Guilty Plea in AOL Engineer's Address Theft Case

ScentCone writes "Jason Smathers, a former AOL software engineer has pleaded guilty in his theft of 92 million in-house account screen names. He'll be paying $200-400k, and serving a year or two of federal time. Smathers used another employee's account to steal the data, and sold it to a Vegas-based online casino operator. Interestingly, one of the charges was 'interstate transportation of stolen property.'"

Comments

That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[glrotate]

Doesn't seem like such a good idea now does it?

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Zutfen]

So... there's no conjugal visits?

Awww crap!

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it seem wrong that extra-judicial rape in our prison system is not only tolerated, but sort of cheered on?

Why don't we just go to a system of corporeal punishment, like in Singapore? At least there, the amount of physical punishment you take bears some relationship to the crime you've committed, whereas in our system you're punished according to your physical strength, ability to join a gang, etc. that have nothing to with the severity of the crime you've committed.

If you think prison rape is just fine, then you should stop kidding yourself and start advocating an official corporeal punishment system. There are not disadvantages to the system we currently have. It's much fairer. If you find this argument absurd and/or don't want to repeal the 8th amendment, then you should not sit idly by and let this absurdity rage on unabated.

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't it seem wrong that extra-judicial rape in our prison system is not only tolerated, but sort of cheered on?


For people who work for AOL? You betcha.

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[quarkscat]

Actually, the 1 to 2 year sentence was way
too light, IMO. Something more along the
line of a public (televised) hanging or
draw-and-quartering (or perhaps more toward
your tastes, impalement.)

His misdeeds have to represent a potentially
large percentage of SPAM sent across the wire,
and the penalty should fit the crime.

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Moofie]

Yeah, because torturing people is just like sending email.

Whahuh?

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[SoloTraveller]

"Corporeal punishment?" Wow, physical and psychological punishment isn't enough, now you want to punish a person's soul, too?!?!?! I doubt corporal punishment would be acceptable, let alone corporeal. But maybe if we got a bunch of New Age legislators, we could pass a whole bunch of corporeal legislation... ;)

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[vsprintf]

For people who work for AOL? You betcha.

No. That's not even appropriate. For people like Kenneth Lay, who preached ethics while robbing little old ladies and millions of others, okay. But he won't ever wind up in prison, and if he did, no Bubba would want him.

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Foobar of Borg]

I think you're certainly right here and some of the responders have missed the point. Yes, prison is about punishment, but the punishment is to be locked up and not free for a certain term. I don't recall any judge sentencing anyone to be pounded in the butt for a specific term.

What if you were to be imprisoned for a relatively minor offence for a period of about 3 months? Does that mean it is okay for you be anally raped for the whole time and, most likely, contract HIV and die a slow, horrible, lingering death? No wonder most of the world thinks Americans are a bunch of savages.

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[vsprintf]

Actually, the 1 to 2 year sentence was way too light, IMO. Something more along the line of a public (televised) hanging or draw-and-quartering (or perhaps more toward your tastes, impalement.)

While I really dislike spam, since people who murder children (no it's not about abortion) often get no prison time, it really seems a little severe. Is spamming 100 million people worse than murdering one child? Is that the Slashdot ethos?

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

he should stay in prision as long as all the list is still circulateing

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Doesn't seem like such a good idea now does it?

Hopefully, you'll have a child who someday does something stupid but relatively harmless and gets caught up in the Fed machine and sent away for a long time. Then *you* won't think it's such a grand thing.

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Corporeal punishment?" Wow, physical and psychological punishment isn't enough, now you want to punish a person's soul, too?!?!?!

Hello eager student of English!

In the event that English is not your first language, please note that corporeal punishment would in fact be physical or bodily punishment.

Alternatively, if you are one of Slashdot's native speakers of English then congratulations on getting your apostrophes right and on correctly choosing between "to" and "too".

Re:That's federal pound me in the ass prison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Interstate?

[Bongoots]

If he was charged with 'interstate transportation of stolen property', does that mean that he printed out all 92 million screen names and took them in his car across state borders?

Re:Interstate?

[__aahsof7392]

Yeah. Probably on a CD in his briefcase. I doubt he emailed the screennames and the casino operator payed him via PayPal.

Re:Interstate?

[file cabinet]

or put them on a hard drive.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/i061.htm

Re:Interstate?

[shark72]

"If he was charged with 'interstate transportation of stolen property', does that mean that he printed out all 92 million screen names and took them in his car across state borders?"

