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 nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
RSS