Posted by
Hemos
on from the good-riddance-to-bad-rubish dept.
KjetilK writes "Ananova reports in an article that two spammers have been jailed for two years after sending 50 million e-mails. According to the story, 12,000 people bought their scam. May they be served SPAM every day in jail."
According to this page, Washington law sets the following as penalties for spam:
The law allows for damages to the recipient of $500 or actual damages, which ever is greater, for EACH MESSAGE received. The law also allows $1,000 or actual damages, which ever is greater, to the Internet Service Provider, for EACH MESSAGE received.
Re:jailed for scaming, not spaming
by
garcia
·
· Score: 3
no you don't. We have enough problems w/people being jailed for stupid fucking crimes (possession of marijuana, fraud, money laundering). We need to put people away for murder, rape, major drug production and moving. We can't find kidnappers, rapists, and murders, but we can track down two idiots who sent out 50 million emails and had 12k idiots fall for their ploy...
Fill the prisons with REAL criminals not stupid idiots. They should be put on house arrest and served SPAM, not taking up space in the already overcrowded system..
More than 12,000 people were duped. Internet providers, including AOL, AT&T and Mindspring, were besieged by customer complaints and their systems were threatened by the overload.
The plea agreements require the men to reveal to the internet providers how they accomplished their scheme.
Here we go, everybody get ready for a constant battering of emails from large internet providers claiming faster service and lower rates. Thanks for adding another powerful weapon to the world of spamming
I think they should have been orderd to keep their mouths shut.
-- I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Internet Idiot Quotient (IIQ)
by
scotch
·
· Score: 4
Let's see, they sent out 50,000,000 emails, and
successfully suckered 12,000 people? This seems like a phenomenol hit rate - 1 in ~4100 or so. Considering many emails were probably never delivered, or rejected by filters, that's much better than I thought it would be. A sucker logs on every minute
The main problem with Spam is the lack of interest from law enforcement in persecuting people who engage in spamming practices. While many spammers act like crackers in order to hijack open mail relays in to being spam amplifiers, not one spammer has been given the Kevin Mitnick treatment.
Spam costs real money to the ISPs that become unintentional spam victims, the free mail domains that spammers forge return addresses from, the victims who purchase commercial software from people not smart enough to set up a mail server to not be an open relay, and the sysadmins that have to constantly refine their spam filters from spammers continual spam filter dodging techniques.
As long as spammers do not get sent to jail for their acitons, they will continue to spam. These people could care less if they make 10,000,000 people angry, as long as they get a few thousand dollars by scamming ignorant internet users.
The only way to make the internet a place where people feel safe putting their east-to-remeber email address on a web page, in a usenet posting, or in the whois data for a domain is to make spamming a crime, and to prosecute spammers to the fullest extent of the law.
BTW, I have written some pretty effective anti-spamming software here. Note that this software only runs on Linux/Unix machines. Windows users can use sneakemail.
- Sam
--
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Hate SPAM? Dont we all! Well now you can actually do something to prevent spamming! That's right, but this offer won't last forever, so act now before it's too late. For the introductory low, low price of only $19.95, you can rest assured that you will never receive another SPAM email again. Simply send your Visa or Mastercard number to this address. Hurry, before it's too late!
Penguins love Salmon, but hate the taste of SPAM. The Linux Pimp
Re:jailed for scaming, not spaming
by
Nehemiah+S.
·
· Score: 3
The war on drugs qua drugs and drug users qua drug users is ridiculous. People should be able to do anything that doesn't hurt others- which means that we should definitely have a war on drug addicts who murder, rape, rob, etc., but only on those people, not on harmless druggies. Money laundering is a crime which hurts me by masking crime or by forcing me to pay higher taxes, therefore it should be enforced as well.
Spamming hurts me in less tangible ways- they eat my time and my bandwidth. I think that spammers should be fined, not jailed, at a rate proportional to the amount the person reading the emails would have earned in the amount of time he spent reading the email (say one second per word, with a minimum fine on the order of $.50). People could rate their email addresses at whatever amount the wished to, and the spammers could decide what price they were willing to pay to broadcast their spam. People who didn't pay the fines should go to jail.
That would bring unsolicited email barriers to entry up to the level of USPS mail, and help to solve the problems (as well as make me some money, fast.)
Neh
-- ... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be where the eye of his telescope has already been
Re:Is spam *really* that bad?
by
Zachary+Kessin
·
· Score: 4
Yes it is. The problem with arguing this from a free speach point of view is this. You are free to go stand on a soap box on a corner and rant about whatever you feal like, simmilarly you can make up flyers and post them around town. That is protected.
