Slashdot Mirror
Spammer Sentencing Guidelines Released
jfengel writes "The United States Sentencing Commission has issued its guidelines for punishment under the CAN-SPAM act (PDF, beginning on page 155). You can get 5 years for a second offense or if you're spamming for fraud, child porn or other felony, or 1 to 3 years depending on how much spam you send. If Congress doesn't say otherwise, it goes into effect November 1."
Only one punishment is suitable for spammers: Death by Fisting.
Trolling is a art,
For plain advertising - Five Years is actually a decent sentance. It's really too bad that, technically, it's so difficult to catch a spammer. Especially if they route through international hosts. Sadly, this is likely to have the worst effect on those that are not technologically savvy, and know the least about how Email works.
To me, those types of people are the least of the SPAM problem.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
What to you count as an "offense"? I would expect all spammers have sent more than 2 spam messages. Do you have to be caught, let off scott free, and then caught again before anything happens? Sounds like an easy ride to me...
They need the 2nd offense to be punished by chemical castration, as in the pourig of the gentals in caustic chemicals.
3rd offense death
Is this an election-winning stratergy?
Unenforceable overseas.
Still those spammers have to be caught don't they? I think it's time for all of us to see that just introducing a new law will never again be enough to stop determined, persistent, and, worst of all, quite clever folks among them do what they can. Compared with the money you still can make spamming around, 5 years are nothing, and for child porn you get even more (money, that is...).
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
I'm more concerned with the rules of evidence that we need in order to bring these losers to court. The judicial system needs to produce a more concrete set of guidelines for what the average joe needs to bring to a law enforcement official (and which law enforcement office) in order to get convictions!
I place spammers right below murderers and birthday party clowns, but aren't these sentences a bit overkill?
Sometimes I wonder if the prison overcrowding problems aren't because they toss out 5 year sentences like candy to spammers (soon), hackers, and people who get caught with a single joint. Meanwhile the cliche of "rapist out in 3 years" continues to remain valid.
Is it all becoming about profits?
Lately I've been thinking about sentencing, and I see people complain about how it's unfair that non-violent crimes get just as much time as, say, a man plowing over another person at 90 mph. And then we see the CAN-SPAM act, and think that these people should get MORE time than that. It makes me wonder if our view of sentencing being linearly or otherwise correlated to the aspect of the crime is wrong.
I completely agree with the spirit of the law. I disagree on how it's being implemented. The law should also go after the idiots paying the spammers to send their unsolicited verbiage. The current laws are completely toothless if the spammer decides to start sending spam from servers out of US jurisdiction. The companies offering the products or services clogging my INBOX should be fined/prosecuted as well. There is no incentive to stop spam as things are. There is incentive to find a spammer who will be out of jurisdiction. How long do you think it will be before the better financed spammers move their servers to India or elsewhere? How long before some entreprenurial Mexicans, Czechs or Russians decide to offer their services?
(Disclaimer: I'm Mexican. I speak Russian and spend a lot of time there. I'm familiar with their technical capabilities and motivations. So don't start on "why did he singled those nationalities out?" Because in my opinion it's likely to happen. You're welcome to your opinion based on YOUR experiences.)
When the law starts going after the product or service pushers, or their credit card payment processors, I'll cheer it. I doubt the law will be applied correctly until then.
Cheers,
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
people well stop sending me emails reminding me that my penis is too small and I have trouble getting it up. However, I'd rather the senate put in a bill that shuts up whoever it is that keeps telling all theses marketers about my small penis and erectile difficulties.
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." - Soren Kier
After all, these [naughty description]s rake in a gizorkabajizalafillion dollars from thier, erm, activities...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Oh thank god, for a minute there i thought they were raising sentences for assult! im glad i can still go around with my gang beating the crap out of people without the risk of too much time in jail cos that would totally suck. Also i think its my right to carry an M16 and a 2 foot sword around wherever i go and i wouldnt want to get into lots of trouble for that (well no more trouble than my rich daddy couldnt pay off ;) Its not like im bad or anything - just a little messing crap up around town, smashing things, kicking people, you know how it is being a kid, anyway i better go my mates outside with some new wheels he just jacked - were going for a little spin!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Don't like something in society? Pass a law to "correct" it! Yes, now you too can contibute to bloated bureacracy, higher taxes and expanded government control that everyone here bitches about if it allows the fed to go after them for massive copyright violations. Yes. It all makes sense now.
