Spitzer goes after Gratis
p2p news / p2pnet: New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, scourge of the Big Four Organized Music cartel, has turned his attention to Gratis Internet, accusing it of selling personal information obtained from people who’d visited what they thought was a free iPod site.
Instead, Gratis sold access to their e-mail information to three independent e-mail marketers, and hundreds of millions of e-mail solicitations followed, says Spitzer, quoted by the Associated Press.
"Gratis, based in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday," says the story. "But in a statement after Spitzer’s related lawsuit of March 12, a Gratis spokesmen said the company wasn’t involved in any inappropriate practices."
Gratis owns and operates Web sites that offer free merchandise for registering their e-mail addresses, says AP.
"The state fraud lawsuit accuses its owners, Peter Martin and Robert Jewell, of privacy violations in 2004 and 2005."
Gratis has, " several million registered users," it says on its web site.
Also See:
Organized Music cartel – Big Four record labels sued, March 12, 2006
Associated Press – Spitzer sues online marketer Gratis, alleging massive privacy violations, March 23, 2006
March 25th, 2006 at 2:39 am
Good for Spitzer!!! Kick their ass!!!!
March 25th, 2006 at 6:59 am
“Gratis, based in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to requests for comment….” I assume there’s a nexus to New York State, otherwise we’d all have to put up with what are considered “appropriate” standards for publishing material on the internet in each of the 46 states, 4 commonwealths, the District of Columbia, and territories.
If they only harvested e-mail addresses and sold them, it’s unlikely that rises to the level of criminal fraud. If they collected information beyond just e-mail address, there is likely an issue. If they did not give away the prizes promised on the website, then that is definitely fraud.
As is the usual case with stories like this, those who have been inconvenienced by some SPAM, are being portrayed as pathetic ‘victims’ of a “massive privacy violation.” It wasn’t as though their medical records and bank statements were sent to their insurance companies. This doesn’t even come close to the ChoicePoint and Lexis-Nexus debacles.
Finally, two old clichés ring even truer on the internet:
“Caveat Emptor”
“If it sounds too good to be true….” (Completion is an exercise left to the reader.)