In a landmark judgment, MySpace has been awarded $230 million in its suit against the so-called Spam King, Sanford Wallace and his partner Walter Rines. The decision, handed down in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday, is the largest award so far since the CAN-SPAM Act was introduced in 2003.

MySpace decided to sue when it discovered the duo had lured MySpace users into revealing their login information through phishing sites. After obtaining user IDs and passwords, the pair distributed messages to the users’ friends list with links to various Web sites involving gambling, pornography and ringtones.

According to court documents, Wallace and Rines distributed 735,925 messages during the scam and earned over $500,000 in the process. The spam campaign caused hundreds of complaints and a big headache for MySpace, especially since the spam indiscriminately sent pornography links to minors as well as adults.

The federal judge in the case fined the spam partners the maximum amount under the law. CAN-SPAM allows for fines of $100 per message and that number can be tripled for particularly abusive practices. The pair were fined $163.4 million under two parts of CAN-SPAM, Rines was singled out for an extra $63.4 million, $1.5 million was for violating California’s anti-phishing laws. Rines and Wallace were also ordered to pay another $4.7 million for incurred legal fees.

A Legacy of Spamming and Litigation

Sanford Wallace is a spamming legend. Over the years he has run various companies including Spambot.net, Cyber Promotions, and Seismic Entertainment Productions - all have faced litigation. In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission won a judgment against Wallace for $4 million for a spyware-related scam. Wallace also made news in 1996, when he was blacklisted and refused service by several Internet Service Providers including AOL and Compuserve.

Can One Spam-Busting Suit Make a Difference?

The judgement against Wallace may seem to be a historic case and a warning to other spam-based businesses out there. But will it really work? MySpace thinks so. In an interview with the Associated Press, MySpace’s security chief, Hemanshu Nigam, said, “Anybody who’s been thinking about engaging in spam are going to say ‘Wow, I better not go there’.”

That sentiment seems doubtful to me. According to The Register Wallace’s last known location was Las Vegas, but his current whereabouts are unknown; so collecting the money will be next to impossible. It may send a message, but it only works if you can actually punish the perpetrators.

CREDIT - PC World contributor Ian Paul

New ‘deadly’ sexual enhancement products have been found in Singaporean markets and can cause serious side effects on users.

The Health Sciences Authority (HSA) announced the presence of the illegal drugs, known as Power 1 Walnut, Santi bovine penis erecting capsule, Zhong Hua Niu Bian and fake Cialis, which have been discovered over the past 3 months. Santi bovine penis erecting capsule has been found to contain high amounts of glibenclamide, a potent drug used to treat diabetes. The tablets also contain sildenafil and tadalafil - potent western medicines used to treat erectile dysfunction. Zhong Hua Niu Bian also contains sildenafil and glibenclamide.

High consumption of the tablets can be potentially deadly as the glibenclamide in the capsules can lead to drastically reduced blood sugar levels which can lead to seizures, stroke, coma or death. Consuming half of a Power 1 Walnut capsule has led to unconsciousness and frothing at the mouth.

Consumption of Power 1 Walnut has led to the death of a middle age man last week who fell into a coma. Currently, one death and two cases of coma have been reported from the total of 89 hospitalised cases linked with the consumption of the illegal drugs. It has been revealed that patients obtained the drugs by purchasing them from illegal peddlers located in various parts of Singapore.

The HSA has advised people to stop consuming the drugs and to report on any cases of consumption to them.

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

ProfitX is an emerging affiliate program with a hot new site that webmasters and surfers are already flocking to. Have you seen VideoSexperts.com yet? If you haven’t you are missing out on a truly original web concept. The site offers unlimited downloadable or streaming video files for over 2000+ DVD quality videos. That’s impressive but not really creative. Where the VideoSexperts site really breaks the standard mold most other sites are made from is in the level of interactivity that members are treated to.

