This is easily the largest spam award in Canadian legal history and it places the spotlight on Bill C-28, the government’s anti-spam legislation that includes a private right of action that would facilitate Canadian spam lawsuits. In fact, the court referenced the Canadian bill as evidence that the damage award was not out-of-line with those envisioned for Canadian law, since the bill includes damages that can run up to $10 million per violation. The ability to sue Canadian-based spammers in Canadian courts has long been identified as a necessary tool to combat spam, since – as the Facebook case demonstrates – organizations currently rely on U.S. law in order to target those engaged in spamming activities in Canada.
Wait, what?! “The damage award was not out-of-line with those envisioned under Canadian law”.
There’s no way a single spammer made a billion dollars, nor is there any way that he did a billion dollars worth of “damage” to facebook.
spam
well, well, well… a billon $ spam award.
1:the web: privacy, property and freedom of information.
2:the politics: the evolution of property from monopoly to interest (rights to interest)
3: the economy: the new corporate-interest (reg. capture) in action
SO.. we the radical types are betting that spam gets to be a privileged-preserve of the elite, NOT a personal liberty,freedom or prerogative.
with VERY selective entry requirements, both public, regulatory and ownership.
The web was used to squash radical politics, open markets, and now is starting in on biz competition…. or personal freedoms?
packrat
Good. Not that I have any illusion that this will make spam go away, but it will hopefully reduce the amount some.
Spam puts my brain on hold
Sorry, as soon as you mention spam, my knee jerk response is to gather a mob with pitchforks and torches. Too harsh?
a billion though? I mean…Ouch!
could i make a living at this?
If a spam bill were to pass with a private right of action clause, I wonder if I could make a living a suing spammers. I do get a lot of spam. My e-mail address is all over the Internet for spammers to scrape and has been there for 20+ years.
I’d have to continue to keep enough cases in the pipeline to pay my bills of course, but if I could make a living at it, I could conceivably put 40 hours a week towards it.
I hate spam as much as the next guy. But does this spammer have a Billion$$ to pay up? If not, what is the point in such a huge amount?
…
Disproportionate!!! Due to my line of work, I get a TON of spam 100-300 per day, primarily from lists that I must be on. A VAST majority of that is v1agra and/or male enhancement products, with a smattering of Russian mail-order bride spam. There must be a lot of insecure men out there. Spam is a fact of life, that being said, properly built mail filters limit the amount of time I must spend dealing with them…only minutes a day. Only about 1 out of every 1000 (Or more) spam is smart enough to get through my filtering and in to my inbox. That being said…I do hate spam, but think this may have been substantially over the top. As long as spam remains appropriate for “general” audiences, I think huge law suits are overkill. Take the good with the bad. If it reverts back to the old days of spam and porn in my mail, then I might have some serious issues with it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s no different than getting flyers in the mail. It’s yet another US-style racket for sueing people. The US culture LOVES to sue people…it’s the new-age get-rich-quick scheme.
@IamME
Spam filters can use up a lot of CPU, and take time to clean up. If it was someone just complaining about their email box, then no they should not get this much. But companies that actually need to deal with it by having the filters, making sure they are working, and then cleaning up after the spammer that make it through? Yeah I can see them wanting to sue for that much. Is a billion a bit much? Maybe.
so what does this mean for the market research companies that endlessly call people who are not interested wouldn’t this be classified as Spam also?
Nice
I honestly can’t wait I plan to launch lawsuits like crazy as soon as this law comes in. I will sue Facebook Microsoft, any company with the money to pay for every spam that hits my email box. I love the idea of this law. 10 million a pop. Sweet!
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