Doubtful. A sometimes common perception among Slashdotters is that the law is immutable and easily defeated by technology, but a look at how the law has changed over the past several hundred years shows that the law does eventually catch up. It's my understanding that interstate transport can now include e-mail as well as the historic methods of postal mail and, as you've mentioned, cars. And, of course, you probably already knew that that database is AOL's property whether it's printed or not.

Other examples: it took several years after the advent of motion pictures before copyright law caught up with them. There were a few years in which films weren't copyrightable, but the law did catch up. When the first cars started being built, there were no vehicle codes (or if there were, they covered things like carriages), but the vehicle codes eventually caught up. And, for most of our history of copyright law, it was basically legal to redistribute copyrighted material without compensation; the law didn't need to cover this because it was simply impractical to print a thousand books and give them away for free. When technology began allowing somebody to put a file on an FTP site and allow widespread duplication, copyright law finally caught up several years later, in the form of the NET act.

Re:Interstate?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my understanding that interstate transport can now include e-mail as well as the historic methods of postal mail and, as you've mentioned, cars.

That's hardly "catching up" but rather "covering that base as we made the laws so far stretching it has to be."

For example, is it crossing interstate lines if you send an email to a friend down the street? What if those packets go to a server that resides in another state? The message did technically cross state lines, even though you have no idea that they did.

Re:Interstate?

[homer_ca]

"that database is AOL's property whether it's printed"

A database isn't tangible property. Shouldn't this be prosecuted instead as theft of trade secrets?

Re:Interstate?

[databyss]

It's not tangible? You can't touch the hard drives? A database of this size will undoubtably have it's own physical server. He transferred the property from one medium to another and moved it across state lines.

For example, say there was a video of you having sex with your partner. I copied this video onto my computer and burned it to a cd. Is this video tangible? Yes, you can even see it, much like the screen names.

Secondly, a screen name isn't a trade secret. Having millions of them doesn't make it any more a trade secret.

Re:Interstate?

[homer_ca]

"For example, say there was a video of you having sex with your partner. I copied this video onto my computer and burned it to a cd. Is this video tangible?"

It's a tangible copy of a video on your CD. The blank media is your property. You don't have the right to copy the video.

He didn't take the database servers themselves. That would be stolen property. Assuming he copied the database to his own CD-R, there was no property removed from the premises of AOL. This falls under the umbrella of intellectual property. In aggregate, a list of millions of customers' info is a trade secret. It's not patented and not copyrighted (although companies have lobbied before to copyright databases).

Re:Interstate?

[X0563511]

Here's a question...

If he were to take disct to the state border, and toss it over, would he be chargable? Seeing how momentum was responsible for carrying it across the state line...

Re:Interstate?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's own physical server

"its".

Re:Interstate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal Prosecutors always have some charge like 'interstate transportation of stolen property', if there was no interstate transportation, then it would be a state crime instead of a federal crime.

Deserved it

[__aahsof7392]

Do the crime, pay the time.

I'm not sure how he's going to pay $200k+ though.

Re:Deserved it

[ryanjensen]

Don't worry, they have installment plans for that. Kinda like winning the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes, but in reverse.

Re:Deserved it

[__aahsof7392]

Isn't there a law stating if the person cannot afford the fine, the fine has to be lowered or dropped? For instance how could you fine a homeless person $100 for trespassing?

Re:Deserved it

[Anonymous Coward]

...and, it's not something one can declare bankruptcy to get out of.

Any tax refunds will be garnished. The courts will decide how much $ he really needs to live on, etc.

Basically, the guy is screwed financially for the next 20-30 years, because he's probably not going to work in IT.

Re:Deserved it

[Macadamizer]

No. But what they do if they levy a fine against someone is that they don't let them get off of probation (or off parole if they are coming out of prison) until the debt is paid off.

Re:Deserved it

[Duhavid]

It's about half what he got for selling the list in the first place.

The preceeding was a sarcastic comment. I do not actually know what he got for the list. Half a nice day.

Re:Deserved it

[tehshen]

He got $28 000, which is hardly half.

Re:Deserved it

[Xero]

This is untrue. It is possible to be off of probation and to still owe fines. Here in Washington State, there has been recent discussion about giving convicted felons who are off of probation but still owe fines the right to vote. Currently if you are finished with your probation, you need to pay off your fines to regain the right.

