Anti-Spammer Claims Court Victory

A Maryland anti-spam activist accused of harassment by an alleged spammer claims victory.

by Brian Morrissey of internetnews.com [April 9, 2003]

Maryland anti-spam activist Francis Uy claimed victory in his quest to out a Maryland man he says is responsible for huge quantities of unsolicited bulk e-mail, after winning a court case related to his posting of the man's personal information on his website.

George Moore, a Linthicum, Md., resident, accused Uy of harassment for posting his personal information, including mailing address and phone number, on Uy's anti-spam site. Moore claimed spam vigilantes signed him up for dozens of magazines and some called to leave threatening messages.

Anne Arundel District Court judge Robert Wilcox sided with Uy, saying that Moore was not directly threatened by the posting of public information.

Moore was unavailable for comment.

With the deluge of spam continuing unabated, many Net surfers have taken matters into their own hands, posting the personal information of unsolicited bulk e-mailers on websites devoted to known spammers.

Moore, in particular, has drawn the ire of spam activists through his company, Maryland Internet Marketing, which sells a variety of gastrointestinal and diet aids, including Fat-N-Emy and Extreme Colon Cleanser.

In January, one of Moore's sites, salesscape.com, had personal information readily available on insecure pages, as reported by internetnews.com.

Uy's site includes a variety of information on Moore, including his home address, known e-mail addresses, and photo. The site has links to stories in publications like San Jose Mercury News and Newsweek identifying Moore as a spammer, as well as links to other anti-spam sites. One site, Spamhaus.org, is a depository of the identities of dozens of known spammers, including Moore. Spamhaus.org scours public records to find and post a plethora of personal information, including property records for his house.

On a Slashdot posting, Uy crowed about his victory, claiming Moore was suffering for his spamming.

"I don't encourage harassment against you, and I don't need to," Uy wrote. "The facts speak quite loudly enough. Your best option is to crawl back under a rock and suck it up, or move to some state other than the one I live in."

Enforcing the cyberlaw
Spam has a long history of vigilantism, because people have felt that technological and legal solutions to the spam dilemma were inadequate. Blacklists were one of the earliest defenses against spam, with some e-mail marketers complaining that there was little recourse to being accidentally placed on a list.

Despite widespread attention, spam has continued to grow to the point where some have feared it will overwhelm the effectiveness of e-mail. Jupiter Research, which is owned by this site's parent company, expects e-mail users to receive 3,900 spam e-mails per year by 2007.

Uy's site urges Internet users fed up with spam to seek relief under Maryland's anti-spam laws, which allow consumers to sue marketers for $500 for sending them unsolicited commercial e-mail. Thirty states have some kind of anti-spam law on the books, according to Spamlaws.com.

Some anti-spam activists have used the legal avenues now available. Dan Balsam, a Santa Monica-based anti-spam activist, filed a lawsuit against Moore in December 2002. Last week, anti-spam company Habeas filed its first lawsuits under its plan to target spammers with copyright and trademark law.

The first suit was filed against online mortgage service Avalend and its parent company InterMark Media, alleging the company infringed on Habeas' trademark by using Habeas' haiku in their bulk e-mails to assure delivery. The second lawsuit, alleging breach of contract, was filed against two individuals, Dale Heller and Stan Stuchinski, alleging they conspired to send spam under Habeas' sender-warranted e-mail seal. ClickBank and its parent company Keynetics are named in the suit for running Stuchinski's affiliate program.

We have two more lawsuits
Habeas was founded last August with a novel approach to fighting the spam epidemic. Habeas includes a copyrighted haiku poem, known as a warrant mark, in e-mail headers. e-mailers must agree to abide by Habeas' e-mail rules to send out mailing with the Habeas warrant. Those violating the warrant are liable to prosecution for violating stringent intellectual property laws.

A number of spam filters have incorporated Habeas into their systems, including Spam Assassin, Mail Filters, Mail Shell, and I Hate Spam. The company says 300 million e-mail addresses worldwide use the system.

Both lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court in California. Defendants in both lawsuits said they have done nothing wrong, professing not to know what Habeas is.

The first suit was filed against online mortgage service Avalend and its parent company InterMark Media, alleging the company infringed on Habeas' trademark by using Habeas' haiku in their bulk e-mails to assure delivery. The second lawsuit, alleging breach of contract, was filed against two individuals, Dale Heller and Stan Stuchinski, alleging they conspired to send spam under Habeas' sender-warranted e-mail seal. ClickBank and its parent company Keynetics are named in the suit for running Stuchinski's affiliate program.

Mike Krongel, InterMark's president, said InterMark does not engage in spam, although it is the subject of a spam-related suit in Utah, where it is accused of violating the state's requirement that commercial bulk e-mail include "ADV" in the subject line.

While Habeas' suit describes a conspiracy, Stuchinski paints a more innocuous picture. He said Dale Heller bought "Secrets of the Big Dogs" about a month ago, and soon after sent him an e-mail to become part of Stuchinski's affiliate-marketing program through his company BigDogSecrets.com. Stuchinski said he has thousands of affiliates in over 100 countries. The affiliates market the Big Dog Secrets e-book in a variety of ways, with unsolicited bulk e-mail off limits, according to Stuchinski.

"I have never met with Mr. Heller or communicated with him by e-mail or phone," he said. "As far as what he does via his marketing, I have no clue."

Clickbank's role in the suit also bewildered Stuchinski, since the company only handles the online-payment system for the e-book. Habeas named Clickbank and Keynetics as co-defendants, saying they acted as middleman by running the affiliate program for Stuchinski.

"They're all benefiting from the infringement of our trademark, so they're all culpable" Mitchell said. "Affiliate spam is one of the biggest producers of the spam that eating up the Internet now."

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