Convicted French football spammer 'not singing any more'

It's joint victory for AOL France and Microsoft, the two competitors who have joined together to fight spam. The Paris commercial court has convicted a businessman from Aix-en-Provence, the boss of a firm called K-Foot, for having drowned internet users with messages pushing football merchandise from the K-foot.com and Kasport.com sites.

On the back of a complaint jointly lodged by the two companies, "Monsieur K" was accused of having used several AOL subscriptions and having created diverse Hotmail addresses to send his advertising bulk mail.

A million messages were sent, according to the two companies. The entrepreneur will now have to pay €5,000 each to Microsoft and AOL in damages and interest and pay numerous court fees. All in all, he will have to pay a grand total of €22,000.

The two heavyweights of the internet were able to rely on contract rights to have the businessman convicted. They highlighted that, by his actions, he broke the general conditions of use of their services. Each user has to be familiar with the conditions and guarantee they'll respect them when they subscribe.

"M.K., to create these different Hotmail addresses, had to click on the button to accept the conditions of use," Microsoft argued. It's "perfectly clear that they forbid sending spam." AOL added: "M.K. violated in a deliberate and repeated manner the subscriber internet access contract."

In his defence, the manager confirmed that the accounts has been used at his behest by members of his staff and "the alleged contracts from Microsoft and AOL are virtual because they don't require the signature of a written contract."

The judge rejected the arguments and found in favour of the prosecution. Microsoft was alerted to the businessman's activities by numerous user complaints.

After having found out that the emails originated from an AOL subscriber, in October 2003, Microsoft obtained an order from a Nanterre to court to get AOL to reveal the identity of the subscriber.

The ISP then decided to back Microsoft in the case.

An AOL spokesman said: "It was the solution that seemed would give us the best chance of success. We are satisfied [with the result of the case] but we would have preferred to be able to take case to a criminal court as well, given the penalties are stricter."

Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France