http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040430_112422.html

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Email marketer sues
anti-spam group Spamcop

By Wolfgang Gruener, Senior Editor

April 30, 2004 - 11:24 EST

San Francisco (CA) - Scott Richter, President of Email
marketing firm OptinRealBig.com, has filed suit against Ironport, which runs
the anti-spam website Spamcop. According to Richter, Spamcop's initiatives have
damaged the reputation of his company and forces ISPs to terminate contractual
agreements with OptinRealBig.com and its upstream providers.

If you receive spam, it's likely you receive emails from
Scott Richter, whose email marketing firm OptinRealBig.com claims to be one of
the nation's fastest growing email marketing firms. Still, Richter insists that
he is doing nothing wrong. To prove his point, he is not just defending himself
against current lawsuits against him. He now has files suit against Spamcop,
one of the most visible anti-spam groups out there.

"We are going to send a message," said Richter in
an email interview with Tom's Hardware Guide. The complaint filed alleges
"Tortuous Interference with Contract, Interference with Contractual
Relationship, Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage,
Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage, Unfair Competition,
Trade Libel and asked the Court for Injunctive Relief." Richter is asking
for $1 million in damages.

According to Richter, "Spamcop has engaged in conduct
which damaged Optin's reputation and forces ISPs to terminate their contractual
agreements with OPTIN and its upstream providers." The complaint alleges
that "prior to sending solicited complaints by consumers to the Optin's
originating ISP's, Spamcop alters the complaints it receives by removing the
email address of the person or entity seeking to be taken off a mailing list
thereby rendering the email anonymous."

Richter claims that because the complaints fail to identify
the original email sender, Optin cannot comply with the CAN-SPAM ACT, which
requires the sender of an email to remove the address of any person who does
not desire to receive any further email. Optin would have "no means to
determine if the recipient of the email has previously requested the
email," Richter said in a statement.

Ironport could not be reached for comment.

One year ago, email marketer Eddy Marin and his
Florida-based Emarketersamerica.org sued anti-spam group Spamhaus. Steve
Linford, director of Spamhaus, said the complaint was merely a SLAPP (Strategic
Lawsuit Against Public Participation) designed to intimidate antispam
activists. "All of the information and allegations contained in it are
false," Linford says. "One of the individuals being sued is my
brother who lives in Italy and doesn't even know what Spamhaus.org is," he
said to PCWorld.com. The case was dismissed "with prejudice" in
October 2003 by a Florida Court, indicating Marin's accusations were denied by
default, according to Spamhaus.

Scott Richter's 32-employee firm sends "several hundred
million emails" to Internet users using its own "only US-based
servers" as well as upstream providers. Richter claims that he is strictly
sending emails only to people who have signed up for his services on his website.
"If someone does not want our emails, we can be easily identified and
remove users from our list by request," he said.

Optinrealbig.com is currently the target of a lawsuit filed
by Microsoft and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in December of 2003.
In parallel lawsuits against Richter, the two parties say that his firm
conducted in illegal spam campaigns through 514 compromised IP addresses in 35
countries spanning six continents. He said that he already rejected an offer
from Spitzer to settle the case for $100,000. "Messing with us is a big
mistake," In a statement he describes the lawsuit as "PR stunt"
and "one of the worst smear campaigns against legitimate internet business
interests of recent times."