Sanford Wallace "King A-Hole"
The Can-Spam Act was established in 2003 to help stop the proliferation of all this spam email that we all get from these people who purport to sell anything from penis enlargers to viagra pills. It’s never solicited email, and it overwhelms both the internet system and our email inboxes.
Overall, the law hasn’t seemed to have put much of a dent into how much spam there is, but there have been some fairly significant court cases which have drawn some interesting verdicts. The most recent is for a guy named Sanford Wallace, who was known as the Spam King. He just lost a judgment to Facebook for the amount of $711 million, and is expecting to finally see some jail time. This guy is a serial spammer, having also lost a previous judgment to MySpace in May 2008 for $230 million. He’s never paid a dime on the first one, so he probably won’t pay anything to Facebook, which is why he’ll be going to jail soon.
This isn’t even the biggest judgment. Facebook won an earlier judgment for $873 million against another spammer, Adam Guerbuez of Atlantis Blue Capital, a Canadian who was accused of sending “sleazy” messages to many Facebook members. They also didn’t collect on this one, since Guerbuez went into hiding as soon as an extradition request was put through.
The basics of the Can-Spam Act really aren’t that hard for most people to follow. Basically, if you’re a marketer, you’re allowed to send some email advertising out to potential clients. What you’re not allowed to do is flood the system with hundreds of thousands of email containing lies, misdirects to sites with malware and spyware, and many other hidden dangers associated with this type of mass marketing. You also have to add an opt-out disclaimer into each one of these types of emails you send out, and you must honor the request of those people who do opt out.
Also, if you’re sending out this type of email, you’re supposed to indicate in some fashion that it’s an advertisement. That’s a harder standard to prove, as some companies have been accused of not following this one, even though their business name is in the title line. To date, though, no company has been found guilty of anything, or even taken to trial, because of this directive.
By the way, there are some restrictions of the application of the Can-Spam Act as well, which figures. There are four types of email spam that are exempt: religious messages; political messages; content that fits within the marketing laws in general (that means if you’re a customer of someone, they’re allowed to send you a bunch of stuff, as well as any of their affiliates), and national security messages.
