types of spam.
Company officials said
the CAN-SPAM Act, passed last year, makes their fight
easier by imposing national standards and increasing
penalties to force spammers out of business.
"The lawsuits we
file now have some added punch they didn't have
before," AOL General Counsel Randall Boe told
reporters at a news conference.
Spam accounted for 62
percent of all e-mail in February 2004, up from 50 percent
six months earlier, according to anti-spam company
Brightmail Inc. Internet providers say the unwanted
traffic drives up bandwidth costs and frustrates
customers.
The lawsuits filed
Tuesday night invoke a wide array of federal and state
laws, from trespass to trademark and organized crime
statutes. But much of the behavior in question is
specifically outlawed by CAN-SPAM.
Defendants falsified
return addresses, routed their messages through other
computers to cover their tracks, and used misleading
subject lines like "important message from AOL,"
the lawsuits charged.
One group of defendants
in Canada sent nearly 100 million messages to Yahoo
customers in January alone and resold the e-mail addresses
of those who asked to be taken off their mailing list,
according to one lawsuit.
Eric Head, Matthew Head
and Barry Head of Kitchener, Ontario, also tried to
circumvent spam filters by including random, invisible
text in each message, the lawsuit alleged.
The defendants could not
be reached for comment.
"It's a myth that
somehow you can evade the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts
by putting a computer offshore," said Microsoft
Deputy General Counsel Nancy Anderson. "Most of the
individuals involved in spam reside in the United
States."
The civil suits filed by
the e-mail providers seek unspecified amounts of damages
and penalties. Violators could also face jail time under
the new law, though government prosecutors have filed no
criminal charges yet.
"Every major case
we've filed, we've definitely had law-enforcement interest
and generally followed up, so I expect something will come
out of this as well," said EarthLink Chief Privacy
Officer Les Seagraves.
The Federal Trade
Commission has several spam cases in the works, a
spokeswoman said.
An FBI spokesman did not
return a call seeking comment.
One privacy activist
noted that Internet providers had ensured that the new law
would prevent individual lawsuits, so their own marketing
efforts wouldn't get them in hot water.
"Microsoft, AOL and
Yahoo all send out vast quantities of e-mail, and they
don't want to get sued," said Jason Catlett,
president of the Junkbusters Corp. consulting firm.
"There could have been thousands of litigants against
spammers, not four."
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