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Federal Bounty on Spammers
Portigui writes "CNN is reporting that the FTC is considering imposing a bounty on spammers. They are guessing it would take between $100,000 to $250,000 to get people to rat out their friends, coworkers, etc... Interstingly enough is that it is 'higher than rewards in most high-profile criminal and terrorism cases. For example, the FBI pays $50,000 for tips leading to the arrests of most of its top 10 fugitives.'"
this
But the question I have to ask - are they really worth persuing to this degree? I'm not trolling (seriously) but I'd rather see my tax dollars paying for takedowns in more serious crime..
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Would be the perfect person to rat out, not only does there datacenter disregard spammers who host there, he also spams quite a bit himself.
Why would I do it ?
1) They screawed me out of a $2000 check.
2) They screawed me on my taxes.
3) They still have some equipment of mine.
4) Even for $10,000 it would be worth it to me.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
No, it implies (to me) that spammers are harder to track down than regular criminals without community help.
I mean you have no crime scene to investigate, no fingerprints or DNA or other physical evidence to link the suspect to the crime.
About the only real way to bag a spammer as I can see is with eye witness testimony. Any "evidence" you collect online is easily thrown out by an attorney with the "anyone could have forged that" or "my clients box was hacked because of an insecure OS".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Pull the licenses of the mortgage brokers using spam and faxes to sell their services. It's that simple. I'm getting faxes for companies advertising penny stocks also. Where's the SEC? Why are they allowing this? The company's disclaimer says they're getting paid via stock and cash to advertise the company. Prevent the listing, prevent the offering, santion the company. Watch how fast they straighten themselves out.
Follow the money. And stop bending over for the DMA. All the Can-Spam act did is make Richter and his cohorts legitimate. If the legislators wanted to put a stop to spam, they would. But they like the corporate money too much. Follow the money and stop the bullshit.
Just remember, behind every dupe article is a submitter who didn't see it posted the first time.
Sometimes stories are marked "pending" for days, so it's not always the submitters fault.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
... who write laws that effectively stop spammers? Writing legislation on commission, what a novel concept! Oh, woops, I almost forgot, that's what big-money lobbyists offer all the time.
Mathematics is not a crime.
Look at the scale of the thing. A rapist targets a single victim, whereas a spammer targets a million victims. If you could take one million junk mail messages and divert them to a single recipient who is forced to either read or delete them all manually in no longer than a minute, it would more or less kill that person, cartoon-style (we are talking 10,000 key presses per second here).
Another calculation: If it takes one second for the recipient to detect and delete each junk mail message (no automatic filtering involved), and some 20 billion junk mail messages are distributed on the Internet every day, that means spammers consume 20 billion seconds of unpaid human labour, or about ten human lifetimes, per day. That makes a total of 3,000 human lives destroyed per year. How many people are killed by terrorism each year?
Sometimes, translating human life into economic terms actually makes it look more valuable, not less.
While I doubt it would happen, I would like to see spammers punished in other ways as well as the big bounty.
Divide the spammer's current net-worth - minus the minimum amount to live for one year - then liquidate and distribute it to everyone that received the spam. Or as many as can be reached after much effort. Make doing this a requirement for the spammer to keep out of federal prison. Make them show progress like an unemployed person has to show progress.
After one year if the person has not found a replacement job of any type or has gone back to spamming then induct them into a government menial job or military service in a non-combat role.
Not an ideal solution but it would at least re-distribute the wealth stolen by these spammers. You'll never get the time back though...
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Funny : Although no pysical person seems to be allowed to prosecute a spammer for his/her losses to them, they are "required" (read : forced, by way of an extra tax) to pay for any bounty offered for capture of those miscreants.
....
I've got a good idea : let the very companies, who are allowed to recuperate their, losses by sueing a spammer, pay the bounty.
Why should I, as a mere end-user of the system, be required to take my losses (due to the time busy with both removing spam, as well as the cost of anti-spam software) without a right to recuperate them from the person(s) causing it, and than have to pay for the costs of finding those culprits too.
I can be wrong, but it looks like a lose-lose situation for me