AOL General Counsel Randall Boe said: "Congress gave us the necessary tools to pursue spammers with stiff penalties, and we in the industry didn't waste a moment – moving with speed and resolve to take advantage of the new law. Consumers should take note that the new law not only empowered us to help can the spam, but also to can the spammers as well - and we'll do that, one spam kingpin at a time if necessary."
Boe and his team are relying on the CAN-SPAM Act, an acronym of the US Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, which came into force on 1st January. It does not actually can or ban spam, but requires that spam sent to consumers includes a means of opting-out of the mailing list used by the sender.
The Act also provides for a national Do-Not-Spam list, bans the sending of fraudulent e-mails or unmarked sexually oriented e-mails, and provides for civil and criminal sanctions for those spammers who breach the rules. The penalties can range up to fines of $6 million and five years in prison in the most severe cases.
Unlike some more stringent state anti-spam laws, the CAN-SPAM Act does not permit individuals to take action themselves. The Act envisages actions being brought mainly by federal agencies and state attorneys general.
However, it also includes powers for ISPs that are adversely affected to bring civil lawsuits in any district court with jurisdiction over the spammer to stop further violations of the law and to recover damages. In some circumstances, this could be up to $300 for each unlawful e-mail sent.
The actions filed on Tuesday are the result of a collaboration between the four big ISPs that began in April last year, when AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! launched a campaign to fight spam. Earthlink joined shortly thereafter and the group has been working together with organisations across the industry to create technical standards and guidelines that will stop the worldwide flood of unsolicited commercial e-mail.
According to the ISPs, the targets of the lawsuits include some of America's most notorious spammers.
Each of the four companies filed legal complaints in federal courts in California, Georgia, Virginia and Washington state. The complaints allege the sending of hundreds of millions of unlawful e-mail messages to customers of the four networks. Some of the CAN-SPAM violations alleged in the complaints include:
Deceptive solicitations for a variety of products including get-rich-quick schemes, prescription drugs, pornography, instructions for conducting spam campaigns, banned CDs, mortgage loans, university diplomas, cable descramblers and other common types of unsolicited e mail;
Use of open proxies (sending spam through third-party computers to disguise their point of origin);
Falsified "from" e-mail addresses (spoofing);
Absence of a physical address in the e-mail; and
Absence of an electronic unsubscribe option.