Send spammers the bill for cleaning up. Possible?

Ferre · 08-05-2007, 11:55 AM

I had this idea.

As we all know, forum owners spend a great deal of our time cleaning up spam.

What IF...

You add a disclaimer in your footer, stating that spammers will be traced and he costs for cleaning <insert HIGH $$ number> will be billed to the owners of the URL that was cleaned up.

Not allways, but often it's just a whois click away to find an address to send a bill to.

Legally do-able?

**G10** · 08-05-2007, 12:07 PM

You couldn't really bill someone in another country for spamming you as tracing it may not be the most difficult thing to do but proving the sender could be.

I've always thought that people should pay to register email addresses, almost like having your own address registered with your countries post office. - I know the logistics of putting together such a system in each country and linking it to a central system would be crazy but if people had to pay for creating an email address and it had to be legally registered with some company, it may cut down a hell of a lot of spam.

Granted, it would cause a big-brother system online but that is basically happening anyway so nothing new there.

Qurratulain · 08-05-2007, 12:07 PM

Adding a disclaimer is not a bad idea, it's practically applicable, but do you think it'll work? I mean to say would spammers/URL owners mind paying High $$ number?

Ferre · 08-05-2007, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G10

You couldn't really bill someone in another country for spamming you as tracing it may not be the most difficult thing to do but proving the sender could be.

I've always thought that people should pay to register email addresses, almost like having your own address registered with your countries post office. - I know the logistics of putting together such a system in each country and linking it to a central system would be crazy but if people had to pay for creating an email address and it had to be legally registered with some company, it may cut down a hell of a lot of spam.

Granted, it would cause a big-brother system online but that is basically happening anyway so nothing new there.

I was NOT talking about email spam Gio, I am talking specifically about forum/blog spam.

And I don't see why I could not send a bill to say, Russia, and have a Russian debt collector handle it.

IF this would be done massively by forum and blog owners it would have some sort of impact, no?

iWonder · 08-05-2007, 02:11 PM

1. What if the country you send the bill don't have any laws against SPAM ? It would be like sending a bill to a women in US for not wearing a burqa .

2. On what basis can one send it ? If I spam my competitors website on a forum, this would certainly do me good

.

Its not practical if you are actually going to send bills to everyone who spams. Its better to just moderate the spam.

Besides, even if the owner of forum/blog just wants to scare of spammers by putting this message, indirectly he would be inviting a lot more attention hence, more ...

Ferre · 08-05-2007, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iWonder

1. What if the country you send the bill don't have any laws against SPAM ? It would be like sending a bill to a women in US for not wearing a burqa .

It's not about the laws in those countries, those have nothing to do wth it.

I think, when as site states that certain services costs money, it's a normal business deal, and business deals are valid in about every country on earth.

When a website states that cleaning up spam costs a certain amount of money, when added to the site, it's actually not much different from other sites that offer a digitally service which costs money. Think about the many sites that ask for payment just to be able to view certain sections. Ther are also sites that ask for payment to place articles, there are numerous news sites that do that.

In principle, with the correct disclaimer/terms of use, a spammer actually agrees as soon as he/she/(the bot) adds the spam URL to this site.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iWonder

2. On what basis can one send it ? If I spam my competitors website on a forum, this would certainly do me good

.

When someone else gets photographed for speeding with my car, I am the one who gets the ticket. But you do make a point, and as I said, it's just an idea that sprouted up in my mind, I did not concider every aspect, reason why we are talking about it is to see if it is actually an idea that could be worked out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iWonder

Its not practical if you are actually going to send bills to everyone who spams. Its better to just moderate the spam.

Dunno about that, When a Russian debt collector is doing the actual work of getting your money and they of course add their provision to it, you don't have much work either than sending bills, which pays for the moderating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iWonder

Besides, even if the owner of forum/blog just wants to scare of spammers by putting this message, indirectly he would be inviting a lot more attention hence, more ...

I don't think so, if website owners would unite and massively add those terms of use to their sites and start sending tons of bills to every spam site they can find the owners from, I guess it would top off a lot of those spammers earnings and it might even make it too expensive for them to keep doing it on the scale it happens now.

fterall, we are talking about a normal business deal here, terms of service for the use of websites which are allready common in some niches.

**G10** · 08-05-2007, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferre

I was NOT talking about email spam Gio, I am talking specifically about forum/blog spam.

And I don't see why I could not send a bill to say, Russia, and have a Russian debt collector handle it.

