Coffee Break

by Clarissa French

America Online announced Dec. 21 that it had won three lawsuits against junk e-mailers.

As an AOL customer, I would just like to say, "Hallelujah!"

Unwanted and unsolicited offers for get-rich-quick schemes, quick fixes for bad credit, home equity loans and pornography overflow my electronic mailbox, often with leading tag lines like "I got your message," "Where did you go?" "About your order ..." or half a dozen other false and familiarly worded come-ons.

Frankly, if it weren't for junk e-mail, also known as spam, I would get almost no e-mail at all.

Which is fine with me. Like a lot of people, I have been mass marketed right to the end of my rope.

Here's how the AOL victories break down:

AOL vs. LCGM. LCGM, a spammer for pornographic Web sites, was ordered by the court to pay AOL damages and costs, including attorney's fees, for sending millions of pieces of junk e-mail to AOL members. The court also ordered LCGM to cease transmission of junk e-mail to AOL members, according to a release from AOL.

The court noted that in sending this junk e-mail, LCGM violated the AOL trademark by using the AOL.com domain name. The court also ruled that LCGM committed fraud in using methods and software designed to defeat AOL's spam filtering technologies. The court therefore applied both state (Virginia) and federal computer fraud laws.

This first-time-ever application of these statutes in an anti-spamming case breaks new ground in this area of the law, AOL stated, providing Internet or online service providers with a new weapon.

AOL vs. Prime Data Systems. The court ordered Prime Data, and its principal operator, Vernon Hale, to pay damages to AOL for the costs of handling millions of pieces of junk e-mail sent by Prime Data to AOL members. The court stated the "malicious" nature of the defendant's conduct warranted punitive damages triple the amount of the actual damages, the AOL release says.

Further, the court determined that Prime Data and Hale violated AOL's trademark rights and, as a result, awarded AOL attorney's fees. The court provided AOL with permanent injunctive relief barring Hale and Prime Data from ever again sending e-mail to AOL or its members.

AOL vs. IMS et al. In a previous ruling, the case against IMS yielded the first-ever judicial opinion finding that "AOL.com" forgery violates federal trademark statutes. In bringing this case to a conclusion, the court ruled against IMS, its principal Joe Melle and two other spammers: Brian Robbins, a spammer advertising a dubious "credit repair" scheme, and Neil Byron Goodson, a Louisiana-based seller of "Floodgate" spam software, the AOL release said.

The court found each liable for actual damages and imposed triple punitive damages. The court also provided AOL with injunctive relief and barred the defendants from ever again sending e-mail to AOL or its members as well as barring them from using the AOL service for any reason.

In the wake of these court victories, AOL announced it has filed nine more suits in five states California, New York, Iowa, Florida and Virginia targeting porn-spammers, get-rich-quick schemers and sellers of spamming software.

As an AOL customer, I would just like to say, "Sic 'em, boys."

Because junk e-mail gives a black eye to the online experience, to legitimate online advertisers and legitimate Internet businesses. The sooner spammers are brought to heel, the better for the Web surfing public.

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