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."
He doesn't seem unbiased.
He stole a list of e-mail addresses. Isn't that theft? Even if he doesn't get charged with sending out spam, he did commit other crimes, right?
Maybe a crime hasn't been committed against this (obscure) law, but stealing critical info from the company you're working for and selling it to the highest bidder (or in this case, spammer) sure is. Was he accused of the wrong thing or what?
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I would rather the law had been written such that selling legitimate addresses to spammers was punishable by death, but that's not the way it happened. So, given that the CAN-SPAM law doesn't prohibit selling addresses to spammers (which may or may not be true), it seems like the right decision.
By the way, this guy needs a new defense lawyer. BADLY.
Whoa there skippy... there's a *big* difference between committing a crime and failing to fulfill the terms of a contract.
A crime is "theoretically" supposed to adversely affect more than just those involved, as in "the rest of society". That's why, in Civil court, you hire your own-ass lawyers, while, in Criminal court, the State prosecutes.
Now, granted, that line has been (intentionally) blurred lately, so I can't really fault you for not being able to tell the difference.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Of course he should first spend some time in a nice secure federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary. Having his anus blown out and being several billion dollars in debt would be just punishment and a fine deterrent. (My emphasis)
I agree totally. Let's throw him in with some HIV-infected sex offender and have him die a slow and painful death caught from being repeatedly raped by this sick fuck.
Maybe this guy will escape his punishment. That's why I hope you'll be publicly declaring your support for manadatory repeated rape of spammers until they get infected with HIV, or hang themselves.
I'm not sure which punishment you propose for the sex offenders who'll be carrying out the rape. Should professionals be hired to do this?
Either way, I expect those who share this view to be airing their views more vocally, in order to avoid being labelled hypocritical scum who support rape being carried out informally, but don't have the guts to have it written in law.
For some reason, I've heard of many vocal lobbies in the US, but never one willing to push for gang rape of 17-year-old shoplifters.
In addition, would it be appropriate for this punishment to include men raping women, or would that be too fucking sick for you?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
An email address that I give to AOL (or Slashdot or whoever) implies that the party so "gifted" is who I expect to send me email at that address. I'm sure many here go as far as actually creating email addresses keyed to a site (e.g., foobar+slashdot@example.com), but all email addresses should be considered non-transferable, even without those special measures. If I get an email to an address given to Slashdot that doesn't come from Slashdot, I have been deceived.
...wow, wouldn't this suck if it was part of a plea bargin..."plead guilty to can-spam and we'll drop the theft/intellectual property charges"....doh!
You don't know for a fact that he had no permission from the company to access this data. If another employee gave him the access code they are, like it or not, they are being granted a license to access what ever data and resources are associated with that account. This would be *stupid* and ground for dismissal but in it self hardly a criminal act.
And this is why security policies are so important. If AOL's security policy explicitly states that no user is allowed to access another user's account, even if that user was given the password, then it is illegal because it would be unauthorized use of a computer. The computer doesn't belong to the user, and therefore the user has no right to authorize anyone else to use their account. It all depends on what AOL has stated in their security policy.
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