I've been wondering for long, as a background activity, how one could get the various organizations on the network organized to make a class action suit against spammers. After all, 1. The spammers' clients are easy to locate using real-world means. You always get a phone or FAX number you can call to purchase the goods that are being offered. 2. The spammers' clients, as opposed to the spammers, probably have some money. Maybe not a mega fortune, but enough to pay the lawyer that will sue them. 3. Once a client loses a spam-related lawsuit, spammers will be out of business. They may also find themselves defending a lawsuit from their clients, which might be sufficient to convince them that, if #2 is likely, maybe they should retire before it's too late. So far spammers have enjoyed relative legal impunity. I think the reasons are: 1. No single organization got upset enough to actually go to court for a silly spam. Spams are annoying, but we all have a job to do, and it doesn't include suing spammers. 2. Other than large ISPs, no single organization can reasonably expect to claim more than some $10k of lost manpower and machine time, which is hardly worth going to court for. 3. Lawyers don't quite understand the Internet, so the lawsuit could be long and costly, and the outcome could be random. 4. Organizations are worried about their reputation and don't want to appear "fascist" and anti-freedom. 5. Last, but not least, people have been focusing all their energy on punishing the spammers. While this may be the "right" thing to do, it does not lead to a working plan, because most spammers are individuals, often without a job, and it may be very difficult to trace the spam to them if you limit yourself to evidence that will hold in court (obviously their clients would have some record of the payment, but guess what, they'd much rather you didn't have a case against them, so they aren't likely to help). At least in the US, it's much easier to prove that ads do origin from the company that later takes people's money when they call the number in the ad. Now let's say we had the following in place: 1. An anti-spam clearinghouse, which could be either a large existing organization with on-staff lawyers who actually understand the Internet (I'm thinking of large ISPs here), or then a newly formed non-profit corporation. 2. Letters from a few hundred organizations in the US legally empowering the clearinghouse to act as their agent when sending cease and desist orders to spammers or their clients. In the case of a non-profit clearinghouse, the organizations would have to enclose a check for say $250 to finance the clearinghouse, but I don't think it should be too difficult to sell universities on contributing $250 to fight spam. Interested parties could also make larger (tax deductible) donations, without having to get involved in the actual fire fighting. 3. Joe then posts a spam for the XYZ thigh cream that will make you look 20 years younger and give you cancer in the process for a one-time low price. The clearinghouse sends a cease and desist order to XYZ on behalf of all its members, demanding that no further advertisement be sent to any of the lists at any of the hosts in any of the corresponding domains. From then on, there are several ways to proceed, depending on XYZ's reaction. If they comply, you try to get paper evidence tracing the deed to the spammer. Eventually one of them will be upset enough to be willing to assist you. If they ignore the warning, you sue them for the lost machine time, bandwidth and manpower, and/or for illicit telemarketing. Lawyers can probably figure out a way to open a case given that XYZ received valuable advertisement for which the clearinghouse's members had to bear the costs against their express wishes. A $10k claim may not be much, but if you multiply by even 100 members you're talking real money. Enough money to make XYZ think carefully. The assumption here is that XYZ has been selected with brain usage activated and is a real company, as opposed to some smokescreen multi-level marketing joint that may or may not have a full-time receptionist. XYZ probably has a very limited understanding of the Internet and should settle rather than risk going to court. Press release to alert future potential victims. No press release, no settlement; sorry, the clearinghouse's mission in life is to alert the world to the fact that spam is bad and doesn't work, so that people quit offering spammers a job, and this can be done either amicably or the hard way, but it has to be done. In addition, the clearinghouse will demand evidence to trace the spammer to the spam. I don't see why XYZ wouldn't want to provide it, given the press release. The least they can do is try to look good and cooperative. "We at XYZ are truly sorry about what happened. We really didn't know it would upset people and we fully support the clearinghouse's effort in warning other innocent victims who, like us, may be totally unaware of the perils of this form of 'advertisement', blah blah blah". Given a PO + payment record, you can send the spammer a cease and desist order, which will probably be ignored (unless the spammer decides to get another job - another press release). There aren't