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

They kept telling him his penis was too small

[corebreech]

So of course the guy goes nuts.

Now I see that they are able to send you animations/videos that get past Mozilla's image-blocking feature. Saw the first one yesterday, trying to sell me a Sony VAIO. How long is it going to be before I get one featuring erotic acts with barnyard animals?

The only thing that surprises me about this is that it wasn't a father who went nuts when seeing his little boy or girl subjected to some of this crap. Yeah, the penis ads are truly obnoxious... but to see your kids exposed to this some of this stuff? I could really sympathethize with someone going postal because of this.

Re:They kept telling him his penis was too small

[ekephart]

Well I don't sympathize. Why can't some people block this stuff mentally? I get penis, hot love4u, debt consolidation, viagra, etc. spam all the time. Those emails I DO NOT OPEN. They go straight to the trash. Additionally, I keep the adware off my machine. I don't really have any problems.

That said, advertising's worst enemy is indifference. Whether one is influenced to buy or influenced to get angry one is still influenced.

Just ignore it.

Before anyone panics

[squiggleslash]

...this is about a guy who made fairly severe death threats against the company concerned. We're not talking about Slashdotters needing to worry about life in prison because they threatened to sue, or demand other ISPs cut off some spammer.

It still sounds like the potential penalty is probably a little severe, but this isn't the type of reaction most of us would have.

If you're thinking of threatening savetrees.com (or whomever) with death threats, go and drink some chamomile tea, relax, and decide, in a rational way, what you're going to do about it.

What ever happened to feelings?

[192939495969798999]

I must say, I am disppointed that no one is allowed to be legitimately pissed off without getting a lawsuit. Back in the late 1800's, people who were annoying were called out in the street and shot at. I'm not saying that shooting people is the answer, but we should be allowed to vent frustrations so long as they don't include actual, specific assault against someone. Email is not an assault, unless the person says they're gonna hurt you, and you have some reason to believe that they are not kidding around.

Too bad he didn't actually murder someone

[HarveyBirdman]

Then he'd only be facing about a year in jail.

Re:if the company is canadian

[DaveV1.0]

He is being charged in the US because:

1. He is an American
2. He resides in the US
3. He made the calls and sent the email from the US
4. There are laws in the US and in the state in which he resides against making threats.

Any other questions?

Here's the real question

[carcosa30]

All of what you say above is true.

But consider what would happen to an individual pervert who sent out hundreds of thousands of sick emails talking about penises, and continued to do so even after the recipients told him in no uncertain terms to stop?

He'd be thrown in jail, that's what would happen.

Why are businesses allowed to do things that individuals aren't?