Sometimes I wonder if the prison overcrowding problems aren't because they toss out 5 year sentences like candy to spammers (soon), hackers, and people who get caught with a single joint.
A sci-fi story once offered a nice solution to prison overcrowding. The convicted criminal had to take a pill drawn randomly from a bottle. A certain percentage of the pills in the bottle were loaded with lethal poison. If criminal survived the pill, they were released. The probability of dying was tied to the crime -- e.g., murder someone and you might have draw a pill from a bottle that gave a 50% chance of death, run a red light and you have a 0.1% chance of death.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What we need is some truly old school punishment for these scum. Especially for recidivist spammer slime. I'd add :
1. Public flogging
2. Draw and quarter
3. The Rack
4. Impalement
5. Pillory
Then again, the Supreme court would probably strike that down as 'Cruel and Unusual punishment'.
Very Cruel indeed
I don't know what kind of email accounts you all have, but I rarely get spam, and when I do, the filters pick it up. Sure it's annoying, but it's really not that big of a deal. We need better filtering, if anything, not 'better' legislation. I can't understand how the same people who want to keep the internet free of government influence are supporting laws to crucify spammers. Maybe after we tackle the spam problem, we can lock up those damn haxorz for life and censor all that indecent content out there. And, actually, let's do it for the whole world, not just the US.
The internet isn't centrally controlled. Even if it was, we need geeks in control, not another pork-barreling suit fucking things over like the gov't (here in the USA) has done to us over the past 100 years.
They don't mention a lifetime ban on ever using a computer again, along with confiscation of all computer hardware on conviction.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
As sick and hateful as we all find it, legit spamming (in large numbers) does seem to produce income, although it also produces dire hatred by all. It's disgusting, because the real truth here is that spamming actually targets the demigraphic of people who are truly most likely to spend their large quantities of hard-earned, overvalued, stamped, signed paper & plastic: old people in retirement, impressionable people, and young people with access to $. ... hmmm ... (imagine Gameworks spamming people with deals to take to the nearest arcade ? Or I remember for awhile that the Toyota dealer in my area had an insane family deal, buy one actual car, get the next for a dollar -- truth ! I wanted to split the cost with a friend, but neither of us had enough to pay.) Initially, I thought, "hey, this is great ... if they're just going after spammers who scam, I'll have to read more on it," but if you spam, then you're either ignoring the demigraphic, or don't care about it.
I wouldn't have much of a problem with it if it were not for the malicious nature that is ingrained within those who use it. (And in fact I analyzed what I would need to do to start it, until realizing that the services would be abused to take advantage of those who can't help themselves.) If it were more reliable and better structured, I'd feel okay with it. After all, there are hands down, enough ways to efficiently deal with it and cut down on it. A legal protocol for a spam-newsgroup system where people can filter them to various folders would be of interest to me
I hate spam, not for the fact that it hounds many of my emails with 3-10 messages per day, but because of the people who are literally preyed upon by it for their money. That is reason enough for spammers to spend jail-time, and lots of it. The government didn't go far enough.
--I gots 99 problems but a new machine ain't one!
AMD! Asus! Whoot! 6 years!
Capital punishment also happens to be barbaric according to the standards of most civilized nations on earth.
The owls are not what they seem
To the suicidal, that would be a license to do anything they want before they died. Afterall, even if caught they would get away with it every time until they died.
It never ceases me to amaze that every time a subject like DMCA or Patriot Act comes up, people fail to realize that it is not the government (which, basically should be, "we the people") but the markets that have overtaken the democratic process are to blame.
Remember. You can vote for (or against) a political candidate; you can't vote for/against what the big business wants. Therefore I still believe that fundamentally big government is good and completely free markets are bad.
The owls are not what they seem
Let us not forget the ever-popular burning at the stake. perhaps we could feed them so much of their 'wares' that they.... er..... "explode" - is this a possible side effect of a viagra overdose? a fitting punishment in any case!!! [evil laugh] muahhahahahah!
How about tacking on a little "not allowed to use computer systems" after the 2nd offense?
I would think that it could apply in some way. IANAL, of course, but if you're physically located outside the US but still commit a crime such as this that affects people in the US, couldn't you be expedited? Or at least have a warrant for your arrest should you enter the US? Not totally unlike what happened to Dmitry Sklyarov.
Just a thought.
...it's still 1-5 years* ~0 spammers.
What we need is the means to take more spammers to court. As it is now, they're so few it'd hardly matter if you gave them capital punishment.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
To prosecute, just follow the link.
