Ig winner spam king has big day in court
Sanford (“Spamford”) Wallace, the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize Winner in the field of communications (and also disco host), lost a court case yesterday, May 14, 2008. The Associated Press reports:
MySpace wins $230 million anti-spam judgment
By ANICK JESDANUN
NEW YORK (AP) ? A notorious “Spam King” and his partner now owe MySpace about $230 million in damages after a federal judge awarded the popular online hangout what is believed to be the largest anti-spam judgment ever….
U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins in Los Angeles ruled in MySpace’s favor Monday after Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines failed to show up for a court hearing.
Wallace earned the monikers “Spam King” and “Spamford” as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s. He left that company, Cyber Promotions, following lawsuits from leading Internet service providers such as Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, only to re-emerge in a spyware case that led to a $4 million federal judgment against him in 2006.
(Thanks to David Brooks for bringing Wallace’s disco career to our attention.)