Could anyone sue spammers? After reading this article about the lawyer who sued companies solely because they sent him spam, I was wondering if anyone could follow his steps and do the same thing, and how one would do so. (I am not sure that one should do it, but whether or not anyone could do it would really interest me).
The lawyer referred to in that article is suing in his capacity as the recipient of spam emails under California's anti-spam law. Not every jurisdiction has a law like this. I'm from Australia. In Australia, when we make laws prohibiting something, the law usually appoints a government agency to administer the law and bring prosecutions under it, and fines are paid to the government. In contrast, America has a lot of these laws where affected individuals can sue and collect the fines personally. So under the Californian law, you can get $1,000 per email for particular kinds of spam even if you haven't actually suffered any real damage: California Business and Professions Code s 17529.5(b)(1)(B)(ii). How? You need to work out who sent the spam, get evidence to prove it, and file a claim in a Californian court. Apparently you can sue in small claims court, which saves you on filing fees. It helps if you have many email accounts, because then you will receive many emails and therefore can collect many fines. One of that lawyer's wins was in Balsam v Trancos (2012) in the Californian Court of Appeal. Another example of a judgment discussing the Californian anti-spam law is Bontrager v Showmark Media.
This seems to be a mix of question about law and a meta-question about this site, but I'll treat it as an on-topic question about law. The author of a question, or answer, owns the copyright to their contributions, and they can re-publish to their heart's content. Any user who posts here grants a license to SE and other users to use content posted here, so I don't have to ask you permission to quote you. As part of the permission granted by SE to use this website, you have agreed to &quot;follow the rules&quot; set by SE. There are many rules, some spelled out more clearly that others. For example, if you post a question, you indirectly agreed that your content can be upvoted or down-voted. Certain content can be &quot;closed&quot; and deleted, when the content is deemed to violate the rules in particular ways (is spam, porn, abuse, or judged to be poor-quality). Judgment (on different matters) can be rendered by community managers, moderators, or other users. The agreement is here, see especially here. If we take the post that you linked to, it is quite possible that it was deleted because it is not a general legal question, in violation of the acceptable use policy. If you want a historical analysis of your particular case, it should be asked on Law Meta.
That's a sad story. The answer to your question is: Yes. If your case is attractive enough then a lawyer might agree to represent it on a contingency basis. Contact lawyers in the jurisdiction where the fraudster has a physical, business, or legal presence. In the U.S. you can ask for referrals to lawyers from the state bar association, or you can call or email them or their firms directly. However, if the amount of potential damages is too small, or the prospects of collecting them too low, then you will probably not find any lawyer interested in taking the case on contingency. If the fraudster has left many victims then you might try to pool your cases to make legal action more attractive. You also might contact the state attorneys in his jurisdictions, as they will sometimes pursue cases against serial scofflaws.
You can absolutely sue the entity that operates EZpass because it is a private company and you have a monetary dispute with it (unless the agreement you entered into with EZpass to allow it to charge your credit card contains an arbitration clause). But, this would make no sense. Everybody agrees that you owe EZpass money for tolls that you admit that you incurred, and if you don't pay that you are clearly in the wrong. The fact that they weren't able to charge your credit card for some reason (who knows, maybe there's a typo in your records or the phone line had static at a critical moment when they tried to process the charge, it doesn't really matter why), doesn't mean that you don't owe them money for the tolls that you incurred and if the sue you at a time when you still owe money for that toll you will definitely lose. The only dispute is over the late fee. And, the dispute is that you have to pay something that you haven't actually paid. So, in the status quo, in which you haven't paid a late fee which you believe you don't owe, and you are winning for now. Generally speaking, one brings a lawsuit to change the status quo. EZpass is the party that claims you owe money and hasn't been paid, so ordinarily EZpass would sue you and not the other way around, because it wants to change the status quo. Now, realistically, bringing a lawsuit for a single late fee is insane. The filing fee alone is more than the late fee, you couldn't afford to hire a lawyer for twelve minutes without paying more than the cost of the late fee, and the contract with EZpass very likely doesn't allow you to get your attorneys' fees if you prevail. The bigger question, which might make a lawsuit worthwhile, is that if you don't pay your late fee, EZpass could ban you from using toll roads entirely and impose big fines that are authorized by your agreement with you if you do. In short, if you can't work it out with customer service reps and their managers at EZpass over the phone, you would be a complete fool to sue rather than to pay the late fee that you think was wrongly imposed. Not every battle, even when you are in the right, is worth fighting.
