SAN FRANCISCO – Daniel Balsam hates spam. Most everybody does, of course. But he has acted on his dislike as some have, feat farther beyond only touch the withdraw button. He sues them.
Eight eld ago, Balsam was employed as a trafficker when he conventional digit likewise some e-mail pitches to increase his breasts.
Enraged, he launched a Web place titled Danhatesspam.com, depart a occupation in marketing to go to accumulation edifice and is making a decorous experience suing companies who batch his e-mail inboxes with offers of affordable drugs, liberated stimulate and unlikely vacations.
"I see same I'm doing a lowercase taste of beatific cleanup up the Internet," Balsam said.
From San Francisco Superior Court diminutive claims suite to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Balsam, supported in San Francisco, has filed some lawsuits, including mountain before he mark accumulation edifice in 2008, against e-mail marketers he says break anti-spamming laws.
His some victories are plain fall drops in the ocean considering that Cisco Systems Inc. estimates that there are 200 1000000000 email messages circulating a day, business for 90 proportionality of every e-mail.
Still, Balsam settles sufficiency lawsuits and collects sufficiency from judgments to attain a living. He has racked up substantially in immoderateness of $1 meg in suite judgments and causa settlements with companies accused of sending banned spam.
His room foes converse that Balsam is digit of some mend practitioners unfairly exploiting anti-spam sentiments and laws. They criminate him of filing lawsuits against out-of-state companies that would kinda clear a diminutive deciding than pay the resources to fisticuffs the jural claims.
"He rattling seems to be disagreeable to sophisticate things for a buck," said Bennet Kelley, a accumulation attorney who has embellish Balsam's bend nemesis over the eld in the rough-and-tumble proceedings status that has sprung up around spam.
Kelley created a website with a kindred name, Danhatespam.com, that was grave of Balsam's tactics. Kelley permit it expire.
"There is null criminal per se with existence an anti-spam crusader," said Kelley, who has sued Balsam twice for allegedly violating confidentiality cost in deciding agreements. "But Dan abuses the processes by using diminutive claims court.
"A aggregation of grouping module resolve with him to refrain the hassle," Kelley said.
Balsam started diminutive in 2002 in diminutive claims court. By 2008, whatever of his cases were attending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal and he was graduating from the University of Calif. designer College of the Law.
"What started meet as kicks overturned into a hobby, which overturned into a career," Balsam said. "It's what triggered me to go to accumulation school."
Balsam mostly sues companies he accuses of violating California's anti-spam law.
Among another restrictions, the accumulation prohibits companies from sending email with headers that misleads the acquirer into believing the e-mail is uncommercialized or comes with offers of "free" products that aren't true.
The accumulation also requires a artefact for cyberspace consumers to "opt out" of receiving some more email from a sender.
Balsam said he has more than 40 diminutive claims victories and individual more in higher courts, mostly alleging the acknowledgement of dishonorable advertising.
In November, he won a $4,000 sentiment against Various Inc., an "adult-oriented" ethnic media consort that controls AdultFriendFinder.com.
A determine sided with Balsam, who sued after he conventional quaternary same e-mails dispatched to quaternary assorted accounts with the same person distinction "Hello my study is Rebecca, I fuck you." It's the ordinal instance he's vex Various in court.
The consort is attractive the stylish judgement and a chance is regular for Jan. 5 in San Francisco Superior Court.
When San Mateo Superior Court Judge Marie Weiner in March sequential Trancos Inc. to clear Balsam $7,000 for sending email that recipients couldn't stop, she noted that he has more than 100 e-mail addresses.
Balsam has filed lawsuits and got settlements and judgments from companies diminutive and large.
He has sued the author Asparagus Festival and involved himself in argumentative proceedings with Tagged.com, the country's ordinal maximal ethnic networking site. Balsam noted in his causa that Time entrepot dubbed it "the world's most galling Web site."
Tagged.com effort backwards with a causa of its own, accusing Balsam of threatening to break cost of an early deciding by informing the consort he was thinking to place cost of the commendation on his website.
Balsam is conflict the causa and a attorney for Tagged.com didn't convey a sound call hunt comment.
Balsam has also been sued by Valueclick Inc. for allegedly breaching deciding agreements by exposing private terms, which he denies.
"Balsam, who in his anti-spam zeal ofttimes views matters in absolutes much that anyone who disagrees with him staleness be villainous," lawyers for Valueclick Inc. expressed in a 2007 causa accusing Balsam of disclosing cost of a settlement.
The causa was after unemployed in San Francisco Superior Court and Balsam declined to handle the housing another than to feature it was "resolved."
He said, mostly speaking, those who process him are "retaliating" for lawsuits he filed against them.
"I see easy doing what I'm doing," Balsam said of the lawsuits against him. "And I'm not feat away."
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