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.
The junk fax law specifies treble damages when the junk faxer is in willful violation (e.g. he's been told to knock it off but continues).
Too bad... you lose.
That's $1,500 per fax. 1.5 billion unsolicited faxes may sound like a lot, but these junk fax outfits typically have hundreds of phone lines, and send millions of faxes per day.
How much trouble could one little tribble cause?
And how about the toner? That stuff's expensive!
Someone here on FR had several paragraphs from the US Code that appears to say that these junk faxes are illegal already. I printed it out and would send it back to those who sent the junk faxes. Then someone stole it. If anyone has it, could they please send me a copy? Thanks!
Carolyn
California Junk Fax Law (weaker, for now): B&P §17538.4
Of course, the plaintiff won't actually be able to extract more than the entire assets of the spamhaus company, but that's a different issue.
Carolyn
And don't forget the telemarketers too! I wonder if faxes are used much anymore (now in 2014). People tell me to just scan it and put it in an email.
In case you are wondering how I found this thread. . . I put 22 as a keyword on a thread (for .22 caliber), but it just leads to this one :)
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