Re:Deserved it

[Macadamizer]

"This is untrue. "

I guess I should have been more clear. What I said is true, just not in every state.

Clearly, WA is not one of the states where it is true.

Re:Deserved it

[teksno]

hell sell the address's to spammers.......even at $.005 hell still make a hefty profit!!!!!!!!!

old news

[Anonymous Coward]

everybody and their mom has a copy of this list.. I actually pruned my copy and removed everybody who's password wasn't "password". a few million 's

You've got jail!

[ShatteredDream]

Sorry, couldn't help it...

Re:You've got jail!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang, you beat me to it! It's good that I searched for it first.

Re:You've got jail!

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

With SlidingBarsClank.wav as your message beep...

Office Space currupts

[Prophetic_Truth]

Stop the IT crime! Burn all copies of "Office Space"!

Re:Office Space currupts

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck burning all the machines torrenting it around...

What?

[VeryApt]

Textual representations of AOL customenrs email addresses are considered AOL's property? As much as I hate spammers, that is insane.

Re:What?

[grahamsz]

There was a case in the UK where a competitor to british telecom bought and typed names and phone numbers from the phone book.

I'm pretty sure that was deamed legal and that which BT could copyright their phone books, the information therein was (in general) in the public domain.

I dont doubt he abused his employment contract, but this seems like a very tenuous description of stolen property.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

He obtained it through illegal means. Thus, it was 'stolen', or more appropriately 'illicitly obtained' as stolen connotates depriving of the good to the rightful owner.

While a phone book is public domain, stealing a phone book and then taking it across a state border would be the exact same crime... transportation of stolen material across state lines.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? If you take your company phone book with you when you leave, technically that's stolen property.
If you take your "rolodex" of contacts with you, that's going to be stolen property as well, not for the physical value of the rolodex, but for the list of contacts you have in it that you gained over time for the Company.

There are lots of cases of lawyers, consultants, sales personalities, etc., leaving a company, taking their acquired customer/contact lists with them, and using those to help drum up business for their new masters, and the old master successfully suing to get that list back, arguing that it is its property...

But your case is for a British person. The courts do not find, in the US, that retyping someone else's work makes it your work. At best, it's a derivative work. Both are controlled by copyright law.

Also, in the US, it's been determined that a "database" is copyrightable, which makes it a form of property, even if it's developed 1:1 from public domain data.

At least in the case of public domain data, there is nothing stopping you of getting the same data and making available an equivalent set of information as someone else. Witness all the current copyrighted editions of "Moby Dick" and other literatures that have become public domain.

Re:What?

[Macadamizer]

"Also, in the US, it's been determined that a "database" is copyrightable, which makes it a form of property, even if it's developed 1:1 from public domain data."

Are you sure about that? I am not aware of any case that makes a general database of public domain data copyrightable. In fact, the leading case in this area is Feist v. Rural Telephone, where one company got the other guy's phone book, copied all of the info, and published their own phonebook, and the Supremes held it to be not copyright infringement, and that the first guy did not have a property right in the collection of public domain data.

Now, if there is some sort of selection of who gets in the database that is "creative" and more than just some sort of mathematical algorithm or random chance, then the list of "what" is in the database might be protectable under copyright, but the public domain information still would not be, as you alluded to in your post.

28K for that kind of list?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smathers told the judge that he accepted $28,000 from someone who wanted to pitch an offshore gambling site to AOL customers

That guy should have asked for much more than that... like if a casino was short on cash! Omni

I'd like to know

[www.sorehands.com]

I'd like to know which gambling sites that this was used to promote. I'd love to file lawsuits against some of these spamming, gambling, sites.

Maybe, they'd learn that when spamming, the sysadmin wins.

Re:I'd like to know

[kaustik]

Maybe, they'd learn that when spamming, the sysadmin wins.

Really? I sure don't feel that way watching my mail queues and trying to convince users that the spam filter is not out to get them...

Obvious

[FiReaNGeL]

He pleaded guilty cause he was.

Can we really say anything more than 'well deserved'?

Do we know for how much he sold the stolen list? I supe hope for him its more than 400k... but I doubt it!

Re:Obvious

[YrWrstNtmr]

Do we know for how much he sold the stolen list?

We who RTFA do.
$28,000

Re:Obvious

[pHatidic]

Can we really say anything more than 'well deserved'?

I hope you remember you said that when the government locks you up for violating interstate commerce laws because you downloaded some warez from the next state over. Copying and selling the information in a private database is bad, but there is no way that it is worth setting a new and dangerous legal precedent just to get this asshole a couple extra months in jail.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't do warez. I can afford to pay for all my media and software.

