Friday, August 23, 2002

Lawsuits Seek $2.2 Trillion Over 'Junk' Faxes
A coalition of California activists filed a jaw-dropping $2.2 trillion set of lawsuits against facsimile marketer Fax.com Thursday, saying millions of ``junk faxes'' are clogging the nation's fax machines, jamming communications and possibly endangering lives.

The suits, filed in both California state and federal court, seek class action status and punitive damages against privately held Fax.com, its telecommunications provider, Cox Business Services, a division of Cox Communications Inc., as well as Fax.com's advertisers.

``The right to free speech stops at the entrance to my house. You are not allowed to invade my privacy and to use my resources to send your message,'' said Steve Kirsch, a long-time Internet entrepreneur and philanthropist who announced the lawsuits on Thursday.

The lawsuits accuse all the named companies of violating federal laws prohibiting ``junk'' faxes -- unsolicited advertisements or announcements which ``broadcast'' to millions of personal, corporate and government facsimile machines.

Fax.com, in a statement, rejected the lawsuits as ``unfounded and absurd'' and said it had the constitutional right to advertise by fax.

But in a decision earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission proposed fining Fax.com $5.38 million for sending unsolicited advertisements by fax, the largest fine ever proposed for such a violation.

Lawyers in the California lawsuits said they would seek a minimum statutory remedy of $500 per fax from every advertiser who used Fax.com to send out unsolicited advertisements over the past four years.

``We believe that there are companies with substantial assets in this group. We will seek treble damages of $1,500 per unsolicited fax from Fax.com and Cox Communications,'' Kirsch said in a statement.

The lawsuits were announced at a news conference at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif., where officials said they had also been bombarded with junk fax advertisements sent by computer ``war dialing'' programs that can target numerous facsimile machines simultaneously.

``We have between 80 and 100 different fax machines in the hospital. In one fax machine which we monitored for a period of about four months we received over 500 junk faxes,'' said Mark Zielazinski, the hospital's chief information officer.

In Washington state, the University of Washington Medical Center was almost shut down by a ``war dialing'' assault mounted by a facsimile broadcaster.

``In the past year, Fax.com made over 1,000 telephone calls at once to the University of Washington Medical Center,'' center spokesman Walter Neary said, adding that the center had since joined with Washington's state attorney general to file suit against the Fax.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-spam-fax.html

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