The problem is that if I send 10,000 emails or more via 1 ISP you have used a lot of the resources of that ISP. You have basicly made them support you free speach. Which you do not have the right to do. Similarly if you send a letter to the editor of a newspaper he does not have to print it. So while SPAM may cost you or me as end users a few seconds of time in the case of an ISP it may tie up a mail server for hours, during which time other emails are being delayed.
The other thing is that just because we are arresting spamers (And in this case it appears that fraud was what they were arrested for) it does not mean that we are not also hunting down Murderers and Rapists.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
-- Erlang Developer and podcaster
SpamGuyInJail.Com - Day 1
by
Sand_Man
·
· Score: 3
CLANK. Lock
"uh, hi."
"Hi, you gotta' be my new cell mate."
"Well, yes. What are you in for?"
"Simple Assualt, but I didn't do it. What're you in fer?"
"Spamming."
"Huh?
"Spamming, you know, sending out large volumes of unsolicited e-mail from my computer."
"Uh-huh. Say, yer hands are soft, kinda' like a girl."
"Uh, gee, umm, thanks, er....."
"And yer kinda pertty, too, how long you in fer."
Tune in tomorrow for the exciting day 2 of SpamGuyInJail.com. In tomorrows episode we find out if SpamGuyInJail picks up the soap or just leaves it on the shower floor.
Re:Sadly, they were convicted of fraud, not spammi
by
Ralph+Wiggam
·
· Score: 5
I sit across a very thin wall from the Pitney-Bowes machine you are referring too. It's a sweet machine but it has two problems that create human jobs stuffing envelopes: 1) It costs a half million bucks 2) It has major trouble doing fancy "non-standard" things that humans can do easily (like putting a card inside a folded letter).
Another thing keeping these machines out of normal office space is that it's about 25 feet long and runs at 90 decibles.
-B
Re:Is spam *really* that bad?
by
nchip
·
· Score: 3
If spam is such a nice thing, why do most spammers fake their headers, their from address and obfuscate the url on the body? Why do spammers connect to internet with accounts they got with fake ID:s. Why do they abuse open relays to hide the real origin of the mail?
I don't think freedom of speech covers speech with fake identity.
-- signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Re:Is spam *really* that bad?
by
Tackhead
·
· Score: 4
(snip "spam iz free speach" argument)
"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or to view any
unwanted communication, whatever its merit. . . We therefore categorically
reject the argument that a vendor has the right under the Constitution or
otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. . . We
repeat, the right of a mailer stops at the outer boundary of every person's
domain."
- United States Supreme Court, Rowan vs. U.S. Post Office, 1970
Whether or not you agree with me that spam is theft by trespass to chattel, the US Supreme Court has long since ruled that unsolicited commercial mailings -- even when paid for by the vendor (as opposed to spam, where the cost is borne by the recipient) is emphatically not afforded protection under the First Amendment.
Spam is not free speech. Hasn't been for 30 years. Now go away, troll, or I shall feed you a second time;-)
In addition to have a witty domain name <g>, it also contains information on
existing state laws which can be used to sue a spammer in court.
Share and enjoy.
Re:Is spam *really* that bad?
by
Darchmare
·
· Score: 3
---
I don't know anyone who pays per byte per Internet access so it's not costing me anything at all.
---
It doesn't matter. Most ISPs and email providers don't charge that way. They take the average bandwidth and resource consumption of all users combined and factor that into their rates. If each user used fewer resources, they wouldn't have to charge quite as much.
In the end, if one person uses up more bandwidth, either the other users are given less bandwidth to consume or they are charged for it with higher base level prices. Generally the latter.
Also, this isn't counting the fact that many ISPs need full time handlers to deal with the complaints, extra servers to deal with the load, and so on. Just because there isn't a section on your bill labeled "Cost due to spam" doesn't mean you're not paying for it.
---
It seems like a lot of the slashbots have started this crusade to stop all spammers at any cost, even if that means wasting government resources and what few empty beds we have in our nation's jails
---
I agree with you that prosecution should be a last resort, but to be honest with you I think spammers deserve the jail time more than most of those charged with petty offenses. No matter how small you believe it to be, what spammers do is no different than theft. Most of them are con men (securities fraud, pyramid schemes, etc) as well.
Either way, it's nice to see that you worry about government resources. So do I. But don't you think user resources are important as well? And remember, the government is there to hear our grievences - that's what they are paid for. But I'm certainly not being paid to hear about someone's "Make Money Fast" scheme. In fact, I pay for it.
---
Even as we speak, there are literally, millions of people with swollen stomachs in the final stages of starvation
---
This is a false argument, based on the assumption that if we don't delete spam or turn in spammers that suddenly the other ills of the world would receive more attention. That's a pretty dubious argument.
You can turn it around, though - if I didn't spend so much time "just pushing delete" I would have more time to spend volunteering time and money to charity. You could even say that the extra processor time spent processing incoming spam uses up electricity, which means more factories churn polluting smoke into the air.