Re:Obvious

[YrWrstNtmr]

violating interstate commerce laws because you downloaded some warez from the next state over.

Downloading is one thing. Downloading and selling is quite another.

Re:Obvious

[shark72]

"Copying and selling the information in a private database is bad, but there is no way that it is worth setting a new and dangerous legal precedent just to get this asshole a couple extra months in jail."

Can you explain what the precedent is here? Over the past decade I've seen dozens of similar cases involving confidential and proprietary information. Before it was e-mail lists, it was snail mail lists. Typically the information is sold to, or taken to, a competitor. Here, it was sold to a spammer. Are you referring to the CAN-SPAM wrinkle?

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you remember you said that when the government locks you up for violating interstate commerce laws because you downloaded some warez from the next state over.

Not a chance. Only an idiot would plea guilty to that! Sorry, but it's true. One person being charged and saying "guilty" doesn't set a legal precedent. It's probably a plea bargain anyway.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression you could only download so software legally illegally per year. Remember photoshop retails for $600 or whatever.

Re:Obvious

[Moofie]

Keep thinking that.

Re:Obvious

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

Actually, ever since FDR bitchslapped the supreme court, the commerce clause has been steadily re-interpreted to where it provides the justification for a huge number of things the federal government does that it really doesn't have the authority to. The watershed is case was 1942's Wickard v. Filburn, where the court upheld fines on a farmer who grew more wheat than his quota allowed, even though he only used it to feed animals on his own farm, because if he had not grown the wheat himself he would have had to buy it, possibly from another state.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

> He pleaded guilty cause he was.

Bullshit... People pleade guilty even if they
are innocent because the Fed has unlimited power
to make your life a hell forever. Has nothing to
do with guilt or innocence. Has everything to do
with a Fed that is out of control.

Re:A tribute to Little Johnny

[Anonymous Coward]

had some 420?

I'm sorry, but this is crap...

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

The guy who gives the email addresses to the spammers is forced to pay restitution costs to AOL for the amount they spent on dealing with email that the spammer's sent. This is bullshit. If anyone should have to pay, it is the spammers. The guy can go to jail for theft of property (if you consider email lists property... which the government seems to... but this is another issue), but he didn't directly cost AOL any money. This is a crap example of a big company getting money from this little guy because getting the money from the spammers is nigh impossible. He plead guilty, so I think that keeps him from being able to appeal.

Re:I'm sorry, but this is crap...

[YrWrstNtmr]

This is a crap example of a big company getting money from this little guy because getting the money from the spammers is nigh impossible.

I know it's a chore to actually read the article, but:
"Smathers told the judge that he accepted $28,000 from someone who wanted to pitch an offshore gambling site to AOL customers, knowing that the list of screen names might make its way to others who would send e-mail solicitations."

It's not like he is an innocent party in this.

"Smathers allegedly sold the list to Sean Dunaway, of Las Vegas, who used it to send unwanted gambling advertisements to subscribers of AOL, the world's largest Internet provider. Charges are pending against Dunaway."

Say what you want about AOL, but they do appear to be going after these clowns.

Re:I'm sorry, but this is crap...

[RockClimb]

The guy who gives the email addresses to the spammers is forced to pay restitution costs to AOL for the amount they spent on dealing with email that the spammer's sent. This is bullshit. If anyone should have to pay, it is the spammers.

WTF? Smathers knew exactly what was going to be done with this list. I'll agree that the spammers should pay, and from TFA...
"Smathers allegedly sold the list to Sean Dunaway, of Las Vegas, who used it to send unwanted gambling advertisements to subscribers of AOL, the world's largest Internet provider. Charges are pending against Dunaway."

Smathers should pay and pay dearly, after all he provided the list to the spammer in the first place.

...but he didn't directly cost AOL any money.

Again, WTF? Do you think that AOL gets bandwidth for FREE? As their bandwidth usage goes up from spam they must buy MORE bandwidth to keep things flowing smoothly and to keep their customers happy. Again from TFA....
" In December, the judge said he had dropped his own AOL membership because he received too much spam.

To me, that looks like 2 places that directly cost the company.

no.

[Anonymous Coward]

why

Thats it?!

[kevlar]

He'll be paying $200-400k, and serving a year or two of federal time.

This guy has 'Capital Punishment' written all over him.... he got off lite!!

