Royal pain

Social-networking site MySpace announced it has filed suit against "Spam King" Scott Richter, calling him the mastermind behind millions of spam "bulletins" sent from MySpace users' accounts without their knowledge in the second half of 2006, writes InternetNews.com.

MySpace said Richter either phished MySpace accounts directly or acquired a list of phished accounts to launch his spam campaign in violation of California's anti-spam statute and the CAN-SPAM Act.

Filed in Los Angeles on Friday, the suit seeks a permanent injunction barring Richter and his affiliated companies from MySpace, as well as punitive damages totaling at least $50 per spam message sent, according to the complaint.

In a 2003 lawsuit, then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Richter of sending more than 250 million junk emails a day. But after Spitzer's suit and another from Microsoft that ended in Richter's paying a $7 million out-of-court settlement, the one-time spammer made a public attempt to take his business legitimate.