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MySpace was announced the winner of a $234 million lawsuit carried against two individuals, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, responsable for a huge series of junk mail sent to a large number of members of the social networking site.
According to some court records, the two managed to send out 735,925 messages and also earned more than $500,000 in the process. One of the main reasons for the large number of complaints was that some of the messages were sent to children and they contained links to pornographic sites. The rest of their junk mail presented a series of links to various Web sites with gambling and ringtones.
The ruling was given for the maximum fine amount allowed by the law. CAN-SPAM permits fines of $100 per message with the option to triple the amount in case of highly abusive practices. The two received a $164.4 million fine under two parts of CAN-SPAM, $1.5 million for violating the anti-phishing laws in the state of California, another $4.7 million for incurred legal fees and Rines is also demanded to pay an additional $63.4 million on his own.
"Anybody who's been thinking about engaging in spam are going to say 'Wow, I better not go there,'" said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer, according to the Associated Press.
The general opinion is that MySpace will not be paid, as the pair didn’t make an appearance in court and are currently nowhere to be found.
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