MySpace has informed us that on Monday it was awarded $234 million in statutory damages, the largest anti-spam sum ever made under CAN-SPAM and apparently ever under any law. This is also the first time damages have been awarded under the California Anti Phishing Act.
The case was won against two notorious spammers, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines. Wallace earned the nicknames “Spamford” and “spam king” for having sent as many as 30 million spam messages per day during a period of time in the 1990s.
Wallace and Rines spammed MySpace by creating their own accounts and stealing the passwords of others. They then went on to mass message users an estimated 735,925 times. Each of these messages warrant up to $300 in damages under the 2003 federal anti-spam law CAN-SPAN because they were conducted “willingly and knowingly”.
The case was brought against Wallace on March 23, 2007 and subsequently against Rines on September 25, 2007 when it was learned the two were working together.
MySpace has yet to collect the actual award and may very well not ever do so; it appears as though they don’t even know where two spammers are (the judgment was made in their absence after they failed to show up to court). Even so, they are charging ahead with another pending case against Scott Richter who also used stolen passwords to spam MySpace users.
The News Corporation-owned social network issued has issued the following public statement:
MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site. The Federal District Court in Los Angeles awarded MySpace $233,777,500 under the federal CAN-SPAM Act and $1,500,000 under the California anti-phishing statute. User engagement is up 32 percent year over year while spam is significantly decreasing, proving efforts like this are working. We thank the court for serving justice upon defendants Wallace and Rines and we remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members.
We’re told that the second largest award under CAN-SPAM was much a lower figure: $2.9 million, paid by ValueClick to the FTC in just March of this year.
Additional details for this MySpace case can be found through the Associated Press.
Below is the court order:
In other news:
TechCrunch Wins Shortest Blog Post in History
Wow, I didn’t know there was that much money in avoiding spam. So far I thought only spammers and spam filter companies (sometimes the same ?) and butchers were cashing in on it.
Peter
follow me @ http://twitter.com/peterurban
@Ryan
That was a good one :)!
Seriously though…
How ironic is this? Myspace, the site/business that was started by a group of guys with a deep history of spam and investment fraud — wins a +$200 million dollar ANTI-SPAM case? *shakes head*
“MySpace was actually created by executives whose backgrounds are anchored in spam and mass marketing, and who are tied to investment scandals.” - Trent Lapinski (google for the document, good read)
Ouch…hope all the spammers will learn from this, you culprits.
@Peter: When will Doorbell be launched?
Oh yea… it is indeed a lucrative market !!
These guys (Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines) are making a bundle
Not so sure if they topped the fine, though
Shai
Am a spam ( UGC SPAM that is ) fighter myself, can follow my posts on http://www.con-trust.com/blog
I hate spammers, I hope they get the death penalty after they pay up.
Jim
Now, is this judgment so large and harsh because of the fact that hacked accounts were used, or that they were sending messages to other users? I’m confused on what can be considered spam on an application that encourages other users to send messages to other users without specific intent. When you have a big flashy button that says “Message ME!” I would assume anything goes.
Okay, what happens next, the two spammers didn’t show up and I guess they did not leave an address where MySpace can send their invoice to, right? Is it now up to News Corp. how to find the guys and demand payment? What if they are caught and cannot pay the fine? Are they not convicted to serve some time in prison?
It would be cool, if News Corp would announce that they pay a bonus for any tips that will lead to the capture of the two. Let’s say a million bucks. Every head hunter in the country will be looking for them and their spammer friends might think about to sell out and betray their former “buddies”. Money drives those folks, not ethics.
Even if the guys do not even have a million bucks to pay the fine (and News Corp the bonus), News Corp would not go broke paying the bonus regardless if they get it back from the spammers or not. It would be great PR, get their names on TV and Newspapers and the Web everywhere and people would applaud them for doing this.
It also sends out a message to spammers that will make feel cold fear going down their spine and shiver one or the other might re-considers what he is doing and decides that the money is not worth the risk having an angry mob hunting you down no matter where you go.
Nice numbers, but rather symbolic from the looks of it. Doubt they’ll get a dime from this.
Spammers, please, send me some spams, $300 each.
Where are u?
News corp, please, I will become your bounty hunter to collect the heads of those spammers. 1 million, half advance, half delivery.
R u listening?
Also, News Corp, it was not MySpace getting the spams, but the users of MySpace getting the spams.
The award of $234 million in statutory damages should go to those users who got damaged, right? MySpace was responsible for protecting those users from spamming, right? And MySpace did not do it well.
News Corp/MySpace, don’t you think you have obligation to pay those users in advance?
so it is time to sue myspace yourself for getting spams thru them.
sue myspace now~ since they got their money now.
I like your idea Carsten. According to the Sanford Wallace wikipedia page…
“As of March 2007, he is currently a DJ in Las Vegas, making weekly appearances at OPM nightclub (name changed to ‘Poetry Nightclub’ October 5, 2007) in Caesars Palace Forum Shops on the Las Vegas Strip under the name DJ Master Web.”
Might be a good place to start?
Lol, at least we know Scott won’t get away. He runs cpaempire.com.
And what happens with the money? I heard rumors that they gonna split the money between MySpace members. Every unique MySpace member gets some money. So 234 million usd / 100,000 real-unique-members… (just signed up for a myspace account)
That’s great news, finally the spam monsters are getting a taste of their own medicine.
What’s the point of this article if myspace aren’t even going to collect the money? The spammers get away scott free yet again
IAW Andy Wong and Ryan Merket…
Also, yes…
This is very funny coming from myspace considering their “humble” spam and junk mail beginnings.
Yeah, they are hypocrites considering they themselves went over to friendster.com to spam the users all to get the friendster.com users to come over to myspace.com.
MySpace should quit acting like such a victim. Instead, they should do a better job about protecting their users.