Scott Richter is telling people here at Affiliate Summit that not only is MySpace suing him but also they are suing over 50 other companies AND affiliates.
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Any paperwork that backs this up?
You know there is an incredible short term bias going on here- this guy is nothing but a spammer and this kind of thing is wrecking things for most of the people pursuing a livelihood on the web. Spammers go for fast bucks while leaving behind a scorched landscape incapable of supporting life…
Now it’s getting ugly… has there every been a case like this before? I haven’t heard of affiliates themselvse getting sued…
OMG. Is myspace trying set some warning to spammers, myspace marketers?
I wonder if they’re going after affiliate that spammed comments on myspace account with “paid survey opportunities”.
The funny part is that this was going on since MySpace started.
Anymore on this story anywhere?
Again – lets not get too ahead of ourselves. Scott says all kinds of things. But until we see some paper work that says that i think i’ll save the dime I may have otherwise used to call a lawyer.
The only other specifics i have seen in naming names was in a ClickZ article (and I read ALL the articles I could find).
“co-conspirators Marat Nigmatzyanov, Yevgeniy Leschinskiy and other unnamed collaborators”
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624642
Seems those are just specific affiliates who I suppose were going hard.
Anyway… the facts will all come out in the next few days.
Makes one wonder why craigslist hasn’t done this yet
CL: Remove’s the shit pretty quick from what I’ve seen… maybe not though ?
They’re making these moves in an effort to clean up their act. I can’t find solid proof of numbers of affiliates being sued, but I know they’ve gone after others…
From: TechNewsWorld
The company has already settled several earlier lawsuits, including one against the distributor of an automated Internet Free How-To Guide for Small Business Web Strategies - from domain name selection to site promotion. bot that sent spam to MySpace users, and a federal suit that was lodged against an affiliate program being promoted via spamming.In addition, the company sued TGLO/The Globe for allegedly spamming MySpace users and violating the site's terms of use agreement. It has also helped law enforcement agencies pursue criminal action against other spammers.
How the hell is this alike craigs at all? Last I checked, people weren’t phishing craigslist accounts were they? Craigslist has their spam problem pretty well taken care of, and I’d honestly like to see someone get in trouble for posting free ads on a free classifieds site.
In my opinion, I think Scott Richter deserves everything coming to him.
Suing them for what? Violating their terms and conditions wouldn’t be against the law would it? (I’m just guessing that’s what the reasoning is, but I don’t know.)
The fine will be paid and things will move on. I have a feeling all the people that spammed in big amounts made wayyyyyyy more than 20 million. But it will make a statement.
The big question is whether this little act will do anything more than scare off the multitude of pseudo-spammers because the big fish will still find a way to hide themselves and keep doing it.
Myspace.com is Spam in its self and was created by spammers. I saw banner on there today “your our 1millionth hit click here for free laptop. Spam is what’s driving myspace. If you eliminated the people promoting there business, bands with friend adders, poker affiliates, you would be left with a bunch of teenagers with private profiles.
If there was any news paper story then I would have linked that.
For now its just what i said… he is telling people that at affiliate summit
I think what they are trying to say is that he posted on the bulletins that he didn’t have access to; had they been his friends it’d be a simple TOS and the worst they could do is boot him off…just IMHO, but since I haven’t seen any legal workup, I’ll assume that their suit is more about the unauthorized use of the bulletins than the advertisements themselves.
I know they state “phishing” but is that the reason? Theoretically, I could create 9 bazillion different accounts (all appearing to be different people) and add gazillions of friends to send googols of bulletins and comments every day…and still not break any laws (to the best of my knowledge). I guess that might LOOK like phishing to a prosecutor and judge not savvy enough to look deeper…
It is probably easier to sue 50 and discourage thousands than it is to develop real anti-spam techniques.
My Myspace acct was phished with a look alike login screen, however once I left the login screen my PC was plastered with spyware and pop ups. Later that day I went to check my bank acct online and was served a pop-up from this spyware asking for my bank login information. I didnt fall for it this time but it shows how crooked these people are and what they are after.
Yeah, honestly myspace should take that money and spend it on more anti-spam techniques on their system to better up the security at the same time.