Feds crack down on pornographic e-mails

[Verbal]

From the CNN article, bold added by me:

Federal regulators accused seven companies Wednesday of hiring others to send illegal e-mails with pornographic messages to tempt consumers to visit adult Internet sites.
...
The FTC said the seven companies did not send e-mails directly to consumers but operated affiliate programs, paying others to send unwanted messages to drive Internet traffic to adult Web sites. The FTC said under the "Can Spam" law, defendants in such cases are liable because they paid others to send e-mails on their behalf.
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The lawsuits seek unspecified payment to the government for "every violation" of the federal anti-spam law.

They make it sound like these Sponsors outsourced a major spam campaign, but I suspect they are being heavily penalized for just a few spamming affiliates.