Anti-Spammers Distance Themselves from Mumma

Long before Oklahoma activist Mark Mumma began his legal losing streak, some anti-spammers say they told him he was headed down the wrong path and could even damage their cause.

Now that he’s lost multiple lawsuits in his anti-spam crusade, they’re shaking their heads in exasperation.

“I hope somebody obtains all the court documents and uses them as the ‘how not to behave’ section of a book on how to fight spam,” wrote anti-spam activist Al Iverson on his SpamResource.com Web site.

A jury two weeks ago awarded Omega World Travel $2.5 million in damages. The award came in a defamation suit the vacation marketer brought against Mumma after he threatened to sue unless the company paid him $6,250 for six e-mails he received from Omega subsidiary Cruise.com that he claimed were not solicited, and called its principals Gloria and Daniel Bohan spammers on a Web site he maintained.

In response to the defamation suit, Mumma sued Omega under the Can-Spam Act and Oklahoma law, but lost the case. An appeals court later upheld the ruling.

Omega’s lawyer, John Lawless, said his company was willing to settle the defamation suit with Mumma, but Mumma refused unless he was paid a “significant amount” of money.

After the $2.5 million judgment, Internet expert and anti-spam activist John Levine wrote on his technology blog: “This may be painted in some circles as a huge defeat for anti-spam activists, but it’s not. Mumma has been what one might call an intemperate litigant.”

However, while it may not be a huge defeat for anti-spam activists, at least one said Mumma’s multiple court defeats may make others’ efforts to wage legal war on spammers more difficult.

“Well before Cruise.com’s suit, many folks in Nanae [the anti-spam discussion group] publicly expressed their disapproval of Mumma’s Cruise.com page on his Web site. I did privately and I was scoffed at,” wrote anti-spam activist Robert Braver in a comment on Levine’s blog. “I also saw the Cruise.com emails and did a cursory check for a pattern of spam complaints. I determined that that e-mails did not in any way violate the Oklahoma statutes or Can-Spam, and told him so. I told him that pursuing such claims could also have negative consequences for others who are pursuing legitimate claims (such as me), and he derided me.”

Braver is an Internet service provider, also located in Oklahoma, and a long-time anti-spam and anti-junk fax activist. In 2005, he won a $10 million judgment against a bulk e-mailer named Robert Soloway.

In an interview with this newsletter, Braver reiterated that he warned Mumma his cases were too weak and could hurt other, more clear-cut efforts, such as Braver’s.

“I said, ‘especially when you’re dealing with a new law like this [the Can-Spam Act], you bring solid cases,’” Braver said. “There are so many bad actors out there … there are far more defendants than you could ever hope to go after. You go after the bad ones, bring a solid case, and once the law’s established and you have some case law, then you can start to go after the stuff that’s not as clear-cut.”