Slashdot Mirror
Spammers Face Jail Time
Lumpish Scholar writes: "An article posted in a couple of places (here (1)( and here (2)) talks about two San Diego spammers who face up to nine years in prison for spamming (and crashing an open relay in the process)." Naturally, tbe D.A. reports that the two spammers arrested "appeared convinced that what they were doing wasn't illegal." Can this really be only the second time spammers have been prosecuted? That might explain all the pink goop clogging my inbox ...
Does anybody remember last year's /. story about the group of Spammers/Telemarketers that got burned by some guy who was Mad As Hell and Not Going to Take it Anymore?
The guy did a little investigation of the business and ended up cracking their network, and coming up with all kinds of compromising material like contact info and n00dz. I think the company was in Tennesee or thereabouts.
It was either brilliant pranksterism, an elaborate hoax, or a disgruntled ex employee/boyfriend. Never was quite sure which.
I did a quick search of the archives and didn't find the story. I'd be real interested in knowing what the aftermath of that story was.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Wouldn't it only have to cost someone something, not necessarily break it? Stealing is itself a crime.
Developers: We can use your help.
What I don't understand is why people keep sending me porno ads to my ICQ account. And whenever I reply to the sender I never get an answer! Are these people really that busy they can't talk to somebody who they messenged? I want to carry on a conversation with a spammer. Get to know them. See what makes them tick!
-underd.o.g-
That is the *maximum* they can face on these charges. *Any* felony is punishable by a year or more in jail (2 yr minimum in some states). The criminal charge covers all crimes of that type, and has a sentencing range. It's much more likely that these guys get a much shorter sentence, or no incarceration at all. My guess would be probabtion including a month or two in the county jail rather than a priison sentence.
hawk, esq.
Yes, but we are getting closer. The last "Spammers Jailed" story seemed to imply they might've been jailed because of the scam rather than the spam. In today's case, however, the crime was a direct consequence of the spamming -- even if the item being spammed was something that would've been totally legal/legit to sell via normal means.
Also, the things that bumped the crime up to a felony were things that weren't direct actions of the spammer but rather the consequences of their actions. From the POV of the spammer, it was just generically spamming through an open-relay.
So it's not ideal, but it's still Pretty Damn Good, IMO.
So, when you connect to an open webserver (yahoo, /., etc.) is it criminal to connect to it if the admin hasn't granted you specificly to access the computer? No, it isn't. So, why should any
other service be different in the eyes of the law?
For the same reason that it isn't a crime to go into a place of business without knocking if the door's unlocked, but it is a crime to do the same thing at a stranger's house.
In other words, because web servers are customarily for public access, and smtp relay (as opposed to an endpoint) is not.
- Investment opportunities in India/Thailand/Mexico
- Having hot sex with Nicki or Linda
- Finding out your horoscope
- College degree in 3 months!
- Warning, New Dangerous Virus Causes Nuclear Meltdown (click attachment for more info)!
How about growing up and realizing that some things barely matter in life. I mean these guys should be in trouble for using an unauthorized email account. And if they really damaged a company's equipment though illegal usage of it, well fine, throw the book at them for that too. But some of the above coments, about how we need to be saved from spam is ridiculous. Most people open spam because they want to get something out of it (sex, etc.). Serves them right that they wind up wasting their "precious time". At least their time is less valuable now since all these "html engineers" are being laid off by the thousands.We do not need laws VS spamming.
What we need is individuals who:
1) Announce on the SMTP port that they offer a mail analysis service
2) All mail comming in is subject to the processing fee.
(snif, snif, smells like a shrink wrapped EULA)
3) Send the spammers a bill for $250 for each chunk of spam.
4) Sell off the un-paid debt, so that somone local can take that debt and "take a spammer to small claims court"
4a) Have 31 (or 30/29/28) seperate people take the spammer to small claims court...one each day for a month of small claims actions vs the spammer.
All grass roots effort, and all without any new laws.
