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MySpace Wins Spam E-mail Suit Against Globe.com
[June 01, 2007]

MySpace Wins Spam E-mail Suit Against Globe.com


TMCnet Contributing Editor
 
A full settlement has been reached by Globe.com and Myspace over a spam e-mail suit. Last June (2006), MySpace filed the suit against Globe.com, claiming the site sent nearly 400,000 unsolicited e-mails to its users from more than 95 dummy accounts, thereby violating state and federal laws including the CAN-SPAM Act and California Business & Professions Code Section 17529.5
 
MySpace’s suit against The Globe.com was just one of its efforts to fight spam, phishing, and other misuse of its site. The company previously won other, related cases, including: 
  • Won a Federal suite against a company that distributed a bot which facilitated spamming on the site

  • Settled a Federal case against the sponsor of an affiliate program promoted by spammers; won injunctive relief and the payment of monetary damages

  • Won a suit against bulk fax and bulk e-mail pioneer Sanford Wallace, for violations of state and federal laws including the CAN-SPAM Act and California's anti-spam statute

  • Helped authorities take criminal action against Samy (aka "Samy Is My Hero") and the operators of "MySpace Plus" for alleged criminal activity related to spam, unauthorized bots, and/or phishing on the site

  • Won suit against Scott Richter, for violations of state and federal laws including the CAN-SPAM Act and California's anti-spam statute

The Globe.com initially declared liable in February 2007, by U.S. District Judge Klausner in Los Angeles, for violations of three separate provisions of the federal CAN-SPAM Act: 

  1. The prohibition against transmission of commercial emails containing false and misleading information, including header information.

  2. The prohibition against transmission of commercial emails which omit identifier, opt out, and physical address information.

  3. The prohibition against the usage of automated means such as scripts to generate commercial email to random recipients, which is an aggravated violation of the CAN-SPAM Act entitling MySpace to treble damages.

The Globe.com was also held liable under California Business & Professions Code Section 17529.5 which prohibits e-mail transmissions to or from California e-mail addresses that contain false, altered or forged header information or misleading subject lines. This is one of the first court rulings under that particular California law provision.

The Federal Court entitled MySpace to recover liquidated damages of $50 per spam sent after March 17, 2006, which amounts to $5.5 million in damages overall.
 
The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. A Consent Judgment and Stipulated Permanent Injunction filed by the Court on April 25, 2007 prohibits The Globe.com from accessing MySpace for any commercial purpose or from sending unsolicited e-mails in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

About MySpace.com

MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is a social networking and lifestyle portal. It has created a community integrating Web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums. It is the second ranked web domain in terms of page views.
 
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Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page


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