First Felony Spam Trial Gets Underway

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Three people faced a judge in Virginia today to answer felony charges for allegedly sending millions of spams touting to AOL users. The defendants are being tried under a 2003 Virginia anti-spam law that prosecutors say is the harshest of its kind in the nation. If convicted on all counts they each face up to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors allege that one of the defendants attempted to send 7.7 million spams in a single day that touted penny stocks and software to let people work at home as a "FedEx refund processor". Defense lawyers contend that the prosecutors will be unable to prove that the defendants intentionally masked the origin of the spam nor that it was unsolicited. The defense was also concerned that the jury pool might not be objective if it was filled with AOL users."

Comments

Impartial jury?

[c.r.o.c.o]

The only way they would get an impartial jury would be if somehow they find 12 people without an internet connection. Regardless of the provider, EVERYBODY has to deal with spam in one way or another.

But this is one case where I wouldn't mind having the defendents tarred and feathered...

Re:Impartial jury?

[Seumas]

Putting people in jail for spamming is just stupid. Reserve jail for people who commit violent crimes. Robbery, murder, rape, child molestation, assault and battery, burglary, hit and run and drunk driving.

Stop putting people in jail for smoking a joint or sending spam.

Does someone, regardless of the amount of spam they send, really deserve a decade or two in prison? Take out the "I hate spam" part of it. Just based on crime versus punishment. Does this punishment really fit that crime? Considering 80% of the spam was probably filtered directly to /dev/null and even if the remaining 20% took one second from each person's life to handle, is taking one second of time from a few million people's lives worth sending someone to prison for 20% of *their* life?

If so, I want to start sticking advertisers and door to door solicitors in prison, right now.

Prison sentences for the heavy-handed fraud which was mentioned, makes sense. That's an existing crime that deserves punishment. But not for faking a damn SMTP header and sending it to people who didn't want it.

Re:Impartial jury?

[Seumas]

I'm tired of a lot of criminal activities, too. That doesn't mean I support putting everyone that commits a crime that I dislike in a prison cell. I can't stand pot-heads, but I don't want to send them to prison. I can't stand dead-beat dads, but I don't support putting them behind bars. Zero-tolerance style policies are an excuse to avoid excercising common sense and engaging in some very important critical thinking. Of course each situation is different and applying some brain-dead mandate is itself a miscarriage of justice and, I would suggest, robs citizens of their right to due process.

And if you feel that a spammer deserves a decade or two behind bars, then how can anyone possibly justify any other sentance for people like Kenneth Lay and the criminal bastards behind Enron, MCI, Martha Stewart and other corporations short of life in prison? Is some schmuck who sent out a few million spams - even if it's part of a pyramid scheme - deserving of a punishment that is ten-fold that of people who defraud thousands of life-long employees of their retirement?

15 years is unduly lenient

[Andy_R]

if it takes an AOL user an average of just 3 seconds of their time to see this, decide what to do with it and delete it, then 7.7 million such mails waste about 267 days of AOL users's time.

If a spammer was this active for more than 21 days, then they are going to be spending less time in jail than they stole from other people.