Most people are incosiderate, unempathetic, non-contemplative boobs who let knee jerk reactions rule their thinking.
This would be the reason there's a grandmother from NY who got caught with an eight ball serving 15 years in prison while a convicted rapist gets out in 10.
Spam is a goddamned piece of electronic mail, GET OVER IT. Maybe if people didn't give their email address to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that ASKS FOR IT they wouldn't have a problem. I mean do you hand out your address in a room full of telemarketers? How hard is this to understand?
I hardly think the 10 pieces of spam I get a day is worth sending someone to jail for three years. But you get more you say? Well I'm intelligent enough to use a personal and a spam address for my email, handing the spam address to things I don't trust. yeah, I must be a frigging GENIUS HERE.
God people are stupid, I don't know how they remeber to breath.
-rt
I would agree, but in my view, at least two of these punishments should apply for each offence.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
It'd be a license to do anything you want for anyone who doesn't believe in an afterlife. Spend your time doing whatever you like and then when you die *poof* your brain stops functioning, your personality ceases to be and as such there is no punishment - you have no mind left therefore you aren't thinking, if you aren't thinking then obviously you don't even know you're dead.
This is also my main argument against the death penalty in practise - if someone does something truly terrible then death is not punishment since they are not around to suffer. Life imprisonment, however, leaves you spending your remaining years being punished - much harsher in my book.
"If Congress doesn't say otherwise, it goes into effect November 1st"
You forgot to mention that the congress is controlled by republicans which passed the "Can Spam Act". I will be surprised if it is passed at all let alone seriuos modifications!
This is by much too little.
I want spammers tortured. I propose they be tied to a low voltage electric chair which is connected to a button on a website. The populace will be invited to come by and issue a non-terminal zap to the offender whenever the mood stikes them.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The War on Spam sounds great, and I'm sure every citizen is happy their politicians are taking such draconian measures. Ditto for the spam fighters, who will get nice shiny boxes and new powers to help in the fight. But it won't work and for simple reasons.
One: spammers have huge networks of zombied computers at their disposal and can send spam almost entirely undetectably.
Two: this legislation does not affect the companies actually selling their products via spam. Thus it simply acts as a darwinian filter, eliminating the spammers stupid enough to remain in US jurisdiction and allow their identities to be tracked (see point one).
Three: there are already more effective ways to get the consumers' attention, and by legislating against spam, these will simply become more used. Mainly, I'm thinking of spyware/trojans like CoolWebSearch.
A realistic attack on spam and the rest must be focussed on the people paying for such services, i.e. advertisers. They must be liable for the cost and moral damage their marketing causes, as in any other domain. Further we need some changes to the policy of "receiver pays" which is the basic reason why spam exists at all.
But as so often, this attack on spammers is too little, too late, and ignores what is a much more serious problem: spyware, trojans, and worms that spread via security holes in MSIE and Windows.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Yeah, this will really stop spammers! It's not like they can just move out of the USA and spam to their hearts content or anything like that ... er ... wait.
Perhaps administor 1 ppt of arsenic for every 1 spam?
2,500,000 spams would yield near-immediate results
while half a million parts per trillion would be a slower,
but more painful death for the spammer later that week.
I believe you've forgotten "soft cushions" and "the Comfy Chair". *Nobody* expects the Spammish Inquisition!
trailer-occupying folks must be upset at the penalties being levelled at their favorite food.
This is also a problem we're facing in the "War on Terror". Those who subscribe to the terrorist-corrupted version of Islam believe that if they die while attacking non-believers they'll be taken to the happiest possible afterlife. Therefore, they design attacks in which they are sure to die, and we have nobody left to prosecute.
The 19 worst offenders in the Sept. 11 attacks died, therefore our criminal justice system is totally ineffective against them.
...that you need to establish a chain of evidence that proves the company sent out, commissioned or otherwise approved of the SPAM. If not, I could simply spam *for* my competitors' websites, and they would be fined/put in jail.
Since they don't know me, they'd have even less chance of actually finding me and stopping my spamming than those actually recieving a spam mail from me. This is more commonly known as a joe job.
It's not sure that it is the company itself or a competitor either. How about a blackmailer? "Give us $$$ or we'll get you in trouble over spamming" or stock scams, assuming we're talking about a company big enough to be on a stock market?