Re:Thats it?!

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth are you talking about? the dude copied some screen names didn't he and he is going to be imprisoned for a year+ and is fined $300k? i think that's excessive, especially in a country where he is permitted by constitution to be able to relay those screen names by speach.

maybe he should have used a speach synth and had the machine speak the data rather than transmitting it in some other fassion.

Re:Thats it?!

[Anonymous Coward]

His mere "copying of screen names" led to the ongoing harassment of millions of people.

Later in the prison showers...

[leathered]

'You've got male!'

Re:Later in the prison showers...

[dep01]

The other inmates will scream, "You've got tail!"

Re:Later in the prison showers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha yes prison rape is hilarious. Lets all hope he gets AIDS! Because selling a list of 92Million screen names without any personally identifying information is worth AIDS.

Maybe he'll die while he's in prison. That'd sure teach him.

mandatory restitution?

[brian.glanz]

Smathers is only paying "the amount the government estimates AOL spent as a result of the e-mails," which is that $200,000 to $400,000. Is our government unable to represent those who suffered significantly more harm than AOL, the people?

Sufferers may primarily be AOLamers and maybe all of us here will laugh that off to some extent, but consider "The stolen list of 92 million AOL addresses included multiple addresses used by each of AOL's estimated 30 million customers. It is believed to be still circulating among spammers." AOLamers or not, these are our grandparents and grade school teachers; training-wheeled users who if anything, need more protection than we do.

This penalty does them no good, whatsover. TFA makes it clear that a signficant number of them are still getting ruined by the crime, as_we_type. IANAL; can someone add whether "the people" can expect to be served a piece of Smathers?

If this is it, it sure as hell isn't what I'd call "restitution." Anyone want to wager that we also get nothing out of Sean Dunaway, the guy to whom Smathers sold?

BG

Re:mandatory restitution?

[mccrew]

Smathers is only paying "the amount the government estimates AOL spent as a result of the e-mails," which is that $200,000 to $400,000. Is our government unable to represent those who suffered significantly more harm than AOL, the people?

2 quick points

1. Yes, the regular folks who recieve spam were harmed, but it is pretty hard to come up with some number to quantify. Another slashdotter hit the nail on the head in the other story today about how spam costs $22 billion per year.

2. The restitution does seem rather low - we all would have a self-satisfied chuckle if it had been a huge unreachable range like $200M to $400M. But it is low enough that there is a realistic chance he will actually have to pay off the whole thing off, perhaps have his wages garnished for the rest of his life. That does sound like serious consequences.

Re:mandatory restitution?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you demand restitution when you cut off the source of income?

Re:mandatory restitution?

[anticypher]

"the people"

You seem to be making a common mistake, anthropomorphizing AOLers.

At least you put the term in quotes, to indicate you are using a non-traditional or alternate meaning.

the AC

Contact information

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't trust my contact information with any private party. The government is, at least, obliged not to make profit with it. I'm glad they sued the competitor.

Bad, bad lawyer!

[GeneralEmergency]

'transportation of stolen property'

More like 'transportation of copied property'.

No such law.

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[bigbadunix]

I'm sure the terms of use of AOL's corporate networks indicate that all information contained on their computer systems are property of AOL.

This, then, would mean that whether he had an electronic file, had written down each address, a hardcopy listing, whatever...it was property of AOL. He stole that information.

But that's just my take on it, and i'm dumb.

Life is simple, people make it complicated

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[ari_j]

You're probably more correct than the parent was.

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[zxnos]

to steal is to take something without right or permission. property is something that is tangible or intangible that someone has a legal title to. so yes, he stole that property. you may believe that information cannot be property, but the current law doesnt agree with you. until the law can be changed everyone needs to follow the law or else those fighting to change it have no credibility because they are seen by others (those in power) as thieves.

by saying that information cannot be property you are opening pandoras box.

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[renehollan]

He violated copyright (by making a copy of copyright information -- AOL certainly has a right to what is called an "aggregation copyright" on the data) and propably made unauthorized use of computer systems to do so.

I doubt he stole anything, or transported stolen property across state lines.

Stealing would have entailed taking the data from a source within AOL and wiping that source clean.

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[shark72]

"I doubt he stole anything, or transported stolen property across state lines."

According to the letter of the law, he did. The transport likely happened when he e-mailed (or snail mailed) the file to Nevada.

"Stealing would have entailed taking the data from a source within AOL and wiping that source clean."

