A Westminster, Colorado Internet marketing company has been ordered to pay MySpace $6 million in damages and legal fees for spamming its users.
An arbitrator ruled that Scott Richter and his online marketing company, Media Breakaway LLC, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in legal fees for spamming MySpace members.
MySpace charged that some of the messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts. Media Breakaway argued that the spam was sent by rogue business affiliates who sent messages for Media Breakaway.
This is not the first time Richter has been involved in a spam case. Microsoft won a $7 million settlement against him in a spam lawsuit in 2005, and the state of New York was awarded $50,000 from Richter the year before.
“We respect the Arbitrator’s findings regarding violations of MySpace’s Terms of Use by certain rogue affiliates, particularly during 2006 when the concept of social networks was still developing,” said Steven Richter, president and general counsel of Media Breakaway and father of Scott Richter.
“We acknowledged early on in this process that our company should not profit from the sending of unsolicited commercial bulletins to MySpace users.”
MySpace said the ruling was part of a series of steps it has taken to fight spam and other abuse on the site. In May, the social networking site was awarded $230 million anitspam judgment against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines.
“This award reflects MySpace’s continued momentum and holistic approach to ridding the site of spammers and phishers,” MySpace said in a statement. “We will continue to do our part in cleansing the Internet of this invasive onslaught of spam.”
