Arguing that in the virtual world, people’s pseudonymous identities are as important as their corporeal counterparts, two science fiction and online personalities are seeking a new way to stem the flood of spam.
In a lawsuit filed two weeks ago, James MacDonald, a science fiction and fantasy author, and Jeffry Dwight, who together operate an online science fiction resource, charged that Carlos Lattin had illegally misappropriated Macdonald’s online name “yog” for business purposes – namely, increasing traffic to his own site. The suit, filed in Kings County, New York, also charges Lattin with trademark infringement, unfair competition, defamation, deceptive trade practices, and false designation of origin.
The New York suit comes as anti-spam sentiment is beginning to build up a national head of steam. Congress is considering two bills to make spam illegal and provide heavy fines for sending it. The Federal Trade Commission this summer held hearings on containing spam. In Pennsylvania, the attorney general’s office recently completed its initial investigation into addressing junk email from a law enforcement perspective. And in Texas, an anti-spam lawsuit against a hapless student charged – like Lattin – with using someone else’s name and return address as a blind for sending out spam is set to be heard in September.
Broken down, MacDonald and Dwight’s charges are another sally in the ongoing war against spam. Parallel to the efforts by the Pennsylvania attorney general and attorneys in Texas, they’re an attempt to bring the full weight of Industrial Age law to bear on a digital age problem: unsolicited, unwanted email, otherwise known as spam.
“Saying that the law can’t be used to police the Internet is the archaic pipe dream of pseudo anarchists,” said plaintiff’s attorney Stevens Miller, himself a computer and sci-fi aficionado. “It hasn’t been done before, but I believe that a particular New York statute that forbids people from using other people’s names for commercial purposes should be applicable to people’s online identies.”
Lattin’s alleged sin is using MacDonald’s pseudonym to spam fantasy aficionados. On 13 April, he supposedly sent out a list of recommended fantasy sites. The list included both www.sff.net, MacDonald and Dwight’s site, and www.fantasylink.com, Lattin’s own site. Shortly thereafter, MacDonald and Dwight began receiving hundreds of emails bounced back at them from bad addresses. They also found themselves on the receiving end of a fair amount of anti-spam bile.
Besides time put in clearing out the bounced spam and responding to enraged correspondents, Dwight and MacDonald contend that their credibility has suffered serious damage – an outcome that could easily have been predicted by anyone who had the slightest bit of knowledge about the online community’s attitude toward spam. “If you were competent enough to send spam attributed to someone else, you’d have to be ignorant beyond comprehension not to anticipate the kind of response you’d get from the online community,” Miller said. “So we believe this was a deliberate attempt to discredit the plaintiffs.”
Lattin, who has not yet responded to the suit, has until 2 September to do so.