Quite simply, it's neither practically or legally possible to skip establishing the chain of events. To take a classic example, referral scams. It's the referer that is misleading them to the site, not the site itself.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is a bad, dumb, wrong law that won't work and will only be used by crackhead prosecutors to harass their political enemies.
Real spammers will simply move their base to a country that won't extradite them and has good broadband connections. Like maybe some island in the middle of the Pacific that acts as a supply and maintenence station for the major trans-oceanic internet cables. So this law won't do anything to reduce the amount of spam that gets to your PC.
I call it a 'Yuppie' law because it's one of those 'feel good' laws that make Baby Boomer mommies believe that they're solving a problem but in reality has exactly the opposite effect of what they're trying to achieve. Because the definition of spam here is so broad, the law can be used by prosecuters ( in the USA these are the government's lawyers who file charges against citizens in the courts. Unlike most other countries, in the USA, the courts are a seperate division of government from the police and the police are subject to the law as interpreted by the courts) to go after people for their lifestyle. For instance anyone sending an e-mail about an out-of-favor political position or an announcement of a demonstration could be sent to prison under a broad interpretation of an anti-spam law. And the present government of the USA is really big on broad interpretation for laws against people that it doesn't like.
So this law is stupid and worthless for what it's supposed to do, and provides a broad weapon to be used indiscriminately against citizens.
So why would anyone on Slashdot support it?
The best sentence should be the one in Fallout II... The spammer gets set free in the center of the town. Rocks are available everywhere. But better yet, we get guns, lots of guns. We take out his legs with a Remington VS Sendero chambered in .223. We take out his arms with .45 caliber slugs. We riddle his body with that really cool HK11e. And his head... Oh yeah, we sit 500 yds away in a bunker and use the sniper rifle, also in .223, and "Critical Hit" the filthy spammer, causing his brain to make a beautiful pink mist.
The problem with life imprisonment is that it is rarely that. A disgustingly large portion of those who are sentenced to life in prison are let out on parole; would you really want a serial killer (who would had otherwise been executed) to be let out of prison on parole?
I know I wouldn't.
No, I wouldn't want them to be executed, I'd like life in prison to do what it says on the tin.
1. Send out millions of spam mail 2. Watch the news about Congress passing an anti-spam law 3. Laugh at Congress because the problem is technical not legal 4. Profit!!!
This is also my main argument against the death penalty in practise - if someone does something truly terrible then death is not punishment since they are not around to suffer.
You are one sadistic individual.
You can't take the sky from me...
RickHunter wrote
The problem with fining the companies offering the products/services is that you've then handed their competition a great way to get rid of them. Having trouble beating a rival in the market? Hire a direct marketer in Russia, say, to send out ten million mails, carefully targetted to include government and law enforcement officers in their jurisdiction claiming to be selling their service. Watch them implode under the fines.
Kjella wrote:
Quite simply, it's neither practically or legally possible to skip establishing the chain of events. To take a classic example, referral scams. It's the referer that is misleading them to the site, not the site itself.
I disagree with both of you. All I have to do is follow the Deep Throat Watergate Principle: follow the money. All I have to do is purchase one of the products or services and follow the chain through the payment processors all the way to the source. There will be a nice money trail. That's why I said "the vendors or their payment processors in my previous post.
Cheers,
Eugenehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
A 'Yuppie' (from 'Young Urban Professional') law is any emotional law that is passed to enforce a lifestyle affection primarily of the young and upper-middle class on the poor and lower-middle class people. It gives the Yuppie do-gooders the impression that they have addressed what they precieve to be a 'social problem' without actually doing anything about in the real world and often making the underlying problem worse.
An example would be the law that requires all children to wear bicycle helmets. Fine for yuppie mommies, they're the first to buy anything that might help protect precious little Megan and Justin. But bad for the children of the poor.
Say a cop sees a poor kid on a bicycle without a helmet. He stops the kid and gives him a big (more than $100) ticket that his parents must pay or lose their driver's license. [I know, there's no connection between the two in the real world. But yuppie mommies love to come up with creative and nasty little ways to make the poor people improve themselves i.e. see things from a yuppie mommy prespective]
The parents can't afford a $100 helmet for the kid -and- pay the ticket. So they tell the kid on the threat of a beating not to get caught by the cops for riding around the neighborhood without a helmet.
So the next time that the cops are around and see the kids riding without helmets, the kids take off in the opposite direction. Being kids, they don't look where they're going and dive right out into traffic where they get hit by a car.
