[TriLUG] NC spam laws?

[Chris Hedemark]

On Monday, May 5, 2003, at 01:39 PM, Brandon L. Newport wrote:

> Having to help with some spam cases in the past.  I don’t think the 
> rules
> have changed yet.  You want to do it through small claims court 
> because it
> only costs you roughly $25 (in most states) however in this state I 
> believe
> the maximum damages that you can recover is $25...

 From my reading of it (IANAL) I was under the impression that it was 
legal costs + $25 so the cost to bring the case is added to the total 
judgement, right?

So $25 is above and beyond the cost to file, if I understand it 
correctly.

>  I
> don’t think the penalties are enough in this state to worthy going 
> after a
> spammer.

Maybe, maybe not.  If I'm going to be down there anyway, and he's 
already spammed me twice, getting $50 out of the guy plus legal fees 
sounds worthwhile.  I think $500 to $1000 would do a better job of 
getting his attention, though.

> I wish it was, cause my wife owns a hosting company and let me tell 
> you we
> would definitely be going after some of these people :).  Spam is 
> probably
> 75% of what our customers get.  Most of it is because their email 
> addresses
> are located on their web pages.  We have figured out that many of the
> spammers are now using google searches to search for email address.  
> The bad
> guys always find a way to make something good into something bad :).

I know this all too well;  I work for the bad guys (though I am not 
actively involved in that aspect of the business... I'm more involved 
in snail mail marketing... and yes I feel all icky about it)