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Defending Harsh Sentences for Spammers
BMcWilliams writes "Russell McGuire, one of the government lawyers who prosecuted spammer Jeremy Jaynes, has published an article justifying the tough sentence recommended by a Virginia jury. He writes, 'the defense attorney argued that greed cuts both ways and the victims got what they deserved because they were trying to get rich quick. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the jury.' Still, the eye-popping 9-year sentence has even some ardent anti-spammers wondering whether 'proportionality is becoming a completely forgotten concept.'"
and go to jail for nine years. Drive a car drunk, sell crack, or commit rape and serve far less (or even any) time. I love this country.
1. Is this nine years in Supermax/leavenworth breaking rocks, or is it nine years in white-collar minimum security for dysfunctional mob accountants?
2. Certainly the criminals can get out earlier with good behaviour.
3. Porportionality, and the excess thereof, is the entire basis behind "prison" as a concept: we try to make that destination deplorable enough to try and discourage certain behaviours that society deems as "crimes".
4. These bozos made the mistake of committing a crime where the jurors themselves were also victims (indirectly). Stupid. Very, very stupid.
davejenkins.com |
I realize our justice system all about law and completely devoid of ethics, but sometimes the jurys are allowed to inject some sanity. Spammers are FULLY AWARE that they're intruding on millions of people who won't want to be intruded upon. They shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
But then the legal system responds to citizen unrest and develops laws which try to restrict what spammers can do.
NOW, the spammer is flagrantly violating both ethics and the law. They're filling your inbox with thousands of unwanted emails, stealing half the available handwidth in the fastest networks, and costing people inordinate amounts of money, just so the spammer can scam 0.01% of his email recipients. AND THEY KNOW IT.
I think people should be hanged for such flagrant disregard for everyone else on the planet. 9 years in prison? He got off light.
I've often thought that the basic concept of a time based prison sentance was flawed. Other than opportunity for parole, there's really no incentive for rehabilitation with this system. I just breaks down to managing the prison population until it's time to release them back into society.
What if, instead of a time based prison system, we could incorporate a level based system? The further within the system you go, the less priveledges you would have. Instead of years within the system, it would be levels within the system that you must earn your way out of in order to be released. This would also have the effect of causing similar types of criminals to be populated together. The very top level could be something like a "half way house" that would replace the concept of parole. To ultimately earn your freedom, you'd have to have demonstrated your ability to function as a law abiding citizen.
White collar criminals, like our spammer, could also have thier assets taken while they are in prison to make restitution for monetary damages.
The idea needs development I realize, but I think it would emphasize rehabilitation more than a time based system would.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Personally, I would think that the 9 year jail time is "proportional" punishment for a number of reasons:
1. How much time was spent deleting the emails that this guy sent - say it takes a cent an email, everytime he sends out 10M emails, this costs the economy $100,000. So taking that into acount, we can probably say that $50-$100 M is lost to the economy each year.
2. How much has been spent on Spam filters, installation and upgrades? How many billions of dollars per year are spent by businesses, individuals and governments? Let's be conservative and say $100M per year.
3. How much bandwidth has been stolen, proxies illegally set up? What is the cost to individuals, businesses, government - again being conservative let's say $50M per year.
4. I won't even guess at the amount of money that this guy's clients have taken from (dumb) people that respond to the emails.
So, looking at this from this prospective, this guy is a kingpin in a minimum $200M per year scam. It could probably be argued that this guy's contribution to the problem could cost society $200M per year. What do you think is an appropriate punishment for a crime of this magnitude?
Fines for this type of behavior don't work; the spammer will just declare bankrupcy after moving his money to a protected location.
The comparison to the time given to a rapist or murderer is not reasonable. I would expect that the spammer is going to end up in a minimum-security institution. Where a rapist or murderer will end up in a maximum security prison or better. On leaving prison, a rapist/murderer is normally required to register where they are living and will be regularly interviewed by police when there is a crime that is similar in nature to theirs - they can never leave this behind them.
The spammer, if he does change his ways, can lead a new life after prison with it just being remembered as a mistake that he didn't fully understand the consequences to - but at least he try to destroy somebody's life (as a violent criminal would have to live with).
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
In my area, we had a guy that raped a 6 year old girl get 2 years, when it should have been life. Another guy that killed someone by running over him with a snowmobile (hit and run, leaving the guy he hit to freeze to death) got 6 months. A woman who wroute a couple bad checks and no prior history got 4 years.
There is a serious problem with sentancing. Criminals with serious offences are getting off light while more minor offences receive serious jail time. I have a problem with this.
In this particular case though, I feel the spammer received an appropriate sentence - maybe a little lighter that I would prefer, but better that the usual nothing.