Using the UK implementation of European anti-spam laws, a man won £750 in compensation from a UK firm after receiving a single spam email. Edinburgh's Sheriff Court ordered Transcom Internet Services to pay a total of £1,369 including costs to 30 year-old Gordon Dick. He has now decided to set up Scotchspam.com to help other internet users bring spammers to court: "If you are fed up with increasing amounts of spam email in your mailbox then make a legal claim now and make the spammers pay for their actions. The courts are sensitive to putting right these misdemeanours and the small claims procedures are ideally suited for individuals to take low cost legal action. We are trying to encourage ISPs and email providers to join us in taking a socially responsible approach by working together to help end users take legal action to drive spammers from the UK by using existing laws," said Dick.

View: Scotchspam
News source: vnunet.com


There are 11 additional comments
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(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by vetmarkjensen on 15 Mar 2007 - 21:31
Ugh. I am all in favor of eliminating spam, but I don't think that millions of individual lawsuits flooding the courts is a good answer, either.
Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by xtravgnt on 15 Mar 2007 - 22:01
Quote - (markjensen said @ #1)
Ugh. I am all in favor of eliminating spam, but I don't think that millions of individual lawsuits flooding the courts is a good answer, either.

Yeah I can see this being a bad thing, people are already sue happy and court systems strained.

"Oh my goodness I just got an email, time to sue"
Quote this comment #1.2 Posted by +Octol on 16 Mar 2007 - 13:09
The idea is that if individuals start winning lawsuits against spammers, maybe the spammers will quit, and voilà! No more need for lawsuits.

I agree that the courts are choked with frivolous lawsuits; but when 80 to 90+ percent of all email is spam, I don't agree that individuals taking the only avenue available to them against spammers is in any way negative or undesirable.

Denying people legitimate access to the courts is definitely not the way to fight frivolous lawsuits – any more than you would fight hunger by letting poor people starve to death.
Quote this comment #1.3 Posted by Aero Ultimate on 16 Mar 2007 - 13:20
Quote - (Octol said @ #1.2)
The idea is that if individuals start winning lawsuits against spammers, maybe the spammers will quit, and voilà! No more need for lawsuits.

I agree that the courts are choked with frivolous lawsuits; but when 80 to 90+ percent of all email is spam, I don't agree that individuals taking the only avenue available to them against spammers is in any way negative or undesirable.

Denying people legitimate access to the courts is definitely not the way to fight frivolous lawsuits – any more than you would fight hunger by letting poor people starve to death.

Exactly! The idea is to get spammers that annoyed by losing suits that they stop or at least reduce their spamming.
If the courts get filled with legitimate suits against spammers, they should better cut back on the ludicrous lawsuits.
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by Ironman2003 on 15 Mar 2007 - 22:22
OT: Like the site design.

Back on Topic (sorta):

I wish we had Bluefrog back again, it really knocked mine down quite a bit, now of they would just get the P2P version up and running and out out of the vision of the spammers, it would be a smash hit as far as I am concerned.

Quote this comment #2.1 Posted by +M2Ys4U on 15 Mar 2007 - 22:35
It's not going to happen


Nobody wants to lead the project, the mailing list is dead, the forums are dead, the IRC channel was dead before I left it a few months ago.

I almost took over but I just don't have the time.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by majmac on 15 Mar 2007 - 22:23
Spammers are in it for the money - nothing more or nothing less - so SUE 'EM!
If people just drove up to your front yard and dumped rubbish in it day in and day out, wouldn't you take legal action against them?
Spammers are garbage purveyors and their anti-social behaviour needs to be dealt with by any means possible.
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by MrCobra on 15 Mar 2007 - 22:53
How come it's illegal to get e-mail spam but perfectly legal to get normal postal spam?
Quote this comment #4.1 Posted by lbmouse on 16 Mar 2007 - 14:30
?? Mail that goes through the postal system has to be paid for by the sender. Emails that go throw the internet are paid for by the receiver (eventually via ISP charges). It would be like getting junk mail postage-due. This is why junk faxes and telemarketing calls to cell phones are banned in the US. This type of unsolicited marketing actually cost the recipient money. Spam should be included.
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by ScottishLad on 15 Mar 2007 - 23:38
Hold up, The next thing thats going to happen here is someone sending out mail is going to get sued for sending spam when really its only a subscribe to mail shot.

Don't get me wrong i'm against spam, but I can see many getting wronly sued over this.

It really is pathetic that the people are just going around sueing people for literally everything these days.

You get sued if you sneeze on someone now. (o noes!!!!

*sigh*
Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by +Octol on 16 Mar 2007 - 13:12
See comment #1.2 above.
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