Man Arrested for 'Spam Rage'

Mirkon writes "We've all gotten frustrated at some point with spam. Perhaps we've even been motivated to send nasty, threatening messages back to the spammers, just to vent some frustration. Wired reports that 44-year-old computer programmer Charles Booker did just that, and 'now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.'"

Comments

Re:More at the Houston Chronicle

[delfstrom]

There's more information (including the company name, which Wired withheld) here.

Re:They kept telling him his penis was too small

[CaptBubba]

I've posted about this before, but it is such a great tool it really needs to be included in everyone's regular mozilla/firebird setup along with mouse gestures.

Flash Click-to-View helps get rid of those stupid blinking flash ads. These are the ones that get around most ad-blocking software. Combine this with adblock and you have a very effective combination that gets rid of almost every ad out there with minimal configuration (just add the offending domains or some keywords to adblock's list, like "*.doubleclick.*" "*.atdmt.*" "*.x10*" "*ads.*", you get the idea).

Back when spam was illegal

[Animats]

He was in California. If Congress hadn't legalized spam at 6 AM this morning, he could have sued the crap out of them after January 1. He could have sued them anyway, and tried out the "long arm" feature of California's old anti-spam law, even though the penalties were small.

Here's what's going to happen after February 21:

• You're going to get tons of spam, and from major companies. This becomes legal, even in states where it used to be illegal.
• The headers will be correct. There are penalties for forging headers.
• The spam won't necessarily have the company name, just some unsubscribe URL and a P.O. box for written "opt-out" requests.
• You can go through the motions of "opting out", but it won't do much. "Opt-out" is interpreted narrowly, on a "per sender" basis. "Sender" is defined narrowly - "The term `sender', when used with respect to a commercial electronic mail message, means a person who initiates such a message and whose product, service, or Internet web site is advertised or promoted by the message." (from S.877) Note the "and"; it's not there by accident. Each combination of spammer and advertiser may be considered a different "sender". That clause could even be interpreted to completely let third-party spammers off the hook. So advertisers get to throw away the opt-out list every time they change spamhauses. There's even a "separate line of business" exception to make this explicit - spammers with both "Viagra" and "refinancing" spams don't have to use the opt-out list from one with the other.
• You can't sue. Only the FTC and the U.S. Justice Department can sue.

This was all carefully crafted by lobbyists for the Direct Marketing Organization, who will be celebrating as soon as they get some sleep, having been up all night getting this through the House.