Posted on 08/22/2002 9:03:12 PM PDT by martin_fierro
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A coalition of California activists filed a jaw-dropping $2.2 trillion set of lawsuits against facsimile marketer Fax.com Thursday, saying millions of "junk faxes" are clogging the nation's fax machines, jamming communications and possibly endangering lives.
The suits, filed in both California state and federal court, seek class action status and punitive damages against privately held Fax.com, its telecommunications provider, Cox Business Services, a division of Cox Communications Inc. (NYSE:COX - News), as well as Fax.com's advertisers.
"The right to free speech stops at the entrance to my house. You are not allowed to invade my privacy and to use my resources to send your message," said Steve Kirsch, a long-time Internet entrepreneur and philanthropist who announced the lawsuits on Thursday.
The lawsuits accuse all the named companies of violating federal laws prohibiting "junk" faxes -- unsolicited advertisements or announcements which "broadcast" to millions of personal, corporate and government facsimile machines.
Fax.com, in a statement, rejected the lawsuits as "unfounded and absurd" and said it had the constitutional right to advertise by fax.
But in a decision earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission proposed fining Fax.com $5.38 million for sending unsolicited advertisements by fax, the largest fine ever proposed for such a violation.
Lawyers in the California lawsuits said they would seek a minimum statutory remedy of $500 per fax from every advertiser who used Fax.com to send out unsolicited advertisements over the past four years.
"We believe that there are companies with substantial assets in this group. We will seek treble damages of $1,500 per unsolicited fax from Fax.com and Cox Communications," Kirsch said in a statement.
Fax.com's president, Kevin Katz, said the suit was aimed at intimidating his company's customers -- many of whom are small business owners who rely on faxing as an affordable and effective method of advertising. He also said the suits ignored the public service Fax.com performs by mass faxing missing children alerts.
"I am dismayed by the outrageous charges leveled in the suit," Katz said. "To claim that a single fax endangers lives is bizarre."
Officials at Cox Communications did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.
"WAR DIALING" HITS HOSPITALS
The lawsuits were announced at a news conference at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif., where officials said they had also been bombarded with junk fax advertisements sent by computer "war dialing" programs that can target numerous facsimile machines simultaneously.
"We have between 80 and 100 different fax machines in the hospital. In one fax machine which we monitored for a period of about four months we received over 500 junk faxes," said Mark Zielazinski, the hospital's chief information officer.
In Washington state, the University of Washington Medical Center was almost shut down by a "war dialing" assault mounted by a facsimile broadcaster.
"In the past year, Fax.com made over 1,000 telephone calls at once to the University of Washington Medical Center," center spokesman Walter Neary said, adding that the center had since joined with Washington's state attorney general to file suit against the Fax.com.
Kirsch, who founded Infoseek Corp. before it was acquired by Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS - News), and now heads Propel Software Corp., has launched a Web site, www.junkfax.org, to tell people how to get off fax marketers' lists.
Federal law allows at least $500 for each offending FAX transmission. Those can really add up over time.
Then don't hook a telecommunications device into a public telephone network.
Killer paper cuts!
PErsonally I agree with people about the fact that spam is pretty annoying, but bear in mind that your telephone is analagous to a mailbox. You get shopping flyers right ? It's just another minor annoyance that has to be tolerated.
The analogy breaks down here, because I'm not being forced to pay for printing up the shopping flyers in the mailbox.
You are missing the main difference between a mailbox and telephone, e-mail, and fax.
With a mailbox
With telephone, fax, & e-mail
E-mail mailboxes have a size limit. Ads take up your e-mail space allotment on the e-mail server. Making it more likely that a legitimate message will not be delivered because your mailbox is full. The same is true for cell phone mailboxes and answering machines, they all have a limited message capacity.
Kirsch, who founded Infoseek Corp. before it was acquired by Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS - News), and now heads Propel Software Corp., has launched a Web site, www.junkfax.org, to tell people how to get off fax marketers' lists.
To the Winbloze users out there: Has anyone tried the Propel Accelerator for DUNs yet? I think it's rather good and at the price they want per month for it, affordable for those without broadband access. The trial version does leave some nasty little reg entries(as does most 'dose software) after uninstalling the program, so be on the look out after removal.
I respectfully disagree. If I personally call you up at your house and start bugging you, and you tell me not to call you back, and I continue to call you back, that is harrassment, and that is a crime.
It's time to apply the same rule to these businesses that we already apply to individual people.
Why on God's green earth is this a "problem" (well, other than the fact that they would be subjected to bankruptcy law rather than something more deserved, such as shia'ra law).
Graffitist: Then don't put your house on a public street, d00d. [picks up spray can and resumes]
Not at all. The law sets forth a certain monetary penalty per violation; the defendant has (allegedly) sent out a certain number of spam fax spews to a certain number of targets. I know the education system has been going to hell, but people do still understand the concept of "multiplication", right?
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