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Judge Rejects Guilty Plea From AOL Employee

Posted by timothy on from the I-want-this-judge-in-my-traffic-court dept.

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."

6 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Does not compute by October_30th · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Authorities said Smathers, who was fired by AOL in June, used another employee's access code to steal the list of AOL customers in 2003 from its headquarters in Dulles, Va., and sold it to spammers for more than $100,000.

    I don't understand how this is not deceptive, fraudulent and illegal...

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    1. Re:Does not compute by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It is. It just doesn't meet the specifics of CAN-SPAM, which is evidently what he was charged with, and tried to plead guilty to.

      What the judge did was, IMHO, right, in the same way that bank robbery doesn't meet the specifics of the traffic laws.

      Charge him with what he actually did, and let him plead guilty to that.

    2. Re:Does not compute by zakezuke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't understand how this is not deceptive, fraudulent and illegal...

      Perhaps it should be, but it's not. No one was actually deceived, the guy flat out used someone else's access code to gain access to a mail list and sell it. For example, if you gave a key to your house and I used it to go in and copy your phone list and sell it to a telemarketer. It's not trespass or breaking and entering because you gave me a key. It might not be deceptive because you might have given me the key to feed your cat and I might not have intended to copy your phone list at that time. And it's not theft because I only made a copy of your phone list. And there is no violation of copyright because a list of names and contact info can't be copyrighted.

      I might be guilty of violating your trust but I don't see how any crime was committed.

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  2. Re:Shouldn't he recuse himself? by techno-vampire · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  3. Re:CAN-SPAM by hackstraw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. There may be an interesting reason for this... by fmaxwell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.