The good yuppie mommies point to this incident as a reason for all kids to wear helmets and to increase the penalities on the parents of the working class children to 'encourage them to make the right choices for their children's safety'.
I know, I know, that you're all going to tell me what a shit I am and how this doesn't make any sense and , of course, kids NEED helmets and what a stupid jerk I am and how I have a serious attitude problem and how I could certainly benefit from counseling and how my own kids deserve a better parent than me and everything else...
It doesn't change the fact that we don't need any more yuppie mommie laws. You need to consider the possible side effects of any law will have before you endorse passing it.
Thank you,
We should put these guys to work doing human spam filtering. Sure, it sounds like a recipe for disaster, but just tie their pay to their performance. Let through an ad for grey-market software at huge discounts? Looks like you're gonna have to get friendly with Bubba if you want your cigarettes this week. Of course you also spot-check their rejects. Drop the email from the ex asking if you wanna get drinks some time? TWO WEEKS IN SOLITARY!
In all seriousness, 5 years ago I would have said that multi-year prison sentences for spamming would be extreme, at least in cases without other crimes involved. On its face, it's still extreme, but these guys now hold an entire communication system hostage. If sending several of them to prison for their transgressions (which ARE transgressions) can be a deterrent, then I'm for it. I think it really will be a deterrent if we can get some convictions. It's not like people spam in a brief burst of anger. These people generally have some business or technical skills that could find them legitimate employment (perhaps somewhat less lucrative, but above the poverty line) even in the lousy tech economy. I hear the porn industry does well when the economy is lousy. I'm sure my mom would much rather I manage a (legitimate) porn server farm than a spam server farm anyway.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I agree with you there.
But I would argue that execution is better than letting them go free, which happens all too often.
This is also a problem we're facing in the "War on Terror". Those who subscribe to the terrorist-corrupted version of Islam believe that if they die while attacking non-believers they'll be taken to the happiest possible afterlife. Therefore, they design attacks in which they are sure to die, and we have nobody left to prosecute.
The 19 worst offenders in the Sept. 11 attacks died, therefore our criminal justice system is totally ineffective against them.
Timothy McVeigh wasn't affraid of the death penalty either. What version of Islam did he believe in?
Deterants do not work on fanatics, Islamists or otherwise.
You can't take the sky from me...
A disgustingly large portion of those who are sentenced to life in prison are let out on parole;
Where did you learn this?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I'm glad I didn't go to your school.
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (*) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
(*) Microsoft will not put up with it
(*) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(*) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(*) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(*) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
sulli
RTFJ.
I love when people complain because of the sentencing on a 'not really important' piece of legislation. At what point should an offender not be morally or legally responsible for his/her actions in breaking the law? Sometimes that's left up to a jury to decide, however then we have situations like O.J. He was found not guilty, so be it. The system isn't 100% perfect and never claimed to be, however running a stop light and smoking pot (right or wrong) have their penalties. What those penalties are, usually, is a culmination of years (decades?) of pissed off people changing the laws. Take MADD for example: a bunch of pissed off Mom's rally together, organize themselves, lobby the government and show Congress a bunch of graphic photos showing dismembered children. They obtain stiffer penalties for drunk driving and a headlight on the problem. Now that they have power, they lobby to get the legal limit dropped and they get it. Then, WHOA, the president of MADD gets herself caught doing what? Drinking and driving? Now she's subjected to the same legislation she helped create and cries foul ("it was only 2 glasses of wine!"). If people really want to change things, they need to organize and lobby (hard). Sitting back in a chair and sending emails doesn't work; hell even lobbying may not work, but at the end of the day my conscience is clear, knowing that at least I tried to establish change.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Exactly...let's rescind ourselves to the first century. That will clear things right up. As a matter of fact, we won't have to deal with spam then, either!
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
ok, after doing programming for a telemarketing company for a year I noticed a very simple solution to telemarketing/spam problems.
If people STOPPED buying this shit, then the problem would go away.plain and simple. but no, we have morons out there who actually purchase products from spam!!!
these are the real enemies. the fscking sheep that buy these piece of crap products!
... or work for the RIAA.
"Mother, should I run for President? Mother, should I trust the government?"
I think this post should get a 'Score: 1 Funny' since it's a hilarious tangent that doesn't have the least to do with this subject. Like if I made an unrelated reference to all the bombings and shootings done by those believing in atheism, with the whole 'I'll disappear after this' notion making it all so convenient. Cause hey, it worked for the Columbine kids and a whole bunch of others. Everyone jump on the bandwagon.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
DAMN! I was hoping I could get through this thread without someone attributing spam to Windows. Acchh, I should have known better.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
It's kind of funny that you blame the government when the true blame lies on the corporations that have bought the government.
