Dear Spammer:
I don’t have much time to read emails, and I especially don’t have much time to read unsolicited commercial emails. But I have decided to make an exception. If you would like to send me unsolicited commercial emails, then I agree to read them on the condition that you promise to pay me $500, and subject to the additional conditions mentioned below. You can accept this offer by sending unsolicited commercial email to me at mailto:[email protected]
In accepting this offer, you also agree (1) to be subject to the laws of California for the purpose of enforcing our contract, (2) to pay any costs, including attorney fees, incurred in enforcing our contract, (3) to pay your obligation under this agreement within 10 days of sending the email, by mailing a check to me at the address referenced in the Contact section of this site, and (4) to accept service and costs associated with any bill collector that I hire to help collect obligations owed me under this contract.
Good luck with your business.
Will this actually work??? If so, cool. 🙂
But haven’t you just solicited it?
Tom,
He didn’t ask that it be sent, he simply agreed to read it if it was sent.
-kd
this sounds all fine and well, but…
Most spam addresses are no longer active to receive a reply like this. Would a business still liable if they never received the contract?
Not likely, because has been no agreement to the terms as outlined…
Also, a contract is only legal between two persons (minors excluded)…a spam bot is not a person, and therefore, addressing the contract to the spam bot nullifies the contract.
My knowledge of contract law is limited. My guess, however, is that an offer is not accepted (and, therefore, no contract is formed) unless someone knowingly accepts the offer.
A spammer will never see professor Lessig’s offer, so sending an email to the included address could not constitute acceptance.
It’s a nice idea, though.
If I am allowed to build a spambot that ignores this contract, then wouldn’t I be allowed to build a bot that ignores clickthrough agreements as well?
This is beautiful. It’s hacking the legal system. I hope it works.
But isn’t the spambot acting as an agent for the individual or business who created it. I would have to believe that the owners of the bot have to be somewhat responsible for the consequences that it’s agent incurs while in the course of what it considers to be normal business.
oh, and does this work the same in Florida? 🙂
While I feel that spam is a problem which needs addressing, I beleive that “contracts” such as this should not be binding.
Obviously you cannot say something like “by following this link to my website you agree to pay me $1000 plus the costs associated with transfering the contents to your computer” and expect people to be bound by such terms. Unless some legal principle beyond the contract itself prohibits the person from accessing the website without permission (such as requiring authentication), the contract should not be valid. It’s illegal to take an item from a store without paying because that item belongs to the store and because it’s illegal to take something that belongs to another without permission. Unless it’s also illegal to follow a link without permission, my contract demanding $1000 from web-site visitors does not have the same strength as a store’s terms of sale.
Furthermore, even if there exists a legal principle that would allow you require permission for a given act, this does not mean you’re personally allowed to decide the circumstances under which the terms of a contract are legally binding. Just because you have a sign that reads “This is private property. By entering this property you agree to pay the owner $10,000.” doesn’t mean that you get to collect.
Why not, of course you can set the terms of the contract to whatever you want. The issue I think is on what constitutes acceptance.
From what little contract law I studied at University (VERY little), silence can not be deemed acceptence (in Australia at least).
Nice idea though. I’ve often thought of sending bills to KMart and their friends for all the crap they stick in my letter box.
Oh and I discovered another Americanised (note the “s” ;)) word this evening — “check”. The “correct” spelling is cheque. Interesting how the same language can have subtly different rules. 🙂
Cheers,
Ryan
All said and done but this won’t do anything nor change anything. I’m sure even my email address from this comments page will be spidered and then added to a list. All e-mails that go to [email protected] are moved to a ‘spam’ folder and it works quite well.
But it’s not the same as following a link, it’s sending unsolicited communications. Just as you have the right to demand junk faxers and telemarketers to stop calling, and they must, or face legal penalties, you also have a right not be harassed by being bombarded with tons of junk email.