I think you're mixing the colloquial and the legal definitions here. The legal world has a different, and often broader, definition of the words "theft," "stolen" and the like. For example, "identity theft" and "theft of service" do not typically refer to the taking of a unique piece of physical property, as you or I might define the word "theft."

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[zxnos]

i dont equate stealing with depriving someone of property only. if someone takes a design of mine or anything i have created and uses it with out permission or claims it as theirs, i still call that theft. even though i wasnt deprived of anything physically. while perhaps offtopic, in general i think that if someone is offering something for a price you should respect that and pay if you want it.

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if I make a photocopy of a corporation's blueprints for a future product, run away with the copy, and sell it to the highest bidder in another state, it's perfectly fine? Some people need to get a clue that in cases, copying is considered stealing. Why do you think the *AA has been kicking and screaming these last 4+ years?

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[Anonymous Coward]

A copy or not does not make a difference. If I copy a formula and go across state lines, it ITSG. If you want to follow the geek history that got ITSG to where it is today, go read US vs. Brown 10th Circuit and then watch how many times Janet / Louis Fre (former Dir FBI) quoted that case in congress.

ps: I"m the Brown in that case. ;)

Re:Bad, bad lawyer!

[Jim_Callahan]

Information can be property. Aka anything copyrighted, or electronic funds. If i transfer all the money in your bank account to mine, it's still considered theft, despite the fact that all i did was alter some numbers, which is technically just vandalism. I'm assuming this is something similar.

XP PR0, AD0BE, 0FFICE 2OO3 & ALL FOR INSTANT D

[temojen]

You forgot to include the text/html part:

----35977.08538_20228509
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

fibration crankshaft spatial
perfecter conjure
downey happenstance aromatic charley gubernatorial

----35977.08538_20228509
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Actual spam message

----35977.08538_20228509--

Copied, not stole

[arbitraryaardvark]

As far as I can tell, aol still had the account names. When my car got stolen, what I objected to was that I no longer had my car, not that someone else had a car a lot like mine. Aiding spammers may be wrong, but let's keep the categories straight.

Re:Copied, not stole

[ScentCone]

As far as I can tell, aol still had the account names. When my car got stolen, what I objected to was that I no longer had my car, not that someone else had a car a lot like mine. Aiding spammers may be wrong, but let's keep the categories straight.

Not so. The block of data that he stole amounts, by any reasonable standard, as proprietary information and trade secrets. If he had stood there and photocopied customer data, it would have been the same story. His intent is almost beside the point - he knew he was diluting the company's value (and its customers' trust in the company) - and that's willful damage, something they should also have pursued.

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Anita Coney]

It may be nothing to you, but when 80% of all email is spam, and when legitimate emails are filtered out, and when email becomes essentially useless, nearly everyone else disagrees.

Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

A prison is supposed to be a place of punishment.

Quite frankly, I don't care what goes on in there as long as people fear getting into one. Fucking ream the shit out of the murderers and child rapists with broomsticks and they'll never rape again.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[ergo98]

Fucking ream the shit out of the murderers and child rapists with broomsticks and they'll never rape again.

Uh, who do you think is doing the raping? Nuns with dildos? It's murderers and rapists plying their trade in the big house.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[KillerDeathRobot]

A prison is supposed to be a place of punishment.

Not necessarily. There are a number of philosophies regarding the reason for prisons; other than punishment, prisons can be said to be places of rehabilitation, places to simply remove the dangerous element from society, and probably other things.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[homer_ca]

Yes, that's why it's called the Dept. of Corrections. Not that they do much rehabilitation or corrections these days, but that is in the name.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

No. People are not punished in prison according to whether they're murders and child rapists. They are punished according to their ability to join a gang, physical strength, etc. This is not the just and fair system that you imagine.

Also there's this little technical problem called the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that expressly forbids this sort of thing.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[hackstraw]

A prison is supposed to be a place of punishment.

Anyone who has taken PSYC101 will tell you that punishment only works when it is temporally near the behavior that it is trying to change.

Prison is about control, revenge, instilling fear in others so they won't do the same thing, and the feeling that the bad guys are "off the street", but it has nothing to do with punishment.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a fucking retard. If prison is for punishment, then people should never be released, regardless of what crime they have comitted. I say lets give everyone with a driving offence a life term.

The whole point of prison is to rehabilitate people, so that these crimes do not happen again. Most molesters were molested as children. Do you thing molesting them as adults, then releasing them back into society is going to achieve anything?

