http://techdirt.com/articles/20080118/003803.shtml

Anti-Spammer Fined For DNS Lookup Of Spammer
from the ouch dept

Anti-spam activists often need to do quite a bit of hunting to track down the real identity of various spammers. Over the years, spammers have become increasingly adept at hiding from those trying to shine light on their activities. However, when one well-known anti-spammer used some standard whois and DNS lookup tools (the same kind many of us use every day) to find out the identity of a spammer, the spammer sued him... and won! The anti-spammer has to pay over $60,000 in fines, and possibly much more once lawyers' fees are added up. The judge ruled that some rather basic tools suddenly constituted "hacking" even though the details don't suggest any actual hacking. The anti-spammer simply used the tools available to get the information necessary. He didn't need to break through any security or do anything malicious to get the info. If you read the ruling, it sounds like a judge could define plenty of perfectly normal online activities as "hacking." Update: There's a good discussion in the comments, suggesting that there's a lot more going on here than is clear from the article itself. The judge's finding of facts suggest that the anti-spammer did some questionable things, including lying and ignoring an injunction -- which certainly hurt his case. However, others are suggesting that the judge's finding of facts are incorrect and there's much more to this story that will come out on appeal.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/anti_spam_activist_lawsuit/

Anti-spammer fined $60K for DNS lookup 'hack'
Whois also ruled dodgy by North Dakota court
By John Leyden → More by this author
Published Thursday 17th January 2008 19:05 GMT
Green Computing - Where do you stand?

David Ritz, the veteran American spam-fighter, has been hit by $60,000 in fines plus lawyers fees after losing a civil suit that accused him of illegal hacking.

Sierra Corporate Design, a North Dakota business run by alleged former spammer Jerry Reynolds, sued Ritz for hacking and trespass offences. Ritz was accused of conducting unauthorized whois and DNS lookups. Edward Falk, another anti-spam campaigner and operator of the "Spam Tracking Page", was named as co-defendant.

The complaint alleged that Ritz "hacked" servers owned by Sierra (which describes itself as a spec1alist web hosting and internet services firm), obtaining confidential internal network configuration data (using a zone transfer, host -l command) and domain name information (using whois) before publishing that data on the net. It was alleged that Falk assisted Ritz by republishing his findings. The case was originally filed in May 2005. An injunction, which allowed Sierra's lawyers to ask Google to purge its Usenet archives of "offending material" was issued in August 2005.

In October 2006, the North Dakota court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over Falk, a Californian resident, dismissing the suit against him. The case against Ritz proceeded.

Hearings in Fargo last October before Judge Cynthia Rothe-Seeger resulted in a surprise 11 January ruling (PDF, transcript with commentary) against Ritz. He was ordered to pay $53,000 in damages, a $10,000 fine for contempt against breaching an injunction and lawyers' fees, which could run into tens of thousands.

It's unclear if Ritz intends to appeal. His problems don't stop there because he faces possible criminal prosecution over the same supposed offences.

The case has sparked concern and support from the anti-spam community. "He [Ritz] got prosecuted for using the same Unix tools that the rest of us use all the time to troubleshoot problems, admin our systems, and track spammers," notes Reg reader Mark.

Supporters are urged to donate to a legal defense fund, set up to defend anti-spam activists against so-called SLAPP lawsuits (getting sued for speaking out on a matter of public concern).

In a separate case Reynolds sued Falk unsuccessfully for defamation for calling him a porn spammer.

Falk had accused Reynolds of involvement with Netzilla, for a time the single largest source of spam on Usenet. The published allegations led to the unsuccessful "John Doe" lawsuit against Falk in Reynolds' home town of Fargo, ND.

More background on the history of legal antagonism between Falk and Reynolds can be found at Falk's site here and elsewhere. ®
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Talk about NON-TECH Judges needing to KNOW something about TECH..
This is a Slap in the face.

Looking over the findings of the Court, it is pretty apparent that Ritz let his enthusiasm get the better of him. He overstepped himself in a number of ways and severely undermined his case.

It's all-in-all a fine lesson in how the law applies itself to the exact particulars of a case and does not - and cannot - address the underlying true justice or injustice at hand. Spammers are far more than an annoyance, they are actually evil. *

Stopping spammers is an admirable goal, but getting so carried away that you perjure yourself, violate direct court orders and leave tracks leading right back to your own door is downright reckless and stupid. If he had attacked them and stayed anonymous he would've accomplished a lot more. If he was willing to let his identity be known to all concerned, then he should've been very circumspect indeed in his actions.

Not good news.

_____________

* As I've mentioned elsewhere - killing another person is the unjust taking of one human lifetime; but when a person takes, deliberately and without their permission, tiny pieces of life away from a large number of people, we don't conceive of that as 'taking lives'. Yet if you cause the complete and total loss of 1/100,000th of a lifetime - to 100,000 different people - then you HAVE taken, wasted, made meaningless, ONE ENTIRE HUMAN LIFE, gone forever, unexperienced, unlived, squandered, destroyed.

Horrendous, disastrous floods, after all, are composed of nothing more than a huge number of mere tiny raindrops.

And this one piece of shit  spammer has taken many minutes, in many cases even hours, out of the lives of MILLIONS of people. In a way, he is a mass murderer. And here, due to the unwise overstepping of an anti-spam vigilante, he has just received formal, legal vindication of his absolutely, totally immoral acts.

The "justice" system, as others have noted, is not very good at delivering true justice.

"including lying and ignoring an injunction -- which certainly hurt his case."

That's the key right there -- never lie.  Ask Martha Stewart.  She got prison time for lying to the Feds, not the original infraction.

Is that like Hidden fee's...
$0,01 at a time and 100 corps hitting you Everyday of your life, taking 1 penny.  At $1 per day, $30 per month, $360 per year....
TIMES 1,000,000 people.  IS ALOT OF MONEY.

There was an entire Cage Match Topic dedicated to the question, "Why Are There Still Spammers?" and I don't feel I ever got any satisfactory answers to any of my questions.

In this case, courts are about laws, not justice. It's the American Way, created and perpetuated by hosebag lawyers.

I like The 3-Headed Cat™ analysis of scumbag spammers killing us all slowly, moment by moment, stealing our lives...

I also wonder what ever happens to An Eye For An Eye, when it would actually be appropriate?

30-30 or do you want it quiet.

Pocket nuke.

I have dirty words to say, as my COMPUTER CROAKED, with win 2000...

I have dirty words to say, as my COMPUTER CROAKED, with win 2000...

You have my condolences, ECA. If you want me to take over shooting the spammers, just let me know.

The problem is that I Would like ALL those programs, SITTING in the Win2000 area, to be FULLY installed and loaded under the Winxp side.
Yes I set it to dual boot, so I could recover..
I HATE recovering...

The problem is that I Would like ALL those programs, SITTING in the Win2000 area, to be FULLY installed and loaded under the Winxp side.
Yes I set it to dual boot, so I could recover..
I HATE recovering...

Remember the good old, primitive days when there was no such thing as a stupid damned Registry to screw up your computer and you could just back things up, including applications and when you restored them, they just worked and Windows found them and listed them for you?

That damned Registry is the root of all evil on Windoze machines and it has been for a long, long time. It's the stupidest damn thing anyone has ever done with an operating system and it made them trillions of dollars. I don't know what that means in the grand scheme of the universe.

Good luck with all the installs!

Nothing like an OS that spawns an entire industry of "registry inspection / cleanup / debug / fixit" tools.  I must have 3 or 4 and use 'em all.  Do your windows get dirty?  Darned right!!