Ben Livingston
Innovative Access, Inc.
7744 29th Ave. NW
Seattle, WA 98117

My name is Ben Livingston. I am vice president of Innovative Access, a small internet service provider located in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. Innovative Access is seeking $3,000 in damages from Print Doctor, Inc, a Florida corporation, for three violations of RCW 19.190.030.

Among other things, this law makes it illegal to send commercial email that " misrepresents or obscures any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path of a commercial electronic mail message." Damages to an interactive computer service are $1,000 per violation.

Print Doctor, Inc. has continuously sent commercial email to our computer systems in violation of this law. The attached examples show messages that were sent to non-existent accounts on our system. Our system bounced them back to the sender, only to have that bounce returned because the originating email address was invalid - meaning Print Doctor, Inc. forged the originating address. This is a very common tactic "spammers" use so they don't have to deal with the large number of bounces their bulk email generates; essentially, they force third parties to incur the cost of these bounces and the bandwidth they utilize.

With most of these examples, the total time between our system receiving the message, bouncing it back, and receiving the "double bounce" is under five seconds; the originating address was almost certainly invalid at the time the messages were sent to our system.

One August 5, 2001, we faxed Print Doctor, Inc. a notice informing them about these violations. (See attached sample of this notice.) Essentially we told them that if the illegal email stops, we're willing to overlook all of their previous violations. Unfortunately, the illegal email did not stop. On October 15, 2001, we faxed them a second notice informing them of the same thing. Still, the illegal email has not stopped.

To find out who was behind the illegal emails, we searched the web for the fax number advertised (305-278-4183) and found Print Doctor's web site (printdoctor.net). Their contact page gave their name as Print Doctor, Inc. with the same fax number as advertised in the illegal emails. I checked their domain name registration also - the fax number was the same and the administrative contact was "Tris Snyder," who is also the registered agent on file with the Florida Secretary of State.

On January 23, 2002, I contacted the phone number on their web site (866-466-7465). A man answered, "USA Cartridge."

"Is this Print Doctor?" I asked.

"Yes it is," he responded.

I asked for their fax number and he said it was 305-278-4183 - the same as in the illegal emails. I asked if Tris Synder was in and he said I was speaking to him. I told him that I was with Innovative Access and wanted to make sure they weren't interested in settling our small claim out of court.

He responded that his lawyer had told him not to worry about it. Furthermore, his company wasn't the one doing the mailing - they hire an outside company to do that. Fortunately for us, RCW 19.190.030 makes it illegal to "conspire" to send these emails as well. Print Doctor may claim they don't actually send the emails, but they still paid to have them sent and they were still informed twice about the problem and didn't make it stop.

Our goal is to make this illegal email stop. We've tried asking Print Doctor, Inc. to stop, but they've indicated their unwillingness to do so. We don't consider $3,000 to be a huge cost to this company, but we do hope it will make them take notice of us and stop this illegal, obnoxious, and time- and bandwidth-consuming email.

I declare under penalty of perjury of the laws of the State of Washington and the United States that the above statement is true and correct.

Dated: January 23, 2002

Ben Livingston

Attachments:

#1 - Corporate records
#2 - Contact page from printdoctor.net
#3 - Domain name registration for printdoctor.net
#4 - Example of faxed "stop spamming us" notice
#5 - Our letter accompanying service
#6 - Sample spam
#7 - Sample spam
#8 - Sample spam
#9 - Sample spam
#10 - Sample spam
#11 - Sample spam