IMO, spambots themselves should be illegal. The sole purpsoe of the bot is to scour the web for anything that resembles an email address so that the originator of the bot can send you things you have not asked to receive.
This does remind me of such a technique once employed by one of my friends. This however was used in the junk mail that came through his letterbox every single day.
He used whatever envelopes the company sent him to return them a letter. A letter stating that he wished not to recieve any more mailings from them or else he would charge the company �20 for reading it.
most of the mailings stopped, except for one company who sent about 4 letters.
My friend then mailed the company an invoice for the �80 they owed him as per his previous letter. And believe it onr not, they paid up. Whether this will work in the same way is another thing, but good luck if it does.
John
(Aka Tsietisin)
This is unlikely to be enforceable. First, it appears to be a unilateral offer, i.e. one that is accepted by performing the specified action (sending Larry spam). A unilateral offer can only be accepted if the person performing the action knows about the offer at the time. So Larry needs to prove that the person spamming him read the message before sending the spam in order to have any chance of enforcing the contract.
Secondly, it�s not clear what you�re accepting by sending him spam. As far as I can make out, the first paragraph says simply that, if you pay him $500, he will read your spam. But condition (3) implies that you have to pay him $500 simply to send him spam. Now that opens up a whole can of worms.
On one hand, if the deal is �if you you send me mail, you have to pay me�, then he doesn�t have to do anything under the deal, i.e. in legal terms there�s no consideration moving from his side and the contract is worthless. One the other hand, if the deal is �if you send me mail, then you have to send me a further $500 and I will read your email� means Larry has a contractual obligation to read all the spam that is sent him. This is also fatal to his attempt, since it�s a clear rule of contract law that you can�t �contract with the whole world� � his blog entry is thus nothing more than an invitation to treat rather than a contractual offer. If it was a contract, then he�d be in breach of contract for every piece spam he didn�t read.
Finally, if all he�s saying really is �if you send me spam, then you agree to pay me another $500 if you want me to read it�, well that won�t stop anyone spamming him. It just means that if they pay him $500, he promises to read all their spam (and they can sue him if he doesn�t). Note that the contract appears to be $500 for _all_ spam sent by the contracting party, not $500 per email.
Here�s my version: �By sending me an unsolicited commercial email, you agree that, in consideration of my maintaining [email protected] as a valid email address, you will pay me the sum of $500 for each further piece of unsolicited commercial email you choose to send me. This sum is to be paid within 10 days of sending the email. There shall be no obligation on my part to read or store such communications. This agreement will be terminated should the aforementioned email address be rendered invalid.�
Hmmm. Now that the e-mail address in question can be harvested from somewhere other than the original blog entry (i.e. the previous comment) is it not even harder to make the case that Lessig’s terms have necessarily been accepted if someone sends anything to that address?
This reminds me of something of that’s almost an every day occurance on my campus. People try to flag me down as I’m walking along, asking if I can “spare a moment for Greenpeace.” I usually reply with, “My rate is $50/hr…should I bother to stop walking?” I’ve had no takers, thus far.
-kd
Yes, the addresses here are harvested successfully. So far three spams to an address I first used four months ago. I haven’t decided whether I’ll turn it off or wait until it self-destructs after receiving 20 emails. Doesn’t bother me unduly because I use spamgourmet to automatically create new addresses periodically just by varying a date I use in the address.
AOL or an individual could presumably postal mail a service offer to a list of spammers and tell them the email address they should use if they want to test their spam filter avoidance techniques, with the spammer agreeing to pay $500 for each success reported to them and $100 for each failure. That would presumably constitute both prior knowledge and an exchange of value.
How about using an alternate address something like this: [email protected] and prosecuting the spammer for copyright infringement?
You could set this up so that each email received would trigger a signal that blended a goldfish, then see how long it took for the sender (or perhaps yourself) to be tracked down by an angry mob.
Jonathan – re your comment that “it�s a clear rule of contract law that you can�t ‘contract with the whole world,'” you might want to reread the Carbolic Smoke Ball case…