Federal Bounty on Spammers

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Posted by timothy on Friday September 17, 2004 @05:54AM from the just-a-thought dept.

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.'"

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Potentially duplicating by dan+dan+the+dna+man · 2004-09-17 05:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

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..

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1. Re:Potentially duplicating by Trailer+Trash · 2004-09-17 06:06 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Spam is a serious crime. A single spammer can cost our country millions of dollars of lost productivity each year. While no one company (outside of AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) bears this entire cost, it adds up to big bucks in the aggregate.
  
  It is quite appropriate that we put a bounty on spammers. Frankly, I still think the proper thing to do is to have a large statutory penalty, say $10,000/spam, that anyone can collect in small-claims court. We had a good law here in Tennessee, but the penalties weren't large enough ($10/spam, capped at $5000/day) and it really didn't specify that the damages weren't compensatory, leaving the judge with some discretion.
  
  The only way to kill a spamming operation is the "death of a thousand cuts". It's obvious that law enforcement doesn't really care about this problem, otherwise Ralsky and Hardigree wouldn't be doing interviews and talking about their wealth. For that matter, I don't see a bounty system as working since we're still relying on law enforcement to catch and prosecute.
  
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Re:What does this imply? by stratjakt · 2004-09-17 06:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

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".

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Re:What we need is... by tomhudson · 2004-09-17 08:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
They are guessing it would take between $100,000 to $250,000 to get people to rat out their friends, coworkers, etc.
Hey, just goes to show how fucked-up the government is, to t hink they'd have to offer a huge award. Someone should point out to them:
1. Spammers don't have friends
2. Most people would PAY a 900 number to rat out a spammer