Technically can I sue these companies?

Technically I am I able to sue the people that spam their links on my forum.... or at least the companies that they are promoting?

 

I doubt it.

 

On what basis do you want to sue them?

Why would the companies they are promoting be responsible?

You could threaten to sue, but I don't think you have a basis for a law suit unless there is something you are not telling us. I assume you are talking about porn spammers.

If you have a policy on your forum about things like that, just enforce your policy, such as kicking offenders off the forum. When you have a forum, you have a responsibility to moderate the forum. That means kicking offenders out and deleting offending posts.

 

heh nope

 

you can try to sue anybody for anything.. (but you can be convicted trying so.. and end up paying for it)

so yes you can sue if in your terms it says people are not allowed to spam, ..
however if you will win or if you'll earn something out of it is not sure

unless you get a crazy judge, you probably only get a settlement for the amount of damage you can proof their spam caused you
so don't expect to get $1m because someone posted a link on your forum

 

Think about it - if I wanted to get someone sued, I would just spam some of their links in your forum. Your time is better spent installing a spam catcher

 

Check out the lagal aspect of it all. If they put people in prison for spamming emails, spamming in general must come with some sort of responsibility as well.

 

I believe the companies are at fault also because they do not enforce their rules.. Their affiliates shouldnt be spamming... I am not expecting any money but rather loss of money but maybe if I do something like this the damm spammers will decrease in the world at least for us forum owners lol

 

In most countries you can only sue for the monies you have lost as a direct result of the action and so realistically you would only be able to get the time it takes to remove them and the tiny amount of bandwidth they have caused... so pennies... and then at the same time your terms and conditions would have to be well enough written/ clearly enough agreed to confirming what spam is etc.

In a few countries punitive damages exist (ie awards greater than the loss to punish the defendant) but not that many.

As to the underlying company being responsible rather than the affiliate, I very much doubt that they have an agency agreement and so the two are independent for most considerations. If you have complained to the company and they have not taken corrective action against their affiliate then there may be a case but again your damages are still limited as above.

 

How could you possibly fault the company when you have no proof that they have anything to do with the spam?

 

They should be enforcing their affiliates not to spam...

Its like if at bestbuy you take your computer to be fixed.. yet they accidentally destroy it... the worker does not pay for it but the company itself will etc..

 

I agree with you, but still, there is no way of proving that affiliate is the one doing the spamming.

If you were in competition with that affiliate, and you knew that the sponsor would ban, it would be pretty easy to get that affiliate banned, which wouldn't be right.

There is no way that you can feasibly hold someone responsible for something you can't prove was them.... that would be like guilty until proven innocent, which isn't the way our justice system is supposed to work.

 

But as an employee they are a representative and the responsibility of the employer. An affiliate is not an employee and it will depend on the legal relationship between the two on if they are considered one and the same entity.

Same way if you buy a Sony TV from a local store and DHL damages your home when they deliver it, you couldnt sue Sony for the damage caused by DHL

 

I guess you guys are right but its just annoying constantly deleting spam lol

 

I hear ya... I have one of my blogs set for moderated comments, and I go to moderate them, all happy that I got 15 comments today, and after going through them all but one was spam ... it's obvious the spammers are using a bot too, because none of their comments had anything at all to do with my blog post

 

need to install some anti-bot tools me thinks