PS, anyone who wants to ream people with a broomstick is a fucking faggot, who should be locked up with the murderers and child rapists, as you are a fucking rapist anyway.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[wo1verin3]

>> People are not punished in prison according to
>> whether they're murders and child rapists

Wrong. Remember the child molesting priest that was killed in jail? The inmates don't take to kindly to f'd up shit any more then we do.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[timeOday]

Quite frankly, I don't care what goes on in there as long as people fear getting into one.

That's crazy. You can go to jail for lots of things, for instance stealing email addresses. Or for that matter, you can be falsely convicted. It happens.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that's a good one. You think you have to be convicted?

The teen was arrested in Broward County in May on charges of delivering marijuana, a felony. He had 30 grams - or about an ounce - of marijuana in his possession at the time of the arrest.

The 19-year-old spent the first night of his sentence in a 7-by-8-foot cell with Randolph Jackson, 35, who has been in jail since July 2002 awaiting trial on a sexual battery charge.

In the early morning hours of June 7, Jackson allegedly held a ballpoint pen to the teen's throat and raped him. Jail staff did not know about the incident until later in the day, when the 19-year-old's family members, alarmed by comments he made during a telephone conversation, called to report it, jail officials said... ...Sheriff's Office officials say the 19-year-old would normally have been sent to an open-barracks wing where nonviolent felony inmates are usually assigned. But because the jail was near capacity, and the open-barracks wing full, jail officials say he was sent to B Pod, a wing composed of one-man and two-man cells that house mostly inmates charged with violent felonies.

link

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[vsprintf]

Anyone who has taken PSYC101 will tell you that punishment only works when it is temporally near the behavior that it is trying to change.

That only holds true for lab rats and freshmen. Other people are able to understand the consequences of their actions once they have been taught.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[laughingcoyote]

But cop-killers are at the top of the heap, and are looked up to. They don't take kindly to -some- types of f'ed up behavior, and very kindly to others. Please don't make it out as though jailhouse beatings and rape are meted out according to the severity of the prisoner's crime-they're generally meted out according to opportunity and physical strength, or lack thereof.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

I should have said it was an inverse relationship for the sake of precision, but an inverse relationship is still a kind of relationship and therefore was not in error.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sorry about the previous reply I thought you were referring to the grandparent and not the parent post, which has since been subsumed by negative moderation.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[DigiShaman]

Oh I see. So it's better to not have people go to prison in the first place? Hell, if that's the case...I'm all for a night long fest of 5 finger discounts!

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not called the "Dept. of Corrections." It's called the Bureau of Prisons you absolute and complete bloody ignorant twit.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that it matters what happens in prisons is not equivalent to saying that prisons shouldn't exist. The depth of stupidity required to equate the two is breathtaking.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[Alioth]

But we're not even talking about a child molester or a rapist here - or even a violent criminal.

Is it proportionate to the crime that a *non violent* criminal should be subjected to rape and the possibility of HIV infection? That's not justice, that's barbarism.

Yes - the guy should be punished. No - he shouldn't be subjected to violent rape.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[runamok1]

People forget that our country was based on the idea that a thousand guilty should go free rather than one innocent be sacrificed.

Somewhere along the way "think of the kids" and media hysteria took over our better moral instincts.

It seems fine to say that those thousand guilty will hurt 10,000 MORE innocent people and the 1 innocent is a worthy cost of a working system.

That is until YOU'RE the innocent.

It would seem that being sodomized in prison would be a bit more than "cruel and unusual". I wonder why the prison system has never been sued into oblivion...

One more bleeding heart liberal comment and I'm done. The fact that we (by we I mean it's an accepted fact in our culture) all think people get abused in prison and we send a crap load of non-violent offenders there is a damn tragedy.

Re:Prison is a place of punishment

[ergo98]

The inmates don't take to kindly to f'd up shit any more then we do.

This is such a load of nonsense, as if prison is full of biblical "rough justice". The reality is that big name inmates that don't have a support structure get killed in jail because it gives someone infamy.

If you think the guy that knifed an old lady for her purse is really the edge of justice...

Sue AOL?

[andalay]

I wonder if users can sue AOL for not taking proper precautions (obviously the assumption here is that they didnt)

Re:Sue AOL?

[ryanjensen]

I don't know if the actual damages you could show would be worth the attorney's fees. Even treble and compensatory damages probably wouldn't cover the cost.

