calling the legal advice team
I have recently been informed that “there is no legal ground (that I am aware of) on which you can stand with your payment requests.”
so, while i appreciate the votes of support and sincere thoughts from kynn, richard, matthew, kriselda, geekman, amy, pieter, chris and others, who have shared their thoughts in backchannels…. now i have a bit of a crisis for this theory of imposing cost on blogspammers.
my service provider received a complaint about my thank-you note and payment request to a spammer, and as a result, i’ve been asked to stop emailing people requesting payment, with the above justification.
so, i’m calling any lawyers within eye-shot of this post - help me craft functional, legal, and binding commercial applications license terms.
i think there are grounds here. i’m providing a service (hosting, storage, bandwidth, professional editorial review, and a prominent posting place), and in return demanding a fee. there should be a nice, simple way to explain that i expect payment for the services provided. i think there is probably a solid precedent for collecting fees for services.
i knew this was a quick hack, and full of holes, but i guess it’s time to get serious. if one complaint from a spammer is enough to shut down this experiment, the spammers have already won. ladies and gentlemen, pack up your blogs and go home.
All I do is click on the MT-Blacklist URL and forget about them.
On a practical level I find it hard to believe that you can do more than complain to an ISP or webhost. They probably won’t listen unless they get multiple complaints.
The heavy comment spammers are probably well-financed, they are often offshore and can easily shift through a host of domains in different countries. (I’ve backtracked various referral log spammers and they are usually overseas and sometimes when I block one IP address they will show back with a different one).
Not that I don’t wish you the best of luck.
Comment by Richard Evans Lee — December 30, 2003 @ 11:22 am
Imposing cost on blogspammers
Rojisan is hoping to craft a legally binding commercial usage license that will enable him to charge weblog comment spammers who abuse his weblog. Calling the legal advice team…
Trackback by Computer Toaster — December 30, 2003 @ 11:31 am
I would think (and mind you, I’m just a love advice columnist, not a legal eagle) that with the “Commercial Applications License Terms” above (and your “I agree to the terms above”), you’d be within your rights to sue and collect - if you can catch the slimedog.
Comment by Amy Alkon — January 3, 2004 @ 10:14 am