Setting aside their rivalries to fight unwanted e-mail choking cyberspace, leading Internet companies announced they had sued hundreds of people suspected of sending unsolicited junk messages known as spam.
The legal actions by Microsoft Corp, America Online, Earthlink and Yahoo, represent the first major industry actions under the US federal "can spam" legislation that went into effect Jan. 1. The suits, which are aimed at shutting down the spammers, were filed on Wednesday in federal courts in California, Georgia, Virginia and Washington state.
Dozens of those named were identified only as "John Doe" defendants accused of e-mailing unwanted pitches for prescription drugs, herbal potions and weight loss plans. Lawyers expressed confidence they can work through the courts, using subpoenas and other investigative tools, to identify and find them.
"We've been doing this a long time, and we know what we're doing. We're only a couple subpoenas away from standing at someone's door and handing them a summons," said Les Seagraves, the assistant general counsel at Earthlink, which named 75 "John Doe" defendants in its lawsuits.
The recording industry has been remarkably successful in identifying Internet users in copyright infringement lawsuits, in most cases tracing a subscriber's unique Internet address.
But spammers are famously skillful at covering their tracks, often routing unwanted e-mail through hacked or unprotected computers overseas and working under aliases and shell companies, complicating efforts to trace and identify them.
Yahoo, for example, employed as one of its lawyers in these cases Marc Zwillinger, a former computer-crimes expert at the US Justice Department who investigated the high-profile Internet attacks in February 2000 by a Canadian teenager known as "Mafia Boy."
"It is a significant challenge," acknowledged Robert Wientzen, chief executive at the Direct Marketing Association, who said he supports the latest lawsuits.
He said companies are increasingly successful tracing spammers.
"We're making some progress with techniques and tools that are starting to pay some dividends," Wientzen said.
The four companies said the defendants include some of America's most notorious large-scale spammers. They said they shared information, resources and investigative information to identify some of them.
The ``can spam'' legislation requires unsolicited e-mails to include a mechanism so recipients could indicate they did not want future mass mailings.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS