Spammer sues, wins case for posting of public information

Dan (the_technocrat) An anti-spam activist has lost a case in which publicly-available DNS records for a well-known spammer were published. The Judge has fined the anti-spammer US$60,000 for "hacking", plus lawyers fees, for looking up the domain name of the spammer and re-publishing the public registration information. For those who aren't familiar with DNS, this is like being sued by someone for looking them up in the phonebook and "making their personal information known" by re-publishing the data. However, this case is even more ludicrous, as the data being published was supplied by the spammer when they purchased the domain name. via The Register

January 21, 2008 5:07 PM ET in News, ,

An anti-spam activist has lost a case in which publicly-available DNS records for a well-known spammer were published.

The Judge has fined the anti-spammer US$60,000 for “hacking”, plus lawyers fees, for looking up the domain name of the spammer and re-publishing the public registration information.

For those who aren’t familiar with DNS, this is like being sued by someone for looking them up in the phonebook and “making their personal information known” by re-publishing the data. However, this case is even more ludicrous, as the data being published was supplied by the spammer when they purchased the domain name.

via The Register

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3 Comments:

  1. Thrax
    21 Jan '08, 6:09 pm

    This is what happens when technologically-ignorant geezers serve as arms of the law.

  2. airbornflght
    21 Jan '08, 6:32 pm

    Wow.

    I would love to see the court transcript. Either this guy's lawyer was a complete bafoon or else the judge was completely retarded.

  3. Leonardo
    21 Jan '08, 6:49 pm

    This will probably be appealed. Maybe they can find a court where the tech knowledge level is post-1985.

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