Slashdot Mirror
Judge Rejects Guilty Plea From AOL Employee
The Hobo writes "Newsday has a story on a New York judge who rejected Jason Smather's guilty plea. Smathers, covered previously on Slashdot, was the AOL employee who stole and sold AOL addresses to spammers. The judge himself apparently cancelled his AOL subscription due to receiving too much spam. While he didn't like what Jason did, he wasn't convinced a crime had been committed under the CAN-SPAM law, which requires that a person be deceived."
I don't understand how this is not deceptive, fraudulent and illegal...
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Yes he stole the email addresses, that's not the point here. The judge said he couldn't be charged with the particular crime that the trial was for. That's why he scheduled a new trial in January.
Apparently the Can Spam law has found another way to be useless, but he'll still pay for the theft.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
In the UK the Data Protection Act would have him down for that.
Actually, it looks like he's doing everything he can to avoid even the appearance of bias. He rejected the guilty plea because he's not convinced that the accuse's actions fit the requirements of the CAN-SPAM act. If he were biased, he'd just let the guy plead guilty and be done with it.
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Ok, he didnt violate the you-can-spam act, nor should he have been charged under that. He should be charged with theft of private information from his employer.
That's not quite true.... you can be biased and still hand down decisions on an issue that aren't biased. The problem, however, is that if someone doesn't like your decision, and you are biased, even if you didn't let that bias affect your decision, they can still pinpoint that as a reason not to accept your judgement.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
He doesn't seem unbiased becuase he didn't hand down a ruling you agree with?
If the list was proprietary / internal / confidential / whatever-your-company-calls-it and you steal it, then you have stolen the list. The law wouldn't be worried about the individual addresses but rather the list in total. Especially if said list has commercial value (which it obviously does).
I could definitely see this as corporate espionage. Overall I would say the defendant is getting off pretty easy.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Maybe a crime hasn't been committed against this (obscure) law
Law in general is obscure. You know a society is too complex and complicated when highly respected people in that society have full time jobs to simply know the rules of that society.
The judge himself apparently cancelled his AOL subscription due to receiving too much spam. While he didn't like what Jason did, he wasn't convinced a crime had been committed under the CAN-SPAM law, which requires that a person be deceived.
If "Jason" isn't responsible, perhaps AOL is. If AOL was negligent in their security, then they can be held accountable for the damages that their users suffered. So by not putting the blame on Jason, AOL could be in the judge's sights. This might be a lot smarter move on the part of the judge than anyone realizes. Or I could be totally off-base.
He commited several crimes, AOL specifically chose to have him prosecuted under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. My guess is for two reasons. One because it carries the harshest sentencing potential (criminal, meaning not just fines but jail time as well) and second because convictions under this act make an example. This is new highly publicised legislation, passed as a deterent more than anything else. Spammers have to be afraid, of laws that legislation like this enacts. If not, the legislation is worthless and not a springboard for passing other acts, creating more law with stricter guidelines and heftier consequences. The problem they ran into is that the meat of the law is about fraud and deception. As in, not fully disclosing the nature or source of the good or service being presented in the email. It's alluded to in the story "The judge, ... said it was not clear that Smathers had deceived anyone -a requirement of the new law."
/. reader knows it is never that clear with intellectual property. He didn't steal anything from the users, because they signed away all rights to the data when they signed up, ie it was never there's in the first place they were just borrowing it from AOL, who can do with it pretty much whatever they choose, under the terms of the User Agreement. As for if he stole anything from AOL any attorney could easily make the argurment that he in fact did not steal anything -which is criminal- he simply used the information inappropirately and profited from it, which is not criminal in this case, but again falls under civil law.
No doubt he violated the terms of employment in his contract, any NDA he signed as well as non-compete contracts he agreed to. None of that is criminal however, it falls under civil law and the best they could do is take him to court and ask for damages. As for if he stole something, every