Spam spreads
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, March 9, 2005
By all accounts, the tidal wave of spam -- the colorful name for unsolicited e-mail -- increasingly overwhelms the Internet. Experts estimate that three out of every four e-mail messages are spam -- or about 15 billion messages a day -- and that the cost to U.S. businesses ranges from $10 billion to $87 billion a year in lost productivity (plus another $140 million to pay for spam filters).
Yet despite recently enacted federal anti-spam legislation, as well as anti-spam laws in about half the states, spamming shows no sign of letting up. Recent court cases highlight the limitations of the current methods of law enforcement in the world of spam.
Consider a case decided on Dec. 20, involving a $1 billion judgment in favor of a tiny Internet service provider (ISP) in Iowa. In 2000, Robert Kramer, owner of the five-employee ISP with about 5,000 e-mail customers, filed a suit against 300 alleged spammers -- after his customers had received up to 10 million spam e-mails a day.
Four years later, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Wolle found three of the 300 defendants guilty, under both the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and the Iowa Ongoing Criminal Conduct Act. The judge ordered AMP Dollar Savings, of Mesa, Ariz., to pay $720 million; Cash Link Systems, of Miami, to pay $360 million; and Florida-based TEI Marketing Group to pay $140,000. So the judgments are soaring, although how much money will be collected is another matter. (Lawyers for the defendants didn't even show up at the trial.)
According to The Spamhaus Project, an organization that works against spam, Florida has 54 of the 180 biggest spamming operations. And for good reason: The state's favorable personal-bankruptcy laws let spammers who are sued hold on to most of their possessions.
The Iowa case also highlights that while justice moves slowly (in this case, four years), spammers move at light speed. Experts estimate that spammers now change domain names every two days -- compared with once a week just three months ago. Soon it could be every few seconds.
While the authorities struggle with limited tools, spam, by flooding Internet in-boxes, threatens the very viability of e-mail. Without some new methods of spam-law enforcement, the situation will only worsen.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/editorials/content/projo_20050309_09spam.1bf1609.html
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