Re: In re: Spam and Gate Crashing

On Tue, 17 Oct 1995, Steven Prevaux wrote:
>
> I just received an inquiry from a university out west where a
> faculty member is the list owner of a list in his academic
> discipline. Anyone can subscribe to the list. The list has
> about 3000 members. Recently the list was "spammed". The
> spammer crashed the list (hooked up without subscribing by
> using a SLIPconnection), and posted his spam to the list.
> In this case the posting contained a message, roughly 16
> typewritten pages, that amounted to a commercial advertisement.
> The identity of the spammer is known.
>
> What legal remedies, sounding in copyright or elsewhere, do
> the system administrator or list owner have available?

Assuming the spammer did not include any prior writings from the list or its administrator/owner in his 'advertisement', copyright is a dead end as far as their legal remedies go.

They might be able to sustain a cause of action for conversion in the form of 'theft of services' or the like, or in contract for the value of the ad (presumably quantum meruit, since I doubt they have an established rate schedule for authorized ads). Whether a judgment for any significant amount could be obtained, is a whole different question.

> Assuming that the "spammer" is instructed to cease and desist
> and yet persists what course of action would you recommend?

The method normally used (and usually effective) to make such a spammer cease and desist is a sharp complaint, including the spam post (complete with headers), to 'postmaster[_at_]spam.site'. That will probably result in a cessation of spams from that spammer @ that site (indeed, it is likely to result in a cessation of *all* activity by spammer @ that site). S/He may pop up again from another site, but will probably run out of sites before all too long.

Good luck on your efforts to purify the net.

Regards,
John
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