IF this would be done massively by forum and blog owners it would have some sort of impact, no?

I bloody wish someone could enforce something like that dude.

Julie · 08-05-2007, 03:12 PM

It sounds good in theory, but probably wouldn't work out in reality.

Ferre · 08-05-2007, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G10

I bloody wish someone could enforce something like that dude.

Gio bro, as with everything, it only needs to be done, it only needs to be worked out legally, i.e there need to be a valid and legal terms of use which implements it and which can be used like, say, the GNU terms.
I think that people who know more about how to word terms of service to implement this in a legal way can design a draft for this idea, and I think it is not as weird as it sounds at first glance. Afteral, for those spammers it's also just business.

**John Scott** · 08-07-2007, 09:52 AM

You can always legally harass the spammers. Sue them, etc. Whether you win or not would be a different issue.

Timinator · 08-07-2007, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Scott

You can always legally harass the spammers. Sue them, etc. Whether you win or not would be a different issue.

You can sue them, and win! Collecting is a whole different story. I was ripped off from a company I did install work for, sued and won. Never seen a dime. Why cause the courts can't even enforce their ruling. All I can do is turn it into collections and trash his credit, which I and a hundred other people have done to him. Nobody has seen a dime.

Ferre · 08-07-2007, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Scott

You can always legally harass the spammers. Sue them, etc. Whether you win or not would be a different issue.

Thing is, that when you send a bill to someone for received services (and those services can be very wel worded in a terms of use, and the person/business you send the bill to doesn't pay, you can hand it over to a collection agency.

When a court case comes out of that, you won't have to sue them for being spammers but simply for them not paying the bill for received services. Not much hassle there.

The American Voters · 08-07-2007, 11:22 AM

I saw this on a site... said $5,000 for spamming at the bottom. I don't see how you would get your money especially from overseas.

Ferre · 08-07-2007, 11:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The American Voters

I saw this on a site... said $5,000 for spamming at the bottom. I don't see how you would get your money especially from overseas.

I know of a couple Russian debt collector companies who would not have any trouble collecting money in Russia.

lucia · 08-08-2007, 08:29 AM

When I lived in WA state, I had a lawyer friend who made a living filing suits to collect valid legal claims when people lived in other states. He charged clients for his services.

So, the process you are suggesting is:
1) Try to create a contract. You will need to hire a lawyer to write a decent contract that could hold up on court.
2) Get a court of law to enforce the contract in the jurisdiction where the contract applies. You will need to hire a lawyer. In thened, you may or may not win your suit depending on their laws and/or the evidence you present about the spam.
3) Waiting to get your judgment. If you don't get paid, file another suit in another country to enforce the first judgement.

With luck, you'll cover your legal costs.

Ferre · 08-08-2007, 09:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucia

When I lived in WA state, I had a lawyer friend who made a living filing suits to collect valid legal claims when people lived in other states. He charged clients for his services.

So, the process you are suggesting is:
1) Try to create a contract. You will need to hire a lawyer to write a decent contract that could hold up on court.
2) Get a court of law to enforce the contract in the jurisdiction where the contract applies. You will need to hire a lawyer. In thened, you may or may not win your suit depending on their laws and/or the evidence you present about the spam.
3) Waiting to get your judgment. If you don't get paid, file another suit in another country to enforce the first judgement.

With luck, you'll cover your legal costs.

No, not exactly. What I was thinking about was;

1) Add terms of service to the site which state that cleaning up spam costs XX amount of $, which makes spammers actually clients of your service.
2) Simply send invoice + bill to clients which can be traced.
3) When client does not pay, hand it over to debt collector in the country the client is registered.
4) Debt collectors start legal procedures when client does not pay.

In this scenario there is no legal dispute other than to prove that the service has been consumed by the client and that the service has not been paid. No hassle about anti spam laws.

Zap · 08-08-2007, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferre

No, not exactly. What I was thinking about was;

1) Add terms of service to the site which state that cleaning up spam costs XX amount of $, which makes spammers actually clients of your service.
2) Simply send invoice + bill to clients which can be traced.
3) When client does not pay, hand it over to debt collector in the country the client is registered.
4) Debt collectors start legal procedures when client does not pay.

In this scenario there is no legal dispute other than to prove that the service has been consumed by the client and that the service has not been paid. No hassle about anti spam laws.

I don't know how workable this solution is, but I like you're thinking on this, Ferre.