No! The TRUE blame lies with the guy/gal in the mirror. Don't give your money to the corporation. Don't vote for the incumbent. Make your own salt. Spin you own clothes. Grow your own weed and your own food. Ride a bike. Walk. Put up a solar array, a wind generator. Collect your own rain water. Compost your shit. The U.S. and other "democratic" counrties definitely have the gov't that they deserve. The voter is every bit as despicable as the politician they vote for.
What?
Great, just what the US needs; geeks controlling the internet. It's not like Joe Sixpack knows how to program or set-up a Linux box, right? Besides, wouldn't your solution be just as dangerous? It would just be a different set of assholes in charge of something they shouldn't be in charge of to begin with.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Well, those who know how life after death works often aren't afraid of it either, as they don't bother believing in the 'eternal judgment' system brought to us by dualists and every mindless preacher with a bone to pick on whomever opposes him.
Either way, it seems like nobody's going to consider all the thousands of people who are set up and framed for the crimes they didn't commit. Seems we're too busy imagining a perfect, spotless judicial system to pay attention to real life, where maybe 20% of 'criminals' were just people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, dealt with corrupt police officers, or were just messing with the wrong people. Looks to me like everyone just wants a 'bad guy' to blame for all their problems.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Deputy Lee Dove
Hiibel
Dove
Hiibel
Dove
Verdict: Drain Bamage
Yeah, right.
How about a war on overreaction of an impotent legislature.
We have here a crime (since 2004-01-01) that causes, at most, annoyance.
It's very politically correct these days to hate spam. But, frankly, it's the kind of hatred that's reserved for rude drivers, cell-phone wielding restaraunt patrons and the like.
Plenty of examples have already been posted about the little old lady with the virus-infected computer or the kid with the lemonade stand. I'll not pile on here.
Who among us has asked "we the people" to throw somebody in prison for being a pain in the ass?
Dontcha think that's a little harsh?
Death penalty for parking violations and all that.
It's the responsiblity of "we, the people" to create justifiable penalties for offences, and then enforce them.
The excuse "it's too hard to catch these guys" does not justify cutting the balls off of the poor bastard we do nab.
Society at large (we call "the law") has to follow some rules, too. No unreasonable search and seizure. No cruel or unusual punishment. No taking of life, liberty, or property without due process.
"War on" [drugs, terror, drunk driving], and now spam seems, however, to absolve "we, the people" from restrictions against abuse of the individual.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
For a long time, I agreed spam is a problem, but I never had more than a couple dozen a day, easy enough to delete. Until this year... now I've had the same email address on my site for years now, and I always disguised it to help against spam bots, but something happened in the last six months. I started getting 10-12 spams EVERY TIME my mail client checked my mail at ten minute intervals. and I was only getting worse.
I switched hosts and had access to install SpamAssassin. Now it catches about 600 spams mails and spam mails to addresses that don't exist on my site a DAY. And still, more and more are making it through to my inbox just because of the sheer volume. And SpamAssassin has gotten a couple of real mails caught in it, but now the volume is so high I can't skim the sorted spam to double check, so I just hope anything that gets caught isn't important.
Unless they either find a way to stop it via legislation, or changing how email works to make it more secure and harder to abuse, and ISPs are pressured to not let spammers use their services, they are going to render the email system completely unusable. My business is online, I can't use a whitelist -- I have to be able to get email from potential clients and customers easily. I shouldn't have to go to this much trouble just to use email, it just isn't right.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Google for the statistics.
The problem isn't laws. Passing another anti-spam law or writing up sentencing guidelines is akin to walking into a Barnes and Noble, buying a book on brain surgery, and expecting you will be a doctor.
Spammers break tons of laws every time they spam. Passing another one is superfluous.
If you want to pass a law to address this problem, pass a law specifying $X amount of dollars to go towards law enforcement and prosecution of existing computer crimes. Form an independent cyber-crime unit that works with the judicial branch of the government to educate those idiots to the fact that these people are criminals and need to be prosecuted. And... ACTUALLY PROSECUTE THEM!
