Judge Slaps Down Spammer Who Is Suing SpamCop

Legal Issues

from the get-real dept

In the ongoing ridiculousness concerning the spammer who sued SpamCop, a judge has denied Scott Richter’s request for an injunction against SpamCop, noting that by simply forwarding on email messages as a complaint, SpamCop is protected via the CDA, which says that service providers aren’t responsible for the content sent through their services (the same reason that AOL shouldn’t be sued when someone uses their service to do something illegal — oh, whoops). However, the judge also went further pointing out that even if they weren’t covered by the CDA, she saw no reason to grant the injunction. She said Richter and OptInRealBig failed to prove its case that SpamCop was in any way libeling them, since SpamCop never states that their reports are definitely spam. Also, there was no evidence that the company acted with “malice” against OptIn. The judge also denied Richter’s request for emails from SpamCop claiming that giving Richter those addresses would be the equivalent of: “one who either intentionally or unintentionally sends pornography to minors, who then asks for a list of those minors so he will not continue to commit the crime.”