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Home :: Email 12 Dec 2006 Oklahoma Anti-Spammer Loses Big in Court Email In November, Mark Mumma, who runs a little design firm at webguy.com, lost an appeal in the Fourth Federal Circuit. He'd filed suit against cruise.com and their parent Omega World Travel under CAN SPAM and an Oklahoma anti-spam law. Omega countersued for defamation. The court threw out Mumma's case, and allowed part of the defamation case to proceed. At first blush, this looks like a big win for spammers. But read the decision, and you'll find that Mumma did just about everything he could to be sure he lost the case. He didn't try to document any meaningful violations of law. Instead he called up the other party and yelled at them. He also made some rather overoptimistic interpretations of Oklahoma law which CAN SPAM preempted. The judge said that regardless of we think about spam in general, CAN SPAM sets out specific rules which cruise.com followed pretty closely, and those are the ones the court has to enforce. We all know that CAN SPAM says spamming is legal. As David Sorkin noted, CAN SPAM legitimizes spam by regulating it, and even though the mail from cruise.com looked pretty spammy, if the law says it's legal, suing the sender isn't going to accomplish anything. Don't take this for more than it is. The lesson is that if you plan to file a CAN SPAM suit, it would be a good idea to have some actual evidence of CAN SPAM violations in hand first. CNet story about the case posted at: 16:25 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments comments...        (Jump to the end to add your own comment) WebGuy You're right. How silly of me to think that a blatantly "made up" server name like 'fl-broadcast.net' (a domain name that just happened to not be registered to anyone) would be a violation under CAN-SPAM. Also, a KNOWN to be non-working return email address as the reply address. That's not a violation either apparently. I guess I'll know better next time huh... (by Mark Mumma 18 Dec 2006 20:15) Add your comment... Note: all comments require an email address to send a confirmation to verify that it was posted by a person and not a spambot. Your email won't be displayed unless you check the box below, and won't be used for other purposes.   Name: Email: you@wherever (required, for confirmation) Title: (optional) Comments: Show my Email address Save my Name and Email for next time

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