Tech Lunch

Unkind people have been known to make jokes about a Scotsman and his wallet, but what about his email in-box? According to spam activist group, Scotch Spam, Gordon Dick, a marketing specialist from Edinburgh, has successfully sued an email marketing company for sending him unsolicited spam. In a story that was first picked up by Associated Press, Mr Dick won £1,368.66 (plus interest) in the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. To achieve this, Mr Dick made use of the UK’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

I think this interesting because, according to Scotch Spam, if all the thousands of recipients of the same spam message had also sued, then the total bill would be more than £54 million. Despite many technical innovations spam still remains a huge problem for the Internet – perhaps resorting to the law, and the power of the crowd, is the answer.

This entry was posted on March 8, 2007 at 11:22 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.