Facebook Trying To Get Canadian Spammer To Pay Up
from the spam-spam-spam-spam dept
Facebook has been somewhat aggressive in going after folks who try to use Facebook for spam, winning various high dollar judgments. Of course, you never expect the spammers who lose those lawsuits to ever actually pay up, but apparently in the case of one Canadian spammer, Facebook is upset enough to try to pursue things further. Michael Geist points us to the story of Adam Guerbuez and his gleeful disregard for the ruling against him (Google translation from the original French). Apparently, Facebook won an award for $873 million. In response, Guerbuez has put up a blog that doesn't just mock the situation, but gleefully plays up the huge amount of the award, while noting that he has no intention of paying, and doesn't believe the award applies to him, since he's in Canada rather than the US. Of course, the article notes that Facebook is now pursuing the case in Canada as well, despite the lack of an equivalent to CAN SPAM. This highlights one of the bigger issues with laws like CAN SPAM. As more and more spammers are not even in the US, the law isn't particularly effective. It seems that technological measures to deal with spam are always going to be more effective.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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...more and more spammers are not even in the US...
Basically, it's a funny story on how Facebook is trying to apply an US court decision on someone who doesn't even live in the USA. As if the Whole World has to accept any orders from the US court. This is just plain stupidity.
So, Facebook started a costly case in the USA against some spammer, getting a verdict that should satisfy them a lot, yet in reality they've won nothing. All they did was increase their own expenses in a facade of trying to show the World that they take this spam-problem serious. They've failed. And now they're trying to convince a Canadian judge to get a similar result...
I even wonder if Canada would ever award an equal amount of damage to Facebook. It seems to me that such ridiculous amounts are just reserved for the US courts...
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New Laws
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Re: New Laws
US courts tend to award ridiculously high amounts for damages, which many outsiders just consider just out of touch with reality. Such judgements are often seen as frivolous or plain silly, because it's very unlikely that any sane person would even be able to pay such a large amount. It's completely out of touch with the Reality outside the US, thus the case in Canada would already start with something to ridicule.
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Re: Re: New Laws
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They would get more satisfaction if they pursued non-monetary methods
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Get a clue..
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Re: Get a clue..
Anyway, get a clue yourself. Canada doesn't have a direct equivalent to CAN SPAM but there are still laws forbidding the practise.
As for the amount of the award Canadian courts aren't in the habit of granting awards the size of the GDP of a small country. What's the point, after all, if you'll never see it?
And as for 7 year olds, does being 7 explain your love of the caps lock key and your atrocious spelling, grammar and geographical knowledge?
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I get more unsolicited phone calls and knocks on my door than I do spam. Can we get these kinds of fines applied to those people as well?
Of the three, e-mails are least intrusive to this human.
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Screwing ourselves by screwing ourselves.
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Re: Screwing ourselves by screwing ourselves.
Do you really think that the scumbags involved in spamming are good citizens and abide by normal moral and ethical limits everywhere *except* when it comes to randomly harvesting e-mails to send fake viagra and penis enlarger ads to? You figure they're model citizens otherwise?
Spammer's don't file tax returns. Example:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/solowayPlea.htm
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Assassinate him.
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Re: Assassinate him.
Of course that would leave use with a bit of a world population problem. As best I can figure the world population would be just you and me. And I'm not so sure about you...
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If It Was The Other Way Round ...
I keep thinking of the Yahoo Nazi memorabilia case, where a US-based company resolutely fought against being subject to French law. And it seemed many in the US sided with Yahoo.
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and how has the spammer "cost" facebook 875 million dollars in lost revenue???
oh yeah, they haven't
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chi hair straighteners, chi flat iron
chi nano ceramic flat iron, chi nano ceramic flat iron
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