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Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted
saikou writes "According to AP Story (via SF Chronicle), brother and sister spammers just got convicted 'in the nation's first felony prosecution of distributors of spam,' while third suspect was acquitted. Jurors moved on to figuring out appropriate punishment (please, please, please give them some jail time. Pretty please). More spam cases for Virgina?"
What are governments outside the US doing to enforce Anti-Spam regulation? Can anyone give me some info on that?
My sons email account has 3 spanish language spams this morning - I guess someone thinks he speaks spanish... but it made me wonder if the spam lords are shifting their focus to other countries to pedal their wares. It is a global marketplace, after all.
The credit card orders make this definitely a fraud case, but if that same punishment was applicable without the fraud... I can't lookup the law as the article doesn't mention it, but I'm very afraid.
SIG: HUP
One hopes that this will have an effect, if not deterring, at least taking one offender out of the equation(if jailed/executed).
This tidbit was less promising: "Prosecutors compared Jaynes and DeGroot, both of the Raleigh, N.C., area, to modern-day snake-oil salesmen who used the Internet to peddle junk like a 'FedEx refund processor' that supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour while working from home."
People are still biting on frauds of all sort, and the internet has become the prime location for it.
There is no real solution to stupidity, at least until designer babies are a reality.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
"Jurors who convicted Jeremy D. Jaynes, 30, and Jessica DeGroot, 28, later sentenced Jaynes to a nine-year prison term and fined DeGroot $7,500"
They both should be given EQUAL jail time, and especially at the range...9 years of jail versus 7500? please!
(\_/)
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(> <) to help him achieve world domination.
That's not an unreasonable interpretation, actually. In the founding fathers' time many cruel punishments were usual, and it's quite plausible to think that they meant only this: ``If the punishment is not the usual one for the crime, it must not combine cruelty (or perhaps an unusual degree of cruelty) with novelty.'' If they had meant to prohibit cruel punishment, they would surely have said so!
Some of the founding fathers had interesting ideas on punishment. For example, Jefferson believed that anyone sentenced to more than five years in prison should be executed, since he'd never be able to participate in society again after five years of being brutalized. He didn't seem to think of making prison less brutal.
See what I've been reading.
I'm not going to dispute that. That being said, I'd like to point out that the editor didn't really read the article. The law provides for a maximum of 15 years jail time for spamming, which is what the prosecution was seeking. In other words, Virginia already determined that they think spammers are criminals worthy of jail time in certain cases.
This case went before a jury, who determined:
The article points out that the judge was reluctant about putting it to a jury. I'm not sure what that means in this context, though. We'd have to check the court documents to determine why he felt this way. Maybe the judge agrees with you, and was having a hard time balancing his duty with his conscience.Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
The U.S. pretends that it's system of justice is somehow too civilized to allow caneing like Singapore does, but I question that.
Caneing is quite aversive to the criminal. I can't imagine they'll decide they don't mind being caned again. Unlike prison, it doesn't further alienate the criminal by re-socializing them to a prison environment, then expect them to be well adjusted members of society when released (or rather pretend to expect).
Given the things that are allowed (sometimes encouraged) to happen in prison and the minimal to non-existant corrective measures, it's easily more barbaric than a caneing and certainly more expensive.
Summary, take away the spoils of their crime and cane them.
So would removing the jailtime would solve all those problems? Nope.
:) Perhaps I'm too moral to kill, but there's definitely people I'd beat the shit out of if I wouldn't be punished for it. The deterrnet worked.
Lets face it- you will never stop crime. All you can do is try to prevent it. Part of that is by punishing people who commit them. Trust me, if all I had to lose from it was money, I have a rather lengthy list of people whom I think the world would be better off without. You can find a partial list in the phone book under the work "lawyers"
The question isn't does punishment deter all crimes. It doesn't. It can't. But it does deter a great deal of it. You want to maximize the amount it deters. To increase the deterrent, you need to either increase the punishment, or increase the chance of being caught. The first is easier than the second. So we add jailtime to a lot of crimes. In a perfect world, you'd have a 100% chance of being caught and then spam would be unprofitable and die, and no jail time would be needed. Just don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This is silly, they are considering the motivation. These people can afford computers so they are not starving therefore any crime of a financial nature by these people is pure greed.
There are alternative justifications for crimes such as rape.
Some people take those crimes increadibly personally, (which may be a sideeffect of the propaganda used to discourage negative behavior).
Spammers are engaging in an utterly destructive and antisocial crime, their chances of rehabilitation using common methods is almost nill.
If it were possible to have a perfect determination of the antisocial motivation of an individual spammer the penalty should be INCREADIBLY harsh.
Martha Stewart is doing xx? months of federal prison time for reacting to what someone told her in order to save money that was hers, so I don't think 9 years is too much for this case. While spam might not seem worth 9 years to someone else, I prefer to look at it and estimate how much of a negative impact this person is having on society as a whole. With this view in mind, spamming millions is more of a negative drain than beating someone bloody and cutting off one of their fingers. Sending them to prison probably saves American society more than it costs to hold them there and is a great deterent for other spammers. Anyone who sends spam obviously knows how much people hate it. To me, stealing time is no different than stealing property.