Not sure I'll be posting for a bit on spam, but I do aim to post the outcomes.
We have a long list of people spamming me, especially to the titanic.co.uk email address which is unequivocally a personal email address for myself as an individual subscriber. Many are from UK companies.
So we have the Huxley / SThree case - we are awaiting reply but expect to sue for breach of contract as they never adhered to their own settlement agreement which they even told the court was agreed.
We have the Deane case, which just got sillier and sillier until his "silver bullet" that I was shareholder and director of the owner of titanic.co.uk, something of a shock to poor Simon (who does own it). They have no defence now, and the ICO agrees we are right, so only issue is what to claim as damages and go to court.
We have a load of others, some I have claimed £5 or £10, some more. Some I have claimed by email. Some I have claimed by recorded delivery letter to registered office. The list is quite long. We have many awaiting any sort of reply.
We have the pre-action conduct directions, which I am trying to follow carefully, and give everyone the chance for ADR via discussion and negotiation before they settle or go to court.
We are also asking a local solictor about this - and I plan to pay for a short meeting to discuss the regulations, how I assess costs as an individual, and if there is a way that costs can be set in stone by a company paying compensation to the recipient under a contract and then itself claiming costs. We need to know what they think is valid, and moral, and will work in a court. There is no intent to rip off anyone here - we want, I want, a fair compensation for the significant hassle and costs caused by spam and I want spammers to be discouraged - all of the objectives of the legislation.
If I can come up for a formula for this - a way of approaching UK spammers, and issuing a county court claim, which basically makes the whole business model of spam in the UK fail, I will have achieved my goal. I expect some approaches to fail, and even some court cases may not go as planned, but unless someone is prepared to try this then the problem will just persist and grow.
So, over the coming months I expect to issue some county court claims and see how they go, and report back. In the mean time, back to censorship, cats, and other crap.
Update: OMG! Someone just spammed me on a personal email address trying to sell me TPS/MPS screening services.
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What pishes me off with the county court system in this country is the lack of guidance for judges in their treatment of LIP's. I've been in front of several and their attitudes ranged from extra-ordinarily helpful & supportive to an old duffer that dared recite the proverb "he that defends himself has a fool for a client"
ReplyDeleteIn that particular case I knew more relevant case law than either the judge or the shiny-faced barrister representing the clamping cowboys / landowner.
It's a pity precedents can't be set at County level.
Having said that about fools for clients the very first time I used the on-line / Northampton service I ended up paying to sue myself and had to beg the courts indulgence to reverse the claimant / defendant titles to avoid having to pay again!
Do you have any experience of the Money Claim Online process? I am in the process of using it to sue Three. My judgement has been "issued", but I am not sure what happens now, I was expecting something in the post to show that I have a judgment, but nothing has arrived so far.
ReplyDeleteps, trying to post this with OpenId I get "Your OpenID credentials could not be verified." It works with other sites.
You get a copy in the post and it should say how long they have to reply. They can acknowledge the claim so as to get longer to reply if they want, or reply accepting it, or partly accepting it, or defending it, or just not reply.
DeleteJust got the TPS/MPS screening service too.... Couldn't resist to send my version of Sect 22/30 compensation request!
ReplyDeleteQuick question, is there any similar legislation protecting non individual subscriber (ie: business/professional and even generic addresses (like info@abcd.co.uk))?
Thanks,
Stephane
Sadly I think not, but if the email address contains your name then there may be DPA implications.
DeleteBelated reply if anyone is reading this ... you cannot spam sole traders or partners who are individuals too. Spamming info@abc.co.uk would break the PECRs if ABC is a sole proprietorship.
ReplyDelete