America Online stepped up its anti-spam
campaign today on the heels of yet another lawsuit filed this week against
a pornographic spammer.
America Online CEO Steve Case, during a speech delivered at the Jupiter
Consumer Online Conference today, unveiled “AOL’s 10 Most Wanted Spammer
List,” and said the company may seek federal legislation in an attempt to
put spammers out of the business.
The 10 Most Wanted Spammer List includes: The “Notoriously Nasty”
Spammer; The LoseWeight Center;
Lovetoys Productions; CN Productions; Internext; AMV, Inc.; Softcell Marketing, Inc.; Paragon Marketing; American
Eagle/PMA (no site); and Springdale
Publications.
“Like the online consumer, we’re fed up with spam,” said Case. “We are
adopting a block and tackle strategy against spammers. That is, we’re going
to block as many of their e-mails at the gateway as we can, and we’re going
to tackle them in court.”
“The spammers on our ’10 Most Wanted’ list represent a severe impediment to
the growth of the medium and are causing a significant depreciation of the
experience for the average consumer. We look forward to taking them on one
at a time.”
In a suit filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, AOL charged that Eddie Davidson and his Web
Communications and Sex Web, Inc. firms are in violation of the federal
copyright statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Virginia
Computer Crimes Act.
Alleging that Davidson and his companies unlawfully transacted business
under names like AOLsex.com, AOL said it is seeking damages and an
injunction to prevent Davidson and the two firms from transmitting spam to
AOL members that advertises sexually explicit Web sites.
The suit charges that the defendants used AOL’s trademark, copied the
design of the AOL.com Web site, and falsely included AOL’s domain name in
return addresses.
AOL also announced today it successfully concluded lawsuits filed on
December 18, 1997 against Dallas, GA-based Squeaky Clean Marketing and
Cyber Services.
