MySpace Wins 'Landmark' Judgment Against Spammers Who Want to be Your Friend

Posted by Eriq Gardner

It probably won't do much to ease the steady flow of junk e-mail to our inbox, but MySpace has just laid claim to the largest ever judgment against spammers.

After two of the Internet's most prominent spam defendants, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, failed to show up in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a judge awarded a default judgment of $234 million. Wallace, known to some as the "Spam King," and his cohort were accused of sending more than 730,000 messages to MySpace members. The News Corp.-owned social network brought suit under the federal anti-spam law known as CAN-SPAM. MySpace described the victory as a "landmark."

In other Internet legal news, eBay and Craigslist have traded punches in court. First, the online auction site sued Craigslist for making actions that "unfairly diluted eBay’s economic interest" in the company. Now, Craigslist has filed a countersuit, accusing eBay of "unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty."

Interesting because eBay owns a piece of Craigslist.

The trademark claim comes from accusations that eBay purchased keyword advertising on sites like Google, deceiving Internet users into thinking they were going to Craigslist when they were really directed to eBay and its subsidiary.