See how silly that sounds?
---
It doesn't take 30 seconds to delete victims of genocide or ethnic cleansings from your inbox, so obviously what you can't see from the comfort of your living room doesn't matter
---
Are you a horrible person because you're spending time posting to Slashdot instead of, say, volunteering time at the United Way or flying relief missions in Bosnia? If you're going to take up so much time preaching this kind of ill logic, you should consider spending that time on something more meaningful (like devoting every single moment of your life sacrificing your own rights because others have it worse).
---
It's this attitude that will eventually lead to the end of humanity if we don't do something to stop it.
---
*sigh*
The end of humanity, because we hold people accountable for their actions?
---
I think it's a good idea to get involved in what you believe is right, but damn is it really worth it to harass all the spammers.
---
Harass them? I just report them, and deal with those that are reported to me. Are you willing to extend your argument to those who are more visible in their theft? Should we stop harassing bank robbers because someone is starving in Africa? Come on. I'm not saying that spamming is of quite the same scale, but the principle (and morality) is about the same. People have no right to make someone pay for something they didn't ask for.
...and since you didn't mention it in your reply, I'm going to assume that you've rethought your freedom of speech argument.
Slashdot Mirror
They got jailed for *FRAUD* not for spamming.
The only difference was that they ran it via email solicitation rather than by the more conventional classified ad route.
BTW, there are no jobs stuffing envelopes. Pitney-Bowes makes very nice envelope stuffing machines, which operate very efficiently in the >$.01 range.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Spam Laws in the US, Europe, and beyond
According to this page, Washington law sets the following as penalties for spam:
Full text of the law is available.
no you don't. We have enough problems w/people being jailed for stupid fucking crimes (possession of marijuana, fraud, money laundering). We need to put people away for murder, rape, major drug production and moving. We can't find kidnappers, rapists, and murders, but we can track down two idiots who sent out 50 million emails and had 12k idiots fall for their ploy...
.02
Fill the prisons with REAL criminals not stupid idiots. They should be put on house arrest and served SPAM, not taking up space in the already overcrowded system..
Just my worthless
The plea agreements require the men to reveal to the internet providers how they accomplished their scheme.
Here we go, everybody get ready for a constant battering of emails from large internet providers claiming faster service and lower rates. Thanks for adding another powerful weapon to the world of spamming
I think they should have been orderd to keep their mouths shut.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
XML causes global warming.
Spam costs real money to the ISPs that become unintentional spam victims, the free mail domains that spammers forge return addresses from, the victims who purchase commercial software from people not smart enough to set up a mail server to not be an open relay, and the sysadmins that have to constantly refine their spam filters from spammers continual spam filter dodging techniques.
As long as spammers do not get sent to jail for their acitons, they will continue to spam. These people could care less if they make 10,000,000 people angry, as long as they get a few thousand dollars by scamming ignorant internet users.
The only way to make the internet a place where people feel safe putting their east-to-remeber email address on a web page, in a usenet posting, or in the whois data for a domain is to make spamming a crime, and to prosecute spammers to the fullest extent of the law.
BTW, I have written some pretty effective anti-spamming software here. Note that this software only runs on Linux/Unix machines. Windows users can use sneakemail.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
---
Penguins love Salmon, but hate the taste of SPAM. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
The war on drugs qua drugs and drug users qua drug users is ridiculous. People should be able to do anything that doesn't hurt others- which means that we should definitely have a war on drug addicts who murder, rape, rob, etc., but only on those people, not on harmless druggies. Money laundering is a crime which hurts me by masking crime or by forcing me to pay higher taxes, therefore it should be enforced as well.
Spamming hurts me in less tangible ways- they eat my time and my bandwidth. I think that spammers should be fined, not jailed, at a rate proportional to the amount the person reading the emails would have earned in the amount of time he spent reading the email (say one second per word, with a minimum fine on the order of $.50). People could rate their email addresses at whatever amount the wished to, and the spammers could decide what price they were willing to pay to broadcast their spam. People who didn't pay the fines should go to jail.
That would bring unsolicited email barriers to entry up to the level of USPS mail, and help to solve the problems (as well as make me some money, fast.)
Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
The problem is that if I send 10,000 emails or more via 1 ISP you have used a lot of the resources of that ISP. You have basicly made them support you free speach. Which you do not have the right to do. Similarly if you send a letter to the editor of a newspaper he does not have to print it. So while SPAM may cost you or me as end users a few seconds of time in the case of an ISP it may tie up a mail server for hours, during which time other emails are being delayed.
The other thing is that just because we are arresting spamers (And in this case it appears that fraud was what they were arrested for) it does not mean that we are not also hunting down Murderers and Rapists.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
CLANK. Lock
"uh, hi."