Any member can choose to take on the role of being a ‘Sexpert’ by entering their own unique review of scenes, movies and starlets performing on the site. In essence the site allows frustrated surfers to voice their opinion and be more than members, it allows them to be expert critics. The site dynamically records the review data entered by Sexperts and assigns values to it which assists ProfitX in evolving the site specifically to please the needs and desires of paying customers. During extensive pre-launch testing and since the site went live earlier this year the effect on retention has been significant. The more a member invests their time, thought and energy into the site… the more the site becomes a part of their own sexual creativity.
More importantly, as more than one Sexpert reviews a DVD title, that particular movie takes on a dynamic ranking of its own as determined by the site’s members. Members can then look for “other recommended titles” by a Sexpert whose views they agree with…. And that leads to outspoken members attempting to recruit and retain shy members. Plans are already in the works to host contests and thank top rates Sexperts with a free month or other desirable rewards. For many, the underground celebrity status that comes along with being a top Sexpert is often thanks enough.
Of course none of this would work on a mediocre website, but VideoSexpert.com is built upon a solid foundation of top quality content, daily updates, a crisp clean design and years of experience operating successful paysites. It also helps that ProfitX is backed by top-notch customer service and has a wealth of excellent promo tools custom designed by the award-winning designers of AdultDesign.com.
Customizable Flash-Scrollers, flash players, and a V-tuner make the promo tools available for affiliates to promote VideoSexperts almost as unique as the site itself is for surfers to enjoy. Visit ProfitX.com or contact ProfitX for your own personal walk-through of the site and the ways in which you can easily promote it on your own sites.
It is not often seeing a site these days leaves the viewer thinking ‘Hey, I’ve never seen anyone do that before.’ However, both the VideoSexperts surfer site and the ProfitX webmaster affiliate site are having that effect on a lot of surfers and webmasters these days. Don’t take our word for it… see for yourself!

The popular video website YouTube has been blocked in Turkey once more. Several sources quote complaints against a video that insults Atatürk, founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, as the reason for the block. On Friday, internet users in Turkey found the website replaced by a notice saying:

“ Access to this web site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2008/55 of T.R. Ankara 12th Criminal Court of Peace. ”

A Turkish court issued a similar order in March last year, after a row between Turkish and Greek users escalated and resulted in insults of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. Insulting Atatürk is a serious offense in Turkey. Internet service providers such as Türk Telekom (the largest and formerly state-owned ISP) can use the domain name system to put the ban into effect.

At the moment, it remains unclear which videos or comments exactly are to blame. Some media sources say that the video compared Atatürk with a monkey. This led some YouTube users to suspect that a video entitled ‘ataturk was a gay and a monkey turkey turkiye turks’ led to the block. This video was added on November 7, 2007, and is a series of images with Atatürk’s face on monkeys, homosexuals, obese individuals and several pictures of Borat. The uploader of the video, known as gaymal45, has several other videos which mock Prime Minister Erdogan and President Abdullah Gül.

Under article 301 of the Turkish penal code, public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk, and other national symbols, is punishable by imprisonment. The article received a lot of attention because it resulted in the prosecution of intellectuals like Literature Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk and murdered journalist Hrant Dink.

It is also unclear how long the ban would last. The ban in March was lifted after 3 days, when YouTube sent evidence to the Turkish prosecutor that the video had been removed.

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

Apparently the RIAA is so busy suing consumers that they forgot to hire a decent programmer. With a simple SQL injection, all their propaganda has been successfully wiped from the site.

It started out on the social news website Reddit, where a link to a really slow SQL query was posted. While the Reddit users were trying to kill the RIAA server, someone allegedly decided to up the ante and wipe the site’s entire database.

The comments on Reddit are only speculation so far. Based on the username, which was apparently “webReadOnly”, it might not have been setup correctly, or someone could have found another way to delete the content form the site.

Another possibility is that the RIAA themselves removed the content temporarily. This would seem unlikely, as a better solution would be to take it entirely offline to fix the bigger problem. While they could fix a small vulnerability like this in a matter of seconds, the chances are it’s not an isolated problem.

As pointed out by Haywire, playing around with the urls a bit can return some funny results. It is pretty easy to make the RIAA link to The Pirate Bay for example.

For now it sure does look like all the content has been wiped from the RIAA homepage. Let’s hope they have backups, or not.

LOS ANGELES — Social networking giant MySpace has entered into an agreement with 49 states that includes the elimination of all links to adult websites, according to one state Attorney General who has signed on to the plan.

The move is part of a plan to fight online predators targeting children, and according to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, includes a commitment by MySpace to “Obtain and constantly update a list of pornographic web sites and regularly sever any links between them and MySpace.”

“Kids face a real danger on web sites like MySpace because they never know who they are communicating with online,” Shurtleff said. “This agreement recognizes the intentions of MySpace to make improvements but it is my hope that all social networking sites will find additional ways to protect children.”

Such a move would pose further challenges for legitimate adult marketers that rely on receiving traffic from these popular portals to fuel their websites ? an especially popular option for solo-model and personality website owners.

