Facebook awarded $711 million in damages by a San Jose

Today Facebook reported they’ve been awarded $711 million in damages by a San Jose, CA court against Sanford Wallace, the notorious “Spam King” that MySpace also successfully went after last year to the tune of a $234 million judgment.

Back in March, Facebook won an injunction against three spammers who sent unwanted messages and made abusive wall posts on the site. The temporary restraining order placed criminal consequences on their continuing actions, but the legal battle wasn’t over just yet.

Seven hundred eleven million dollars is a lot of dough. But amazingly, it’s not the highest judgment levied under the CAN-SPAM Act, a piece of legislation that contains tough penalties for violations surrounding commercial email and message sending. That honor also belongs to Facebook (Facebook), who in November of 2008 won an $873 million victory against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital.

More than being about the monetary figure though, especially considering the difficulty of actually extracting the cash from the defendants, is the deterrent effect these judgments will hopefully have on future would-be spammers. Facebook implores its users to help stop the scourge by using the “Report This” links throughout the site when you spot the evil stuff.