A friend of mine had a spammer break into his network. He filed a case with the FBI and gathered all the evidence to prosecute the spammer. He ID's where the spammer was located and documented hundreds of cases of computer tampering and other felonious fraud. The FBI presented the case to the District Attorney for prosecution and the DA blew it off. I'm beginning to think the actual spammers are District Attorneys the way they seem so unwilling to go after these people.
So you think a serial killer who tortured countless people deserves to just fall asleep and never wake up? Doesn't sound like much retribution for what they have done.
No-one attributed spam to windows, but windows is playing a big role in helping spammers hide their trax.
the whole point of (most) spam is not clog servers and carry out vendettas
And you think the US cares about the standards of other nations WHY?
I think the death penalty lets them off too easy. Let 'em stay in the box for 40 years.
So you think a serial killer who tortured countless people deserves to just fall asleep and never wake up? Doesn't sound like much retribution for what they have done.
Sadists enjoy making others suffer.
That includes serial killers, and people who want to make serial killers suffer.
You can't take the sky from me...
...takes a lot longer to pick up.
By "we", I mean those who maintain moderately large mail systems. My own mailsystem gets about 8 million messages per day;
Of those 8 million, approximately 4 are rejected right at the SMTP level for various reasons (mostly inexistant domains or mail recipients); according to spamassassin, 43% of what does get in is also SPAM. That's almost another 2M. In other words, I (or my company) could have invested less than 25% of what I actually did in equipment (the spam filtering servers alone are almost a third of the total), and my nights and days would be *MUCH* less stressful.
A senseless waste of our tax dollars. This won't work because spammers know how to hide behind hijacked computers and open relays, etc.. Having glanced through these guides I couldn't help thinking how easy it would be to distrubute spam containing child pornography while posing as your competitor.
It's ironic that our elected officials can't take on tough issues like health care but seem to have plenty of time to pen 161 pages of rendantly abominable extraneous verbosity.
We've had the DMCA, now it's CAN-SPAM. What troubles me about these laws is that they're ineffectual. People will copy DVDs and distribute them, others will send unsolicited advertisements to any email address they can get. Relax people. This is no biggy. For the domains I manage I get about 1500 emails/day (webmaster, postmaster, admin, etc.) but I use a spam filter and a procmail script to deal with it.
What we're asking here is for the government to control what comes into our inboxes. I'm sure CAN-SPAM will be tied up in the courts for years over it's implications on the First Amendment. The whole thing is a waste of society's resources.
Five years for sending some unsolicited bulk email? Wouldn't a more appropriate punishment be a small fine?
HAHAHA! Just kidding. I had to say it, since I knew some spammer would be piping up with some lame-ass post like that. Considering that spamming is a crime where a single act commits theft against hundreds of thousands or millions of victims each time, five years is light. In fact, five years is much too light. If someone can get five years for selling a couple kilos of pot, a million spams should get fifty years to life because the amount of money made is about the same, but the damage done to the victims is far, far greater.
Have a look at the following graph showing the statistic of spam per day during the last year (thanks to Spamcop).
Clearly the CAN-Spam act did in no way reduce the amount of spam.
The 5 year and 3 year sentences are maximums set by Congress. A while back, Congress created the U.S. Sentencing Commission and laws that bound what a judge may do in a given case, based on the Commission's Guidelines. So, although a crime may be a 5 year felony, a judge can only sentence someone to 5 years if he meets the criteria set in the guidelines.
Congress was actually interested in pushing sentences up, because it wanted to appear tough on crime. Therefore, at the same time, it abolished parole for federal crimes. There is no parole for federal offenses, only a small amount of time off for good behavior, calculated through a formula.
The Guidelines end up working like Dungeon & Dragons. The crime has a base offense level, say 6. Then there are "enhancements" for various kinds of conduct. So, if you're caught (somehow) and used an innocent person's computer, you could get +4. If you use the word viagra, +1; if you misspell viagra, +2, etc. [Like, I'm wearing my leather armor, but my armor class is improved by 2 for my dexterity and 4 for my magic ring] See The Fraud Guidlines
A defendant also has a criminal history score, based on how many times he's been convicted before.
There's a table in the guidelines that cross-references offense level and criminal history to give a sentencing range in months. With a criminal history of I (they use roman numerals for the criminal history), you need an offense level of at least 11 to be certain of any actual jail time (because zone B sentences allow a convict to do "home detention"). See The Sentencing Table.
