A Florida man has been fined $11.2bn (£6.6bn) for
sending out 280 million spam messages.
The fine was handed out by a US district court after action
taken by CIS, a small US ISP.
CIS claimed James McCalla had sent out more than 280 million
spam e-mails with return addresses pointing to CIS.
The judgement against McCalla also prohibits him from accessing
the internet for three years. The $11.2bn fine is as an aggregation
of nominal sums for each spam e-mail he is said to have sent.
The spam e-mails offered the services and products of a number
of different companies. CIS has also taken action against some of
these firms, with previous court judgements demanding that they
should pay $1bn fines for their part in the spamming operation.
CIS, however, does not believe it will receive any of the money
it has been awarded.
The US has the strongest laws against unsolicited spam, but
courts are still struggling to enforce fines handed out to
culprits.
