MySpace Wins Another Lawsuit Against Another Famous Spam King
from the richter-goes-down-again dept
Just a month after MySpace won a huge fine against famed spam king Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, it's now won its lawsuit against another big name spam king: Scott Richter, who it sued a year and a half ago. Richter and his father (who runs the company) are claiming victory in that the fine is only $6 million -- when MySpace had been asking for much more. You may notice that I'm not linking to coverage of this story, since right now it appears that only the Associated Press is writing about it -- and, as you may have heard, the AP has decided it doesn't want bloggers linking to its stories. Fair enough. Update: Here's the News.com coverage.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: scott richter, spam
Companies: myspace
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Re: AP Business Model
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Re: Re: AP Business Model
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Amazing! You can't even put a price on that!
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Money
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How is the common man to afford 'justice'?
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spammers
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Great Job!
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The AP...
It's good that spammers are getting their just desserts in court, too.
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This is meaningless
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I agree
And is a $6 million judgment really effective against spammers? I would bet that they could just save their money for a few months, pay the judgment, and write it off as a cost of spamming users on MySpace.
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Re: I agree
No, they won't appeal this decision. First, every day that the spammer delays payment is another day that interest accrues on the award, making it more expensive to pay the $6M. Second, this was a binding arbitration decision under the Federal Arbitration Act, which allows for expedited review. The FAA only allows for vacatur of an award in extremely limited circumstances, such as the arbitrator was fraudulent or exceeded his powers. Thus, if MySpace moves to confirm the award in federal court, they can get judgment rendered pretty swiftly.
Further, if the spammer refuses to pay, MySpace can order seizure of the spammer's assets, and if that doesn't work, MySpace can take a loss on its tax return, thereby alerting the IRS that the spammer may be committing tax evasion.
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Poster #13
If Richter appealed, he would probably be order to pay more. He got lucky with arbitration.
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Boycott
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"spam king" lawsuit
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"spam king" lawsuit
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