Gasp!
Having … Trouble … Breathing.
Massive … Chest … Pain.
Why the heart attack? Because Unspam and its CEO Matthew Prince are using the American legal system for another questionable project. But this one may be good for the Internet and seemingly doesn’t give legitimate marketers the shaft.
Prince’s anti-spam organization, Project Honey Pot, filed a lawsuit last week in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, VA under the state’s anti-spam law and the federal Can-Spam Act against a series of “John Does.” The complaint alleges they illegally sent millions of unsolicited e-mails to spam traps maintained by the organization.
The complaint also alleges that in order to hit the traps, the John Does must have either harvested the addresses or bought them from someone who did. It further alleges the John Does sent 600 million e-mails to Project Honey Pot addresses and seeks damages of up to $1 billion.
There are some gaping holes, however. For example, Project Honey Pot—which bills itself as having been created by Unspam—should have a tough time proving it’s an Internet service provider, as required by the Can-Spam Act of plaintiffs who aren’t either the Federal Trade Commission or a state attorney general.
It’ll also be tough to prove any damages. Moreover, harvesting addresses isn’t illegal under Can Spam, just an aggravating factor to be considered during the determination of damages.
Oh, well. The idea of tying up courts with zany legal schemes hasn’t stopped Unspam so far.
In any case, Project Honey Pot aims to find the identities of the people who sent the spam through legal discovery and make them pay.
Sounds perfectly noble so far. But wait a minute: This is Unspam. Shouldn’t there be a government-maintained registry or database and astronomically high fees involved in this effort somewhere? And where’s the part that destroys a perfectly legitimate industry?
After all, this is a scheme by the company that lobbied for and runs the tragically misnamed child-do-not-e-mail registries in Utah and Michigan.
Unspam is also behind Utah’s recently enacted Trademark Protection Act, a law that bars companies from bidding on keyword advertising triggered by other companies’ trademarked names—that is, as long as the trademarks are registered with the state for a fee.
Are we truly to believe that Unspam is behind an effort to punish cyber thugs and there are no government-enforced, industry-destroying, money-making schemes attached?
Naaahhhh. Can’t be. Heck, this is Unspam. There’s no way legitimate marketers are going to come out of this unscathed. There must be a resource-draining registry in there somewhere.
No?
Then the only explanation can be body snatchers. Aliens body snatched the staff at Unspam and replaced them with beings who have no idea their main mission is to cause millions of dollars of private-sector money to be wasted fighting misguided laws that accomplish little more than destroy perfectly legitimate businesses.
Yeah, that’s it. Body snatchers.
