Calling Spammers Names Costs Spam Victim $2.5M
In a case of justice gone horribly wrong, WebGuy.net's Mark W. Mumma, ISP, spam victim and anti-spam activist, has been dealt the ultimate "low blow" by a Federal Court. The small, Oklahoma City based ISP has been ordered by a U.S. Federal Jury to pay $2.5 Million in damages to the very company that admitted sending him unsolicited e-mail in the first place.
Oklahoma City, OK (PRWEB) June 27, 2007 -- In a mind numbing decision two months ago today in case no. 05-CV-122 in the U.S. District Court's Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that Mark W. Mumma's statement that Plaintiffs, Cruise.com, Omega World Travel and Gloria Bohan "are spammers" is "untrue" in spite of the fact that Cruise.com witnesses confirmed, under oath, that they never ask a recipient's permission prior to sending them e-mail offers. The reason given by Cruise.com CEO Anthony Hamawy regarding why they don't verify an e-mail recipient's desire to receive their offers was, 'No, we have not, primarily because our competitors don't.'
"I have been battling spam for more than a decade and was very pleased when laws were passed defining stiff penalties for those who send spam," Mumma stated. "I tried to recover relief through the courts for the wasted time and loss of productivity I've suffered because of spam, but after incurring $70,000 in legal fees and seeing a $2.5 Million jury award leveled against me, I think I've had about all the 'relief' I can stand."
A little more than three years ago, Mumma set up a web site to 'out' spammers called, SUEaSpammer.com. He warned senders of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) that he would expose anyone who sends him any such unwanted e-mail messages. He warned spammers that he would record their telephone calls and post them on the Internet. He also warned that he would post photos of the people ultimately responsible for spam messages, as well as the spam e-mails themselves. He wasn't kidding. Yet it is Mumma that has had to pay the ultimate price for spam when Cruise.com's parent company, Omega World Travel, sued him for defamation for 'calling them spammers'.
"I have tried opting out, but no matter how legitimate a company seems, virtually every time I opt out of an e-mailing that I didn't opt into to begin with, I just end up with more spam, not less," says Mumma. "Maybe if there was a significant cost involved in sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, companies would stop."
Throughout the case, Cruise.com attorneys accused Mumma of signing up for the offers in spite of Cruise.com's own evidence to the contrary. At least one of Cruise.com's attorneys has vowed to foreclose on Mumma's home in order to satisfy their judgment against him. Another has vowed to sue him when he releases, SLAPP SUIT, the documentary Mumma is self-producing about this lawsuit. Mumma's plight was featured in TIME Magazine, this past January.
"During the trial, Omega's lead attorney stressed that this case was about 'Cruise.com's good name.' Ironically, the most important time for Cruise.com to utilize their 'good name' would have been to identify their e-mail server as a 'cruise.com server' when connecting to recipient mail servers," Mumma explained. "Instead, Cruise.com failed to use its real name, announcing itself as 'FL-Broadcast.net', a domain they have never owned. A complete fabrication."
In spite of the fact that Cruise.com witnesses testified during discovery that they did not own the domain name FL-Broadcast.net, as well as confirming that Mumma had not requested the e-mails in question, Judge Brinkema advised the jury that the case was 'essentially about damages' and that she had already 'determined as a matter of law that calling an entity a spammer is a defamatory statement.' This finding has been followed by Judge Brinkema referring to the e-mails Cruise sent as 'spam' herself during a May 11 hearing.
"I originally claimed that Cruise.com had broken the law because I genuinely believed that 'HELO forgery' was illegal under the provisions of The CAN-SPAM Act," Mumma contends. "Now, as long as some contact info is present in the e-mail itself, I know header forgery is 'excusable'."
"I expected justice to be done," says Mumma. "I never imagined I would be victimized by the courts, saddled with tens of thousands in attorney fees, a $2.5 Million judgment and the possible loss of my home. What makes it all the more frustrating is the Plaintiffs corroborated every 'true, yet somehow still defamatory' thing I have ever said about them. Cruise admitted that an unknown Comcast Cable Internet subscriber in Illinois signed up my e-mail address. They further admitted that they have no system in place to prevent anyone from signing up someone else's e-mail address, so, basically 'Legal Unsolicited Commercial E-mail' or 'LUCE' happens because someone signs you up, and irresponsible e-mail marketers don't bother to check and see if the sign-up is legitimate or not."
As a result of a hearing June 1st, Omega World Travel now faces the choice of accepting a lowered damage award of $330,000.00 or having a new trial. Omega has only until the end of the week to file their decision with the court.
"Once a judgment is entered, I will have thirty days to file an appeal; however, without a little help from other weary and tired e-mail users, there is no way I can afford it. This lawsuit has wiped me out financially. If possible, I want to try to get a grass roots effort organized to take the fight back to spammers everywhere. If other Internet users want me to keep fighting the good fight, I'll do it. Appealing the decision in my case is important to get the war on spam back on track. Proactively going after spam and LUCE offenders alike needs to continue. I refuse to just lie down and die."
"I came very close to 'giving up' several times," Mumma confesses. "However, I was inspired by the movies Facing the Giants and Maxed Out to make my own documentary about this ridiculous lawsuit."
"Cruise.com appears to owe their jury victory to their successful re-definition of the term 'unsolicited e-mail'. In Cruise.com's version, if someone signs you up, even if it is someone you do not know and have not authorized to subscribe you to e-mail lists of any kind, the courts will back them, because the e-mails were solicited by 'someone'," Mumma added. "I thought that was the very definition of 'Unsolicited e-mail'; when someone besides the recipient adds the recipient to an e-mail list."
Cruise.com is a registered trademark of Omega World Travel, Inc.
MummaGraphics, Inc., founded in 1993, is a provider of Internet web hosting and web site design services and, until recently, has been directing its energies to curbing unwanted junk e-mail, a/k/a spam. MummaGraphics began suing spammers in August 2004, but may soon retire as a spam fighter.
Original PRWeb Release || Hi-Res Broadcast Quality Video
Press Contact: Mark W. Mumma
Company Name: MummaGraphics, Inc.
Phone: 310-691-5800
Website: http://www.2bucksamonth.org/
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