The thing is, I can't find what exactly the Commission has sent to Congress, i.e., the proposed offense levels and enhancements, so its hard to tell what the Commission has actually come up with. From what I can tell, they have decided to incorporate this offense into the the fraud guidelines. (according to this ZDnet story). The fraud guidelines are based on the amount lost and are notoriously squishy--because it is difficult to estimate exactly how much a given scheme cost.
On the other hand Italy has a law (since September 2003), which seeks up to 3 years in jail and fines up to 90.000 Euros!
Guess, which law I find better? Jail-time would be payed by us, the innocent citizen, while fines weight on the offenders pocket!
And make sure their cellmates bought plenty of "3 inches longer" pills and black market Viagra.
I don't care how they die, I just want to know that they won't ever be able to do it again. And I don't want to pay to feed them, etc for 40 years - they are scum and money spent on taking care of them is just wasted.
If retribution is your goal, then torture them before you kill them. But locking them up is simply too expensive with no upside.
Fines, fines, and more fines - and enforce them! Otherwise stop wasting public money on what amounts to a nuisance (and don't give me crap about how much spam is costing us in productivity, because I've been hit with plenty of spam in the office, and it killed off five to ten minutes tops during which I would otherwise have been surfing the web anyway - hey how much is /. costing us in productivity by the way?) when gang members, rapists, muggers, and all their friends go through the revolving door court system faster than you can blink.
Who cares what the content is? Is it the act of spamming that they're prohibiting or what? Is getting a 419 scam spam worse than one from Freddy's Home Improvement, but not as bad as Zelda's House of Whips?
It's all garbage. They shouldn't be trying to qualify what's worse.
1st spam offense gets you x; the 2nd y and the 3rd z. That's it.
If you ran a red light causing a schoolbus to hit you can killing 30 children you'd go to jail...
Even if it only nearly hit you you'd probably do some jail time (reckless driving, which I think you have in the US too from my viewing of 'cops').
Whoever is profiting is probably guilty. The court is responsible to find out if they really sent that spam. We don't have a jury system for nothing.
Or, as the judge in 'Fear and loathing in Las Vegas' suggested: "Castration! Double castration!!"
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I know perfectly well that this is probably illegal. However, we all know that now spammers generally send their trash through 0wn3d Windoze computers. Is is not possible to write a slowly-propagating virus (One that will NOT cause the network to slow to a crawl) that will search out and destroy spam/spy/ad-ware on the computer?
There is no way to find the bastards or stop them from sending their trash without getting rid of their zombie networks. If you eliminate those, you might as well break their electronic kneecaps.
Even people stupid enough to buy from spammers generally aren't stupid enough to send money through the mail. They send checks or money orders.
Companies that hire spammers may pay cash. If they do, the spammer takes the money to his bank. (unless he plans to evade taxes, in which case he's got a resourceful, tenacious, and powerful enemy called the IRS) If he's promised immunity from prosecution, there will probably be a bank withdrawal by the spam customer matching the spammer's deposit and if the company is of any reasonable size, a "paper" trail to match what the spammer got paid.
There are plenty of law enforcement officers and forensic accountants who know how to make this work.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The Bagle (& Netsky?) viruses scan your friends' hard disks for email addresses and forward them to spammers.
p.s.: the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment.
Don't we already have laws addressing fraud, child porn, and other felonies? I want a law addressing spam, not a law addressing spam that already breaks other laws.
-Rich
Why does this comment get made over and over? Why does it get modded up? It's wrong.
You cannot evade responsibility for a crime by hiring someone else to commit it.
Also, the law passed around the beginning of the year.
As currently implemented, that may be true - I dunno. But you can hang a lot of murderers and rapists with one rope, so I'm convinced that it could and should be cheaper to kill them than to take care of them the rest of their lives.
One to Three years sentence, yet nobody has been charged with spamming since the law took effect on January 1. Doesn't the government know there are millions of illegal spam emails sent every day?
Send out 25,000 vriaGa spams, be force fed 25,000 viagras.
Send out 50,000 Monster Cock pr0N, get reamed in the ass 50,000 times by actual gay porn stars from Burbank, and star in your own gang bang
Pen1s enlargement? get suspended from a bridge by your pecker with a backpack filled with a penny for each spam.
MUTUAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL? open up a bank in Angola with the nephew of the dead President Dos Santos with initial assets of $1/spam, or option 2, a walk to the CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA to meet with MR. ROLAND JOHNSON and discuss the terms of your NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR URGENT WORK, @ $1/spam.
I see no data to support the claim.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.