Last Friday, I mentioned that Florida’s Attorney General has sued a spammer as a result of information turned over in during discovery in a suit against a now discredited fuel booster.
Well, now North Carolina has jumped on the bandwagon
A Rowan County man has been sued by the state in its first case against “spam” e-mail, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper said Friday.Cooper’s complaint accuses Michael Abbott of Rockwell of violating the nearly two-year-old federal anti-spamming law in pitching a discredited fuel booster to hundreds of people nationwide last year.
The quote of the day belongs to Abbott’s wife, Telka:
Why can’t they pick on murdering people? Michael is an honest person. He would never hoo-doo nobody. Why’d they make a big deal over this?
It turns out that North Carolina officials found out about Abbott’s enterprise the same way that Florida officials did: As a result of their probe into FuelMax and Super FuelMax. This time, though, it appears that Abbott was part of the scheme — he wasn’t spamming solely on behalf of others, he had signed up to sell this stuff himself.
Well, it looks like the hoo-doo that he-doo so well has come turned into a bit of a hoo-ha for him.
TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL FIGHTS SPAMMERS TOO
Attorney General Greg
Abbott’s news releases on
White Buffalo Litigation
March 26, 2004
January 9, 2006
Attorney General Sues Prolific Spammers
Attorney General Sues
College Student Over Spam
August 9, 2005
AG’s Anti-spam lawsuit
(Original Petition)
http://www.faculty-rights-coalition.com/WhiteBuffaloCasenote.html
(see links to Greg Abbots materials enbedded in the case note on the UT
spammer case that recently made an unsuccessful trip to the Supreme Court, and the links in the right margin).
Somewhat ironically, the same Attorney General also required release of the student and faculty email addresses because they constitute a public record under the state’s Open Records Act aka Texas Public Information Act.
We’re all aware of the White Buffalo case. You, in fact, found this blog because White Buffalo got cited in a case in which you were a litigant, which prompted you to do a search for it.
White Buffalo, though, has no relevance to this case. The North Carolina and Florida cases here are linked through their discovery methods. Both people in these cases were selling the same bogus “fuel saver” and were discovered when the maker of the bogus product got sued and had to turn over their names.
Perhaps it is ironic that email addresses constitute public records that must be disclosed. But discovery of the addresses through a Public Information Act request does not extend permission to email the holders of those addresses.