all that many spammers, so eventually you should have a repeat case on the same spammer with evidence that stands in court, and you can sue him. Since the clearinghouse's sole purpose is to fight spam, it doesn't really matter if the spammer isn't rich enough to make the lawsuit worth your while. Once one of them has to sell his car and house to pay legal bills, spam will probably come to an abrupt end and the clearinghouse will have accomplished its mission. You would probably want to keep it alive (but dormant) for when the spammers come up with something new. Finally, the clearinghouse must be adequately protected from retaliation by spammers, and from other forms of interference. The following steps sound like a good start: 1. The clearinghouse and in particular the lawsuits should be managed either by new staff that will be dedicated to the cause, or by volunteers employed in a field that doesn't have anything to do with the Internet, and whose employers have given their full support in writing. It should NOT be a part-time assignment for people employed in an Internet-related company and who will constantly have to worry about their employer's best interests or how corporate HQ might react to this or that, what with the impending change in management after the next board elections. They should be able to concentrate on their mission without fearing for their job. 2. The people employed by the clearinghouse should have a legally binding job offer from an interested party, offering them work for (say) 3 months in the event that the clearinghouse should lose a lawsuit and go bankrupt. In other words, they should not have to worry about paying their rent when making decisions on behalf of the clearinghouse. Hopefully the clearinghouse will hire a very small amount of highly clueful people who should not be worried about having to find a job per se, just about paying the bills between two jobs. 3. The clearinghouse staff should operate from a specific host or domain with a specially tailored mail system that does not accept mail from mailing lists, unless they're listed in an exception file. Mail from other lists is bounced with a "no such user" type error, a signoff request could even be sent automatically. This prevents spammers from flooding the victim's mailbox with spoofed subscriptions. The machine running this mailer should be very fast so that mailbombing attempts turn against the bomber, and dedicated to the task so that no one else has to suffer. Bandwidth would presumably be donated by an interested party (I'm thinking in terms of colocating a SMTP/POP server to which the clearinghouse staff would connect via dial-up, ie no telco charge). This machine would also host a web server. All in all I think that all the necessary tools (technical, legal, press awareness, etc) are available. The only thing that is missing is motivation and manpower. Many of you have asked me in private why L-Soft doesn't embark on a legal crusade against spammers. While it's true that I don't think many customers would object to seeing their money used this way, there would still be a number of overwhelming obstacles. The first and most obvious is that putting an end to spam is going to cost serious money (probably over $100k) and take a lot of time (we're dependent on how fast the courts can move). We have found a more cost effective and much more expedient way to shield our customers from spam (and you will find that the spam detector that ships with 1.8c is even more effective), so as far as we are concerned spam is not a major problem, although there will always be spams that get past the filter. It's certainly not a problem worth spending $100k on. But even with additional funding to cover the costs, there would still be serious obstacles. First off, L-Soft is a for-profit corporation, like the spammers and their clients. This is a case where the public opinion may, sadly, determine the outcome, and it is important to prevent the spammers from turning this into a "XYZ Corp wants to eat ABC Corp because they're getting in their way" type of issue. A clearinghouse of (mostly) universities, on the other hand, would not have that problem. Second, L-Soft sells anti-spam software solutions. We don't want anyone insinuating that we're botching up the job using their funding because we don't really care if spam goes away and just want to prevent a competing and more diligent anti-spam organization from being formed with these funds and taking away our leadership in anti-spam technology. Finally, we have to consider the well-being of our employees. Anyone you hire to lead an anti-spam clearinghouse will have to be prepared for an assortment of death threats, random phone calls with heavy breathing, etc. This is just part of the job. Heck, if I were the lawyer drafting the contract, I'd make sure to add a special clause about it :-) On the other hand, this kind of treatment is definitely not part of the job at L-Soft, and we would like to keep it that way. We don't want people to quit or just have nightmares or ulcers because of a crusade which is not really ours. In the context of a large neutral clearinghouse like the one I have described, however, we would be able to contribute without problem. Eric