"Hi, you gotta' be my new cell mate."
"Well, yes. What are you in for?"
"Simple Assualt, but I didn't do it. What're you in fer?"
"Spamming."
"Huh?
"Spamming, you know, sending out large volumes of unsolicited e-mail from my computer."
"Uh-huh. Say, yer hands are soft, kinda' like a girl."
"Uh, gee, umm, thanks, er....."
"And yer kinda pertty, too, how long you in fer."
Tune in tomorrow for the exciting day 2 of SpamGuyInJail.com. In tomorrows episode we find out if SpamGuyInJail picks up the soap or just leaves it on the shower floor.
I sit across a very thin wall from the Pitney-Bowes machine you are referring too. It's a sweet machine but it has two problems that create human jobs stuffing envelopes: 1) It costs a half million bucks 2) It has major trouble doing fancy "non-standard" things that humans can do easily (like putting a card inside a folded letter).
Another thing keeping these machines out of normal office space is that it's about 25 feet long and runs at 90 decibles.
-B
If spam is such a nice thing, why do most spammers fake their headers, their from address and obfuscate the url on the body? Why do spammers connect to internet with accounts they got with fake ID:s. Why do they abuse open relays to hide the real origin of the mail?
I don't think freedom of speech covers speech with fake identity.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Spam is not free speech. Hasn't been for 30 years. Now go away, troll, or I shall feed you a second time ;-)
that my tax dollars are going to feed these spammers and clothe them (in prison uniforms) and heat their cells, etc.
I think we ought to at least recoup the costs.
How many of you out there would pay for membership to the site:
"Live webcam: hot teenage spammer jailbirds getting their asses raped day and night."
sounds like a winner to me.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
In addition to have a witty domain name <g>, it also contains information on existing state laws which can be used to sue a spammer in court.
Share and enjoy.
---
I don't know anyone who pays per byte per Internet access so it's not costing me anything at all.
---
It doesn't matter. Most ISPs and email providers don't charge that way. They take the average bandwidth and resource consumption of all users combined and factor that into their rates. If each user used fewer resources, they wouldn't have to charge quite as much.
In the end, if one person uses up more bandwidth, either the other users are given less bandwidth to consume or they are charged for it with higher base level prices. Generally the latter.
Also, this isn't counting the fact that many ISPs need full time handlers to deal with the complaints, extra servers to deal with the load, and so on. Just because there isn't a section on your bill labeled "Cost due to spam" doesn't mean you're not paying for it.
---
It seems like a lot of the slashbots have started this crusade to stop all spammers at any cost, even if that means wasting government resources and what few empty beds we have in our nation's jails
---
I agree with you that prosecution should be a last resort, but to be honest with you I think spammers deserve the jail time more than most of those charged with petty offenses. No matter how small you believe it to be, what spammers do is no different than theft. Most of them are con men (securities fraud, pyramid schemes, etc) as well.
Either way, it's nice to see that you worry about government resources. So do I. But don't you think user resources are important as well? And remember, the government is there to hear our grievences - that's what they are paid for. But I'm certainly not being paid to hear about someone's "Make Money Fast" scheme. In fact, I pay for it.
---
Even as we speak, there are literally, millions of people with swollen stomachs in the final stages of starvation
---
This is a false argument, based on the assumption that if we don't delete spam or turn in spammers that suddenly the other ills of the world would receive more attention. That's a pretty dubious argument.
You can turn it around, though - if I didn't spend so much time "just pushing delete" I would have more time to spend volunteering time and money to charity. You could even say that the extra processor time spent processing incoming spam uses up electricity, which means more factories churn polluting smoke into the air.
See how silly that sounds?
---
It doesn't take 30 seconds to delete victims of genocide or ethnic cleansings from your inbox, so obviously what you can't see from the comfort of your living room doesn't matter
---
Are you a horrible person because you're spending time posting to Slashdot instead of, say, volunteering time at the United Way or flying relief missions in Bosnia? If you're going to take up so much time preaching this kind of ill logic, you should consider spending that time on something more meaningful (like devoting every single moment of your life sacrificing your own rights because others have it worse).
---
It's this attitude that will eventually lead to the end of humanity if we don't do something to stop it.
---
*sigh*
The end of humanity, because we hold people accountable for their actions?
---
I think it's a good idea to get involved in what you believe is right, but damn is it really worth it to harass all the spammers.
---
Harass them? I just report them, and deal with those that are reported to me. Are you willing to extend your argument to those who are more visible in their theft? Should we stop harassing bank robbers because someone is starving in Africa? Come on. I'm not saying that spamming is of quite the same scale, but the principle (and morality) is about the same. People have no right to make someone pay for something they didn't ask for.
...and since you didn't mention it in your reply, I'm going to assume that you've rethought your freedom of speech argument.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff