14 DAY TRIAL // A Quebec Superior Court upheld a default judgment of one billion Canadian dollars against a Montreal man accused of sending millions of spam messages on Facebook in 2008.
Adam Guerbuez present himself as a large-scale Internet marketer, but Facebook calls him a spammer after allegedly posting ads for erectile dysfunction meds on the walls of millions of its users.
The social networking giant filed a complaint against Guerbuez in a San Jose court, which fined him in his absence with $100 in damages and $100 in punitive damages for each of the 4,366,386 spam messages sent.
The total fine added up to $873,277,200 and was converted to $1,068,928,721 in Canadian currency.
Guerbuez appealed the ruling in Quebec and argued that it would have cost him at least $100,000 to defend himself in a foreign jurisdiction.
On October 1, Quebec Superior Court Justice Lucie Fournier upheld the Californian court judgement, which also permanently forbids the spammer from being involved in any way with the social networking site.
However, it's very unlikely that Facebook will get any money. According to The Montreal Gazette, in August Guerbuez filed for bankruptcy and the social network became one of his creditors.
The spammer, who now refers to himself "the one billion dollar man," claims the publicity associated with the ruling actually drove more clients to his Internet marketing business and might even land him a movie or book deal.
"Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no.
"It's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can).
"But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users," commented Max Kelly, Facebook's Director of Security.