Re: Why Spam is a problem

[claus at faerber.muc.de (Claus Färber)]

Jan Meijer <Jan.Meijer at surfnet.nl> schrieb/wrote:
>> BTW, national legislations don't seem to help much. I do get a lot of
>> national spam (i.e. in German language), although German laws forbid
>> sending unsolicited email (not explicitly, but the German Bundegerichts-
>> hof ruled it to fall under unfair competition laws).

> How many people/ISPs in Germany have actually sued German spammers?

This is another problem with antispam legislation: It does not pay to
sue spammers. You can only sue them individually and the damages you can
get are very low (less than a cent per message).

In Germany, you would have to pay several hundred EUR to bring forward
an action against a spammer (which you will get back if the spammer
loses the lawsuit and is not already bankrupt), which can only yield a
few cents damages and an injunction that this single spammer must not
send you any more spam (So you get one or two less pieces of spam per  
year...)

Claus
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