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.

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).

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.

Re:Before anyone panics

[Henry V .009]

Exactly. Be rational. For God's sake, fake your return address.

(Once you are assured of your anonymity, make sure that the threat is extremely detailed. A threat to snipe employees in the parking lot -- located at the intersection of streets Y and X -- is the kind of threat that companies take seriously. If necessary, you can spell out the profit/loss calculus for them. 10,000,000 spam emails = 10 penis devices sold = 1 crazy nut shooting up your place of business. Is it worth it, punk?)

Re:Before anyone panics

[the_brat_king]

So what everyone is getting at is simply:
Let's take spam "assassin" to a new level?
Could be a nice new field for laid of tech workers!

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.

Spam Rage?

[Schmucky The Cat]

A man goes nuts and threatens the people who are spamming him with weapons and bio-weapons Seriously, this guy needs help.

What kind of help? I'll loan him a gun or two. Can any /.'er surreptitiously provide the anthrax spores?

Re:More at the Houston Chronicle

[delfstrom]

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

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?

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.