AOL Wins Spam Suits, Files Another

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March 05, 1998 (12:00 AM EST)

By John Borland,

America Online reached a high point in its court battles against online bulk e-mailers Thursday, announcing it had settled lawsuits against two bulk e-mail companies and filed suit against a new pornographic advertiser.

Officials said that a federal judge had ruled for America Online in its suit against Prime Data Worldnet Systems, barring the company from sending bulk e-mail to AOL subscribers.

AOL also said the target of another suit, Squeaky Clean Marketing of Dallas, Ga., had agreed to a permanent injunction restricting it from sending unsolicited e-mail to AOL members. Squeaky Clean also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum in damages.

Meanwhile, the company's legal team turned their sights on a new spammer, operating under the names Web Communications and Sex Web, which officials said had bombarded members' mailboxes with pornographic advertisements. The bulk mailer had advertised sexually explicit services under names such as AOLsex.com, violating America Online's trademark, the lawsuit alleges.

"The conduct of these defendants has been nothing short of outrageous," said AOL senior vice president and general counsel George Vradenburg in a statement Thursday. "They have deliberately exploited AOL's name in a manner calculated to suggest that AOL somehow endorsed their pornographic websites, when nothing could be further from the truth."

But while AOL successes mount up in court, the targets of their suits say the victories are driving spammers further underground.

"I think what's happening, if anything, is they're forcing companies to act in a rogue fashion," said Rick Lee, president of Las Vegas-based Over The Air Marketing, one of the first bulk e-mailers to settle with AOL. "I don't think that's helpful to the Internet in general."

Start-up spammers are taking the example of Over The Air, Prime Data, and the other targets of AOL lawsuits to make their physical world businesses as untraceable as possible, Lee said. "I think they have an attitude of 'Look what's happened to these people when they tried to do it right.' I think that's made AOL's job a little harder."

To combat the problem, AOL and other enemies of spam have taken their battles to federal and state legislatures, and are conducting a full-press public relations campaign against unsolicited e-mail.

Four separate anti-spam bills have been introduced in Congress -- ranging from an out-and-out ban on unsolicited bulk e-mail to a measure requiring such advertisements to be clearly labeled. Similar bills have been introduced in at least ten states around the country. AOL has not formally endorsed any of the bills, but is working with several of the legislative sponsors, company officials have said.