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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."

3 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. But will he be charged with theft? by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  2. CAN-SPAM by FiReaNGeL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --
    Eureka Science News - automatically updated
  3. Nice to know that judge respects the law by Software · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It's good to know that the judge respects and applies the law _as written_, and doesn't try to punish the defendant because he (the defendant) is a total scumbag.

    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.