From the Reporters

Spammers Beware

 

In the largest anti-spam judgment to date, a California judge recently ordered a Los Angeles area company to pay $2 million for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail messages.

Santa Clara Superior Court Judge William F. Martin imposed the fine last week on PW Marketing LLC, an Internet advertising company.

Martin also banned the company's owners, Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin, from owning or managing a business advertising on the Internet without first notifying the state's attorney general, a restriction to remain in place for 10 years.

Prosecutors accused the company of sending millions of e-mails that, among other things, weren't identified as advertising in the subject line and didn't provide "opt-out" information for customers wanting off the mailing lists.

Spam-haters cheered the decision, the first such action under California's tough new anti-spam law. The state enacted its restrictions in an attempt to battle the still-rising tide of junk e-mail, which Ferris Research says costs businesses billions every year in lost productivity, network storage problems, and exposures to computer viruses.