tips@consumerist.com gets a lot of email. A small percentage of it is made up of much coveted submissions from you, our beloved readers. We adore these. They allow us to get paid without the drudgery of actually having to find exciting new Consumerist “scoops” ourselves. So thanks for that, guys. Unfortunately, the much larger percentage of our email comes from Eastern European girls we have never met making presumptuous statements about our potency or – worse yet – phallic circumference. Spammers or friends of ex-girlfriends, in other words. But usually spammers.

I think everyone wants to karate chop these mooching jerks right in the thorax by now, so it’s nice to see CIS Internet Services win an $11 billion dollar judgment against a single email spammer.

Quad-City Times reports:

A Clinton-based Internet service provider who successfully sued Internet spammers in the past now has been awarded an $11.2 billion judgment against a Florida man for sending millions of unsolicited e-mails advertising mortgage and debt consolidation services.

The judgment against James McCalla of Florida is the culmination of a multi-defendant lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa in 2003 by Robert W. Kramer III, owner of CIS Internet Services in Clinton.

Good for them! On the other hand, this was what Robert Kramer, owner of CIS, had to say about the judgment…

E-mail is an innovation like atomic energy or the automobile. In the beginning, the opportunity for misuse is obvious. For e-mail, that
s now changed,
he said.
This ruling sets a new standard. Gross abusers of e-mail risk exposure to public ridicule as well as the economic death penalty.

…which is, without a doubt, the stupidest quote we’ve read all week.

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