spambag.org - Fusepoint legal threat

2/27/03 - It took some time, but the first legal threat is in. And, boy, did I hit the cartooney jackpot. Not one, but two sets of lawyers at once.

The story begins on 2/13/2003, when I got spammed by Gotmarketing. Gotmarketing already spammed me several times before, from other Internet providers. Very few actors in the spam industry manage to stay at one provider for a long time. They bring up a colo-ed box, or a circuit at one provider, generate complaints, and are forced to quickly pack their bags. Sometimes they manage to hang on for quite some time; but sometimes the providers are quick to pull the trigger and they must leave town quickly.

So, anyway, I already blocked the IP addresses Gotmarketing was spamming me from. Now, they began to use a new IP address that was apparently assigned to a Canadian provider called roundhaven.com. So, I quickly blocked that IP address from sending me mail, and sent my usual complaint to roundhaven.com.

A week later I receive an obvious form letter, claiming that they need 45 days to pull the plug. Now, look at my reply. It wasn't inflammatory by any stretch of imagination. It was mostly an "oh, well, you're going to let your customer spam for 45 days, so be it" kind of a repsonse.

Well, that innocent, one paragraph response made all the hell break loose. The next thing I know, these guys send not one, but two Fedexes. Here's the icing on the cake: in their zeal, instead of addressing it to spambag.org's mailing address, these guys apparently Fedexed a pair of addresses they got out of a phonebook.

One address was my street address in a very rural area. It's a house that I'm in the process of selling. I'm not there during the day, making things rather difficult. The second copy went to a completely different city.

These guys were so anxious for an answer that they, originally, gave me only one business day to respond. But it took a week for their demand letter to get here. The published mailing address would've been much, much quicker.

This demand letter must set a record of sorts. It's five pages long. It's not one, but two demand letters at once. First, there's a three-page monologue from roundhaven.com's Canadian lawyer. Then, because allegedly I did not respond to their Canadian's lawyers demands, there's a demand letter from an American law firm. The American letter is dated one business day after the Canadian letter, and I never received the Canadian letter in the first place, until now.

I can almost hear "The Merry Go-Round Broke Down", playing in the background.

Anyway, here's the good stuff:

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5

Anyway, while deciphering all of that one thing kept nagging me - they claimed that I blocked an entire /24 block, instead of a single IP address (which I did). I finally managed to figure it out just before I replied to this joke of a demand letter. Read my reply for the punchline.


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