Spammers, beware. MySpace said Tuesday it has won a record-setting $234 million legal judgment against two well-known spammers who didn’t even bother to show up for their court date.
According to news reports, the decision in a Los Angeles U.S. District Court in favor of MySpace was rendered after the popular social-networking site filed suit against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines because of junk e-mail they sent to MySpace members. The judgment is considered the largest ever against purveyors of unwanted, commercial e-mail, which is flooding inboxes everywhere. The court also issued injunctions against similar activities in the future.
‘Better Not Go There’
MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam told the Associated Press that “anybody who’s been thinking about engaging in spam is going to say, ‘Wow, I better not go there.'” But some observers have noted that the fact it’s a default judgment may indicate that MySpace doesn’t know where Wallace and Rines are.
According to the lawsuit, Wallace and Rines created fake MySpace accounts or took control of existing ones by stealing passwords, and then they sent spam from these accounts. To many MySpace members, it looked as if the junk e-mails — which often asked the reader to visit a Web site or watch a video — were coming from friends.
The e-mails, which MySpace said numbered more than 735,000, were intended to make money by selling things such as ringtones when someone went to a site or a video, or make money based on hits. MySpace said some of the sites contained pornographic materials, and the spam generated hundreds of complaints and cost the social-networking site money.
Under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, each violation can result in $100 in damages, which are tripled if the e-mail can be shown to have been sent “willfully.”
‘Still Have Murder’
Peter Firstbrook, an analyst with industry…