It's a gray area. You won't know for certain until a case is tried by a court. Regulatory bodies are notoriously assertive on the matter of jurisdiction. If there is a gray area, they often assert jurisdiction first, then let the judiciary limit their authority. Also, if you try to ask the regulatory body for an opinion or "permission" in advance (as a prudent person might think to do), they might offer you one if you are lucky. But they will most likely qualify it as "non-binding." In other words, they give themselves wiggle room to change their mind at a later time to file an action against you. The long and short of it is, the scenario you describe is likely to at least cost John Smith a fortune in legal fees to litigate the matter with the California authorities. So it would be prudent not to give the advice in the first place. Even if he were to ultimately eventually prevail on the action.
There are no laws requiring that any company must publish all opinions from its customers. I'll admit it's fundamentally dishonest to only publish the positives, but there's no prohibition against it either. Look at movie advertisements, for example. They'll paraphrase or selectively quote a review, citing only what seems to be positive, yet if you read the review and quote in context, you'll understand the review quite differently. How exactly would you police it if you were to require companies to publish all reviews? Would you have some kind of litmus test to determine whether the critique is justified and fair? How often do people post false reviews (good or bad), and how would you account for them? Company web sites offering reviews form their own customers are doing nothing more than using the web as an extension of their marketing, so one has to expect some manipulation of the information in order to present products and services in their best possible lights. Why, for example, would I tell you how much someone hates my product when my goal is to sell it to you? This is why it would be better to use independent third-party review sites that have no dog in the hunt when it comes to honest feedback about the companies they cover.
At least in theory an end user could be sued for infringing on a patent, especially a method claim. Given the cost of a patent lawsuit, this strikes me as extremely unlikely to happen though, unless the user in question were an extremely large company, or something on that order. Theoretically, the only difference between open-source software and proprietary software would be that availability of the source code makes it easier to prove use of a patent in open-source software. Releasing the software as open-source doesn't confer any immunity from patent law or anything like that though. Realistically, however, the chances of being sued for infringement if you're basically giving away the software in question are fairly remote. It rarely makes sense for a patent holder to spend millions of dollars on a lawsuit where they stand no chance of even recovering their cost (but no, that certainly should not be taken as legal advice that you're free to infringe on patents, or anything similar--in fact, none of this should be taken as legal advice at all). If you can actually prove that a technique was published or publicly known and used (e.g., in a product that was offered for sale) well before the patent was applied for, the patent is probably invalid (and if proven so in court, the case would normally be dismissed with prejudice, which basically means the patent holder wouldn't be able to sue anybody else for infringement of that patent). I'd note, however, that in my experience this is much less common than most people imagine--many look at (for example) the title of a patent, and assume it lacks originality because it refers to some well-known technique, and ignore the claims where it details the precise differences between the previously known technique and what the patent really covers. Just for example, the EFF used to have a web page talking about a (now long-since expired) patent on how to draw a cursor on screen. In an apparent attempt at scaring the unwary, they showed code they claimed infringed in the patent--despite the fact that the patent's "background of the invention" specifically cited the technique they showed as being previously known, and not covered by the patent.
Whether any person, provided that they are in full legal capacity (not a minor, not incapacitated etc.), needs a lawyer, is to be decided by that person. Even criminal defendants can be self-represented if they've got the balls for it — the law does not impose a requirement to have a lawyer when the person does not want it. Considerations as to whether to have a lawyer are very fact-specific and person-specific. Assuming that Steve is not literate in law, it would probably be good idea for him to get a lawyer before answering any questions. The facts are such that it is not totally impossible that he may be charged, especially if he inadvertently says something not in his favor, or otherwise says something favorable to McRobberface.