CAN-SPAM Act Keeps Price of Spamming Going Up

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that spammers who sent millions of illegal email messages – including sexually explicit messages – have paid $621,000 to settle charges that their practices violated federal laws.

According to the FTC complaint filed in January 2005, the defendants sold access to sexually explicit Web sites through spam. Four defendants control a network of corporations that own and operate the Web sites, payment systems, and servers used to distribute and sell sexually explicit content. One defendant was an affiliate hired to market the content from the Web sites. While the affiliate sent many of the emails that allegedly violated federal law, under the CAN-SPAM Act all of the defendants are responsible for the emails, including the defendants who paid others to send the emails on their behalf.

Details of the complaint are available here.

Also See: CAN-SPAM Act Hits Sexually Oriented Email
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