As part of its agreement with the state attorneys general, MySpace will:

–Strengthen software identifying underage users;
–Retain a contractor to identify and eliminate inappropriate images;
–Allow parents to send their child’s e-mail address so MySpace can restrict the child from signing in or creating a profile;
–Obtain and constantly update a list of pornographic web sites and regularly sever any links between them and MySpace;
–Create a closed “high school” section for users under 18;
–Implement changes making it harder for adults to contact children;
–Dedicate resources to educating children and parents about online safety;
–Provide a way to report abuse on every content page, consider adopting a common mechanism to report abuse and respond within 72 hours to abuse reports.
–MySpace will also create and lead an Internet Safety Technical Task Force; which in conjunction with the attorneys general and other social networking sites, experts and groups will develop improved Internet safety practices.

Reports will be issued quarterly, with a report on the group’s formal findings and recommendations planned for a late 2008 release.

via Xbiz

Today PCWorld.com published an article about the threat of free video sites to the porn industry. The industry doesn’t have only competition of pro’s but from amateurs as well. This article is an interesting read, especially for the content webmasters here. I won’t copy the article due to copyright of Reuters. Instead I will post the url to the article where there is information about Vivid (and the AEBN lawsuit), some quotes from XTube.com, a vision of the future of the porn industry and the potential to go mobile with porn. To read the whole article:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141315-pg,1/article.html# 

A statement from the company on Saturday gave no further details on the accident.

Wang joined the company as CFO in September 2004; he’d previously been a partner at the accounting and consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

Wang also sat as an independent director and chairman of the board’s audit committee at WuXi PharmaTech
the Shanghai provider of outsourced drug-development services.

Baidu went public on Nasdaq in August 2005 at $27 a share; less than 21/2 years later, it’s trading at nearly 15 times its IPO price. Baidu said the CFO’s duties would be assumed by the company’s senior managers for now.

It looks like the porn industry is now also loosing money on pirating and tube sites. The big content making machines understands now that all the surfers want is just some five minute wanking material. The new generation of tube sites like XTube, RedTube, FuckTube and PornoTube is popping up all over the Internet giving the viewers of adult content just what they are looking for in short clips for free.

 First one out to sue everybody is Vivid Entertainment Group. Last month they filed a lawsuit in Los Angles federal court against the adult site PornoTube and its owners, Data Conversions, which does business ad AEBN Inc.

It’s said that the lawsuit is very similar to the one files by Viacom against YouTube this year. But YouTube managed to work out deals with everyone suing them, sharing revenue generated while their clips still playing.

“We’ve decided to take a stand and say ‘no more’,” Vivid co-Chairman Steven Hirsch told the L.A. Times. “We will go after all the free sites.” Hirsch said he was not interested in making a deal similar to the ones YouTube has made. “I can’t be a policeman, and I don’t intend to be,” Hirsch said.

There is also another problem that the Vivid Entertainment Group has with PornoTube sites. Vivid is required by law to record the ages and birth names of its performers. And as we all know PornoTube sites does not always comply with that law and therefor they have an unfair competitive advantage, according to the lawsuit.

Farley Cahen, publisher of Adult Video News Online, said. “There are longer and longer clips that are free, and companies are at a loss over what to do.”

Vivid Entertainment Group suit is asking for damages of  $150,000 for each infringing clip.

It is being reported that Facebook may not be allowed the clout they have been receiving recently after all. Tomorrow, Google will begin heading up an alliance of social networks that will begin opening up their sites to outside software developers. This group will introduce a common set of standards for this practice, according to The New York Times.

The group includes Orkut, LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning. Since it opened its site to outside developers last spring, Facebook has had over 5,000 small programs built to run on its site.

The plan was supposed to be unveiled at a Google party tomorrow night, but people briefed on this, let the New York Times know about it and Google confirmed to the publication.

An anonymous source said to the NY Times “It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook.” OpenSocial as the platform will be known is “compatible across all the companies,” according to that same source.

The group will also include software makers Oracle and Salesforce.com. The aim is to expand the spectrum of social networks for developers so as Facebook does not hold a monopoly over this market, however for the time being it remains the platform of choice for developers and U.S. users.

Site in the alliance have a combined 100 million users, the report continues, which is over twice as many users as Facebook. Expected at the event at the Google headquarters are the developers of popular Facebook apps like Slide, iLike, Frixter and RockYou.

Eric E. Schmidt, CEO of Google was quoted in the NY Times to say “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real. If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

Google has ad deals with many social networks, as well as a $900 million deal to sell ads on MySpace. There is also money coming Google’s way through ads running on Facebook apps. This step towards dethroning Facebook, so to speak, is just more proof in the power behind the social network and social networking features. It is undeniable that we are in the age of the social network.

Story Care of ADOTAS