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15 Mar 2007
A man who won £750 in compensation from a UK firm after receiving a single spam email has set up Scotchspam.com to help other internet users bring spammers to court.
Edinburgh's Sheriff Court ordered Transcom Internet Services to pay a total of £1,369 including costs to 30 year-old Gordon Dick.
"If you are fed up with increasing amounts of spam email in your mailbox then make a legal claim now and make the spammers pay for their actions," Dick states on his website.
Dick used the UK implementation of European anti-spam laws to bring his case.
"The courts are sensitive to putting right these misdemeanours and the small claims procedures are ideally suited for individuals to take low cost legal action," he said.
The Scotch Spam website currently lists wins for Dick's case, as well as an out-of-court settlement for Nigel Roberts back in December 2006.
Roberts brought an action against Media Logistics (UK) in a Colchester court before settling the case for £300.
Dick said that he is hoping to get backing from UK ISPs, and urged internet users to ask their provider to work with the scheme.
"We are trying to encourage ISPs and email providers to join us in taking a socially responsible approach by working together to help end users take legal action to drive spammers from the UK by using existing laws," he said.
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Drop in the ocean
Whilst this case is of course all very worthy, it is only applicable if the spam received is from a UK based source. Given that 99.9% of spam originates from outside the UK, whilst this sort of approach may make those 'lucky' enough to receive their spam from UK sources a few quid, it's hardly going to solve the problem, or even begin to solve the problem. What I don't understand is that, given that my own personal experience and the experiences of everyone else I've discussed this with, spam is absolutely obvious in probably 90% of mails, why is it so hard for ISPs to block this stuff ???? (apart from laziness and inertia of course !)
Posted by: Martin 16 Mar 2007