EarthLink Network Inc.
said that it won a $2 million consent judgment in its suit against notorious
spammer Cyber Promotions Inc. and
its founder, Sanford Wallace.
The decision also prohibits Cyber Promotions and Wallace from engaging in a
long list of spam-related activities in the future.
Cyber Promotions may be down (its Web site doesn’t seem to be working anymore
and it has lost other suits, including one filed by AOL), but it’s
anybody’s guess whether it’s out. We still get our share of spam.
EarthLink, a large ISP, said it “declared all-out war on spam” in April 1997
and has since launched several initiatives to keep unwanted junk e-mail from
filling its members’ mail boxes and clogging its servers.
These steps include taking legal action, implementing hardware and software
deterrents and co-founding an ISP-industry coalition, ISPSEC, to deal with
the problem.
According to the consent judgment, Cyber Promotions is liable for $2 million
as a result of its trespass upon EarthLink’s computer resources. Wallace will
also write a formal letter of apology to EarthLink and all its members for
any inconvenience he or his clients may have caused, the company said.
In addition, EarthLink can collect $1 million from Wallace personally if he
ever engages in prohibited actions in the future, including spamming
EarthLink members or enabling anyone else to spam them. It also covers the
distribution of EarthLink member e-mail addresses, further trespassing on
EarthLink’s servers, spoofing messages to look like they came from
EarthLink, and cloaking messages to EarthLink members to disguise their
origin.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to be rid of one of the Internet’s most
notorious spammers,” said Garry Betty, president and chief executive officer
of EarthLink Network, in a statement. “The most important benefit of this
judgment is the message we’ve sent to spammers that illegally tap our
resources and clog up the Internet with this trash–we won’t stand for it.
On top of that, now they’ll pay a very real penalty.”
EarthLink maintains a spam information resource Web site and has
established a new spam hotline at 888-ELN-SPAM.