Wouldn't it be worth $100 to harass a spammer back? (local fees for a small claims action here)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Tell me again why spamming warrants a longer jail term than some violent crime?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Mostly, we all sit here on /. and complain about spam; but if we'd make an organized effort to write to our representatives to have a law passed to ban spam, we might have a lot better weapon against it. We ought to organize a letter-writing campaign.
ie. If I spam 10,000 users with get rich quick schemes and no server falls over then what case do people have to bring me to court? Annoyance because of non-solicited email?
However if I crash two servers and cause a company a big headache and loss of business then they can get me for that and not the sending itself.
Last time i heard someone was prosecuted it was because what they were trying to get people to do was illegal not because they'd sent out 50 million emails.
Could be wrong though ...
--
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Looks like it is time to call the ghostbusters!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Here's how it would work: I get a spam and it wastes a little of my time and costs me additional money in wasted resources. Maybe it doesn't cost me too much, but together with all the other recipients, the "affected class", it would probably add up. So, to get the lawsuit started, first thing my lawyer will need is the mailing list that the spammers used, and any attendant records of how successful the deliveries were.
Any lawyers out there? Any way the courts would order the beginning of this sort of discovery process?
Why, of course neither the American - nor any other constitution (yes indeed - there are others) provides a guarantee not to be irritated.
But probably most constitutions value the right of an individual to be left alone higher then the right of somebody yelling his message, by whatever means available, into my ear.
I also don't think that the American constitution grants you the freedom to forge e-mail addresses, to abuse third party networks or to crash computers to get your message across.
Further, you guys (usually) have flat rate network connections. Virtually the entire rest of the world does not. We might pay as much as 5$ an hour for a simple, local telephone connection. This means my bandwith comes at a price.
If you spam me (or any Asian, African, Australian or European) you are stealing, it costs. Does the American constitution mention a right to steal?
See, I didn't think so.
Free speech means you can stand on a park bench and blabber what you want to blabber, it means that you can publish text, image, video, music whatever. It means you have the right to publish, it doesn't however give you the right to force your publication on me. Especialliy not when I'm forced to pay for it.
You mention filters. Unusable for me. I run my own business and even when my primary e-mail address is spammed 9 times out of 10, I can't filter it. The risk that one legitimate message gets filtered is just too big. Such a filtered message could cost me ten thousands of $ in lost revenue.
So, to summarize:
You have the right to blurt your message, regardless how ludicrous
You have no right to force that message on me.
And you have especially no right to force your message at societys and my expense, OK?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Convict: Heh, what're you in here for?
Spammer: I don't really know! I'm just a business man with a little computer skill trying to make a buck.
Convict: Damn the man! Always screwin' over us small business men. Why, I'm in here for selling cars!
Spammer: Really?
Convict: Well, they weren't *my* cars.
Spammer: Uhh....
Convict: Hey nerd boy, You got a pretty mouth. You wanna have sex?
Spammer: MOMMY!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Under the computer tresspass act, it is a criminal offense to use a computer that you are unauthorized to (hacking a mail relay, even if open). It might be a stretch to say that by sending SPAM to your POP3 server, that they had used your computer to retrieve and store SPAM without authorization.
About them being clueless, it's bull. They knew it was wrong, why else would they hack into a open mail relay; why would they hide their identify?
It's funny, they claim the SPAM is legal, but they hide their identity.
Fight Spammers!
However, there are a fair number of laws that say I have the right never to be robbed, which is what spammers do with their automated postage-due crap.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
SAN DIEGO, California:
San Diego Superior court appears to be after another party in its spammer court case, this time slashdot is being sought for what is known as the "slashdot effect" after a story posted on their web page pointing at signonsandiego completely knocked out their servers causing a panic. CmdrTaco was unavailable for comment at press time.
There is no spork.
It's nice to see that some jerks may do hard time for that, but it would be even nicer if they are punished becaause of the actual act of spamming.
Aparently legislators only get involved when business are hurt, but not when we, as individuals have to deal with this pest.
I fear this is not really a victory for the anti-spam league (although it might send a strong message to spam-wannabes). On a sidenote: Salon ran a story a year ago, in which Janelle Brown actually tried to get rich quick, lose 90 pounds in a week or sign up for the greatest pr0n available TOTALLY FREEEEE!!!
The ironic thing is, that she had a really hard time actually contacting the seller and purchasing all those goodies...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk