The Pathetic Desperation of Comment Spammers, Trying to Sell Their Crappy Stuff On My Blawg

There was a post here this morning about SBC, which was up for about three minutes before I took it down. It concerned the following corporate puke that was attached to a post from January 7, 2004:

My Charter Communications bill jumped from $72.82 to $100.76 for the same service in one month. That's a 28% increase!

Check with [SBC website] to see if DSL is available at your address. It's the same 384k speed for only $29.95 per month. Charter's not the only "game in town"!

In my original post, now deleted, I accused SBC of comment spamming. Anyone with a weblog is familiar with this practice, which I define as the practice of posting advertisements for products or services, unrelated to the weblog itself, in the weblog's comments. The typical comment spammer is an Internet drugstore, a porn site, or some similar detestable leach. Getting comment spam from a "reputable" company is unusual, in my experience. The way I see it, if it was SBC that was responsible, posting comment spam on this weblog is no different than driving to Godfrey, Illinois, and attaching the SBC web address to the side of my law firm's building with spray paint.

So why did I delete the original post? Just after I published it, I opened Outlook and saw I had an e-mail from the comment spammer, who denied my charge. He wasn't a comment spammer, he said, but just an ordinary citizen concerned about DSL prices. His e-mail was in response to one I sent him over the weekend. (Yes, he left his e-mail address, and it worked.)

For now, I'm giving SBC the benefit of the doubt. In the meantime, though, if you receive comment spam from SBC or any other reputable company, I'd like to know about it. Just send me an e-mail, and I'll start a database for a use to be determined later.

Although the conventional wisdom is that comment spammers are legally untouchable, I'm willing to consider some creative class action remedies against viable defendants. How about a trespass to chattels theory? Or a "conversion of bandwidth" theory? Or most promising of all, an unjust enrichment theory? By attaching their advertisements to unsuspecting weblogs, comment spammers are deriving a benefit that they shouldn't in fairness be allowed to keep. (In my original post, I asked these guys to work up a short but incisive memo analyzing the possible theories of recovery. I was even going to pay them. But now that the matter's no longer so urgent, I'll do the memo myself, and they can worry about their exams.)

Anyway, to repeat: Please notify me when you receive comment spam, especially when you think the comment spammer isn't some fly-by-night huckster operating in secret outside the borders of the U.S. In that case, unfortunately, we can't do much except delete the comment spam.

Comments

[TPB, Esq.]

Gunning for a comment spam class action?

[Evan]

TPB: Helping to stanch the flow of that crud, is how I like to think of it.

[Kevin]

My host has unlimited bandwidth.

[Evan]

Kevin: Actually, I don't know that much about bandwidth, understanding it mostly to be something that Will Baude at Crescat Sententia is continually running out of. But since Crescat doesn't have comments, Will's problem must stem from something other than comment spam.

On the other hand, Kevin, are you arguing that a tortfeasor cannot convert something that belongs to A, just because A's supply of that something is unlimited? That doesn't sound right to me. I'll add the issue to my list of urgent research questions.

[Kevin]

I was responding to the Comment Spammer's comments, actually.

[Evan]

Kevin: Gotcha. But you still raised an interesting point, even if that wasn't your intention. As for the "Comment Spammer's comments"--that's something else that's troubling me. Was the comment I quoted in the post actually comment spam? When I first read it, I had trouble believing SBC would stoop so low, but it certainly seemed that it had. Then the alleged comment spammer himself denied it, saying in an e-mail that he was merely urging me to consider a switch.

Coincidentally or not, last night I got hit by more comment spam than ever before--six separate comments, each containing at least 15 links. It must have taken awhile to type that stuff in; I took particular delight in deleting the comments, hopefully before Google saw it. None mentioned SBC, by the way.

[Kevin]

Comment Spam? Probably. Maybe SBC has an affiliate program. Always check for the referrer ID which will confirm your suspicion. Look at my example -- WebHost4Life -- you can either scroll over my example and peek at your status bar or right click, 'copy shortcut' and paste.

15 links. Simple. Just create the comment once and copy and paste it over and over.

I agree that comment spam sucks, but I'm not sure its conversion (whether limited or unlimited) ... we may need your team to draft some new legislation.