Facebook’s leaders are smiling as the company announced an antispam victory. The popular social-networking Web site was awarded more than $873 million in damages Friday against a Canadian spammer who was sending sexually explicit images to Facebook users.

Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital were ordered to pay Facebook the damages by U.S. District Court Judge Jeremey Fogel in San Jose, Calif. And Guerbuez can no longer access Facebook. The ruling came after four months of court arguments.

Guerbuez and Atlantis were ordered to pay $436.6 million in statutory damages and $436.6 in aggravated statutory damages, according to court documents posted on Justia.com.
The award is the largest judgment awarded under the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003).

“This judgment is the outcome of the tireless effort of our protection experts, legal team, and other significant resources we’ve devoted to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks,” wrote Max Kelly, Facebook’s director of defense, on his blog.

Four Million Messages

Guerbuez runs the crazypricks.com Web site, according to Neil Schwartzman, executive director of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial newsletter (CAUCE), a consumer-advocacy group formed to fight for antispam laws which now works to defend Web users. “He is a Nazi skinhead who was videotaping homeless citizens beating each other up,” Schwartzman said.

The court found Guerbuez illegally accessed Facebook’s user-profile documents to launch his spamming activities. He sent Facebook users four million messages and conned some into providing their log-in details. Each violation under CAN-SPAM can be punished by a $11,000 fine.

CAN-SPAM covers e-mail that is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service.
The Federal Trade Commission is the enforcer and the office of Justice handles criminal violations.

Other federal and state agencies can enforce the law against organizations under their jurisdiction, and companies…

[Source] dhiram