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Facebook Wins $873 Million in Spam Case
The National Law Journal
December 02, 2008
Facebook has won an $873 million judgment against a Canadian resident for sending millions of spam messages to the social networking site.
A San Jose, Calif., federal judge on Friday issued the order, which is believed to be the largest to date under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or the CAN-SPAM Act, said Sam O'Rourke, a senior corporate counsel for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook. Facebook v. Guerbuez, No. 5:08-CV-03889-JF (N.D. Calif.).
"We were obviously very happy with the judgment," O'Rourke said. "We felt pretty much we had an open-and-shut case, so we weren't surprised and we're definitely happy the court agreed with us." The judgment was delivered against Montréal resident Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital, which Facebook says is a fake business name used by Guerbuez. O'Rourke said Facebook will work with Canadian lawyers to ensure the judgment is enforced in Canada.
"I wouldn't be shocked if we didn't recover the entire amount," he said, "but we are planning on collecting as much as we can." O'Rourke said Guerbuez has not showed up in court hearings, but that he was served with the lawsuit in person over the summer in Montréal. O'Rourke said that as far as he can tell, Guerbuez is in the business of sending spam e-mails for profit. Facebook got involved after noticing a large increase in spam e-mails sent to its members in March and April, he said.
The spam was sent in the form of posts on Facebook user profiles and drove users to third-party Web sites, the lawsuit alleged. Facebook said it suffered harm to its reputation and goodwill and spent additional time and money due to the spam.
"The spam promoted numerous products and websites that, on information and belief, are offensive and embarrassing to a large segment of the Facebook users who received or viewed these messages, or whose accounts were fraudulently used to send those messages," the lawsuit says. "The products marketed by these spam messages included marijuana, male enhancement pills, and sexually oriented material." The judge ordered the defendant to pay $436 million in statutory damages,
There was $436 million in aggravated statutory damages, as well as attorney fees and costs of the lawsuit. The judge also prohibited Guerbuez and those associated with his business from using Facebook for any purposes.
Founded in 2004, Facebook has more than 120 million active users.
