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 ...

Comments

Spam

[xXunderdogXx]

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-

Re:You do damage, you do hard time!

[Erasmus Darwin]

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.

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.

This is ridiculous

[NateKid]

People always act like getting spammed is equivalent to being punched in the face. These are the same people who want to start unions to protect against the Carpal Tunnel syndrome they get from "Coding Sweatshops". Here's a quick fix to all your spam problems. Do not bother opening any mail about:

1. Investment opportunities in India/Thailand/Mexico
2. Having hot sex with Nicki or Linda
3. Finding out your horoscope
4. College degree in 3 months!
5. 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.

This goes to show

[mr]

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)

Does this make sense?

[infinite9]

Tell me again why spamming warrants a longer jail term than some violent crime?

Doing something about it

[kurisuto]

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.

Re:You do damage, you do hard time!

[CaptainZapp]

Nowhere in the constitution nor in the Bill of Rights does it say that you have the right to never be irritated. That is the price of freedom, and one that too many people are trying to legislate away. If we are to have true freedom of speech, you might actually hear something that could in some way be slightly unpleasant, disagreeable, or (horror of horrors) offensive to you.

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?

What're you in here for?

[Bonker]

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!

You do damage, you do hard time!

[CaptainZapp]

This is not a case about spamming, it's a case about computer theft and damage.

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...