Ouch! Posted December 17, 2004 Share Posted December 17, 2004 Is there any laws against or is it illegal for a person to spam up my forum with porn pictures. :angry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted December 17, 2004 Share Posted December 17, 2004 Starting with the funny side of the question .. you posted this in; SpamCop Help A forum to help users with the SpamCop Reporting System. Questions about SpamCop Email should be directed to the appropriate forum, not this one. I'm not sure I see the relevance of your query, as based on the Forum description. So along the same line, what are the guidelines, AUP, TOS, etc. of your Forum? National laws may have some bearing, local laws/statutes may have some impact. You make no mention of just what your Forum is about or whre it's hosted ... is it OK for a porn spam a week and you're complaining about 400 a day? What controls are in place, what capabilities are offered to forum 'members', is it a closed Forum, what methods of identification are in place for posters, .. on and on ... Exactly how far do you want folks to guess at / about your situation? For general info, the user's posting ISP is headquarterd in Atlanta, GA, USA ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouch! Posted December 17, 2004 Author Share Posted December 17, 2004 Heh, alright, ill more specific. I have a public gaming forum. I got a person who spams up my forum every other day. I set the repost delay to 5 minutes so the spammer can get only maybe 20 spam threads. But the threads contains porn pictures, discusting porn pictures i might add. (Pictures of a woman deficating) Now I have disabled guest posting and set it so members must be activated by an admin before they can post. My forum dont have any any Terms of Service, End User Agreement, Rules or anything on that line. Just a forum with basically no rules at all set fourth. It is a free phpbb forum hosted by a company. So I cant add a ToS to it. I could create a topic that contains the TOS but i havnt done that yet. I live in Canada and the forum is hosted in the USA. And the hoster of my forum dont have any TOS agreement either. I been searching around for some laws specifing internet forum spammers but havnet been successful. So with the specifics covered. Is there any legal action I can take against the spammer. Or report the spammer to his/her ISP and have his/her internet connection disabled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted December 17, 2004 Share Posted December 17, 2004 OK, so TOS can't be applied, but surely an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) can be generated. Technically, with what you are describing thus far, there are no guidelines other than common sense and a bit of decency involved ... something that doesn't work in a court of law. What data is available about the poster? For instance, are all the posts coming from a single IP, is that IP the same as the user first signed on with? You say that now members must be "activated" .. wouldn't that also suggest that a user can be removed? If the same IP is used, perhaps you can ask your hosting company to block that IP? Although you say this host has no TOS (which would normally apply more to "you" actually) .. have you asked them for their help in putting a stop to this? I don't believe there are any existing laws covering the grounds you're describing. The closest thing I can recollect would be charging you for making this crap available, but that was back in the good old BBS days. That you are in Canada, the host is in the US, and at this point having no idea where your poser is located (or what services are involved), coupled with no AUP in place, I really don't think you have any kind of a case (then again, I've only been beat up and screwed by lawyers, so am not offering any legal expertise here. You might find one that would be happy to take your money <g>) As you actually mentioned, if the poster is using the same IP to make all his/her postings, and that IP turns out to be traceable to an actual system, in general, most ISPs would take some action to stop that flow. But again, all hypothetical at this point due to lack of specific data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christine Posted December 17, 2004 Share Posted December 17, 2004 Hmm...I know for a fact that many child pornographers will post their pictures to obscure but public forums, e-mail the addresses to all their friends, and wait for somebody in charge to notice. It's a way to share stuff without being traced. These people never stay around long, lest somebody calls the cops. The sort of porn you describe has been prosecuted as in violation of communtity standards. This is a hazy area, as it is completely unclear what community should be involved. I'd say you have to rely on your host. Is it a commercial host, or just some friendly guy with spare bandwidth? You need to get this guy blocked, and hopefully banned from whatever computer he's using. And if you can figure out his name, I suggest snail-mailing a letter to everyone on his block. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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