Mickey Chandler's SpamSuite

Today FoxNews.com ran a piece stating that Quinstreet, Inc., has been identified as a "major spamming firm" by this site. That statement is inaccurate and misleading. Quinstreet, Inc., was one of several defendants in a lawsuit filed by Mark Ferguson which was dismissed after Quinstreet won a motion for summary judgment.

While I did find at least one of their affirmative defenses laughable, they have not been identified on this site as "a major spamming firm" and the other website they identify (anti-spam.org) according to the whois results is owned and operated by Mark Ferguson, the Plaintiff in the lawsuit that we tracked here.

While I approach what I do here with a definite anti-spam angle, and you might be able to glean my feelings toward a particular party in a lawsuit from my commentary, I prefer to let the judiciary make such sweeping determinations as who we should describe as being "a major spamming firm." (And, really, who could ever forget such memorable moments as "Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer."?)

I suspect that what happened here is that a reporter made the assumption that if someone is a defendant on SpamSuite then they must be a spammer. That is not always true (as we saw in the three cases in which e360Insight, LLC, sued various people (including Mark Ferguson) for making life difficult for it).

The following is (most of) the text of an email I sent to FoxNews.com's News Manager this afternoon.:

Hello, I am the owner/operator of SpamSuite.com and am writing to you in regard to your story about former Sen. Bradley and Quinstreet found at:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517622,00.html

While I am gratified for the link to my site and the exposure, it is grossly inaccurate to say that SpamSuite.com has "identified" Quinstreet as "a major spamming firm." In the particular case referenced in your story, Quinstreet won the case on a motion for summary judgment.

SpamSuite.com does not identify spammers. SpamSuite.com exists for the sole purpose of republishing court documents related to selected spam-related lawsuits. As such, I make no representations as to whether any particular party is "a major spamming firm."

Any time that your reporters wish for an opinion on a spam related matter, and especially spam-related litigation, they are welcome to contact me (and I give some confidential contact information I'm not repeating on the site).