But then, you never know. You should try it and tell us how it works out.

Re:Sue AOL?

[andalay]

S1R 1 HoPe that u R not iMplYiNG that 1 uSe 40l for internet access..

sorry i dont speak 1337 speak

Interstellar transportation of stolen property!!

[radar_music]

"Interstellar transportation of stolen property"

Yikes! At first glance that's what I read.

Thinking about it though, (while not really stolen property) he could do that but it would take at least 4 years for the act to occur.

Punished?

[ckemp.org]

Damn, man. The guy deserves a thank you. Those casino sites rock. Really.

Re:Punished?

[troller general]

I know you. I've seen you before. I've watched you get dressed and take a dog for a walk. I've seen you in your dorm room. Have fun in Canada.

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Tatarize]

Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam!

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[MillionthMonkey]

If this wasn't about spam, people on here would be jumping up and down screaming their guts out about how the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

$400k for 92 million screen names? That's less than a half-cent per compromised screen name- what a deal! The year in prison is on top of that but that's probably on the order of magnitude of about $500k (judging from how much you'd have to pay me to go) so we're still at less than a cent per screen name. Ask anyone whose screen name was compromised, with a punishment of less than a cent. This guy got off easy.

For christ's sake, spam is NOT that big of a deal.

Yes it is.

We have to make it so.

[www.sorehands.com]

When spammers are having to pay money for spamming, we will win.

Look at http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119011,0 0.asp

Re:We have to make it so.

[kaustik]

Oh, I see. Well, "we" won't win unless "we" are in on the lawsuit. Otherwise, "we" will continue to waste time and money until spammers are just too broke to keep going on.

Re:But wait...

[shark72]

" Its not theft, right? AOL wasn't deprived of any property!"

If you use the Slashdot groupthink definition of "stolen property," well then sure. You often see this come up in Slashdot discussions regarding copyright protection. Nonetheless, in the world of trade secrets, mailing lists, and the like, these are the terms that are used. If you leave a company and take with you a copy of a customer list, trade secret, or other confidential or proprietary information, you cannot use the "the company still has a copy so I didn't deprive them of anything" defense. In the real world, this claim can get you a +5, Astute from the Slashdot crowd, but that's about it.

Such a danger

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, get this man off the street before he copies anyone else's database! I know I feel a lot safer with him behind bars. The monster.

Re:Such a danger

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, get this man off the street before he copies anyone else's database! I know I feel a lot safer with him behind bars. The monster.

Oh give me a break. This motherfucker is the same type of person who would have sold social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. If that were to occur and you were in those databases, I can assure you your fear would be genuine.

Wait

[Lord Kano]

As I understand it Facts are not copyrightable. A huge list of email addresses is just a big list of facts. If they can't have a copyright on the list of email addresses they can't assert that they've been stolen.

LK

Re:Wait

[kaustik]

Well, not according to TFA.

Federal prosecutor David Siegal said Smathers had engaged in the interstate transportation of stolen property and had violated a new federal "can-spam" law meant to diminish unsolicited e-mail messages about everything from Viagra to mortgages.

Re:Wait

[shark72]

"As I understand it Facts are not copyrightable. A huge list of email addresses is just a big list of facts. If they can't have a copyright on the list of email addresses they can't assert that they've been stolen."

I'm not sure how you made that last logical connection. This isn't a copyright infringement case; it's one of trade secrets and proprietary information. This is the modern equivalent of the old days where somebody might sneak out a big list of customer names and snail-mail addresses -- they're not copyrightable either, but it sure as hell is legally actionable.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee. I wonder why they hate us. [worldnetdaily.com]

No wonder liberals in this country are losing. They'll believe absolutely anything if it pats their worldview on the back, even if it's some completely baseless Internet rumor article from freaking WorldNetDaily!

Re:Wait

[afidel]

You are correct. This site has some good information including some applicable federal statutes involving theft of trade secrets and economic espionage. This guy was looking at up to 10 years in prison and 500K in fines so he got off relativly lightly. I never knew that theft of trade secrets carried criminal attachment, I thought it was purely a civil tort, shows how much you might not know about the law if you're not a lawyer.

Re:Wait

[kayak334]

I side with who's correct, not accordig to party lines.

From your blog:

We, Republicans that is, got our asses stomped in 1992 and 1996. Sure, we didn't like it, but you know what? We dealt with it.

You bet on "gay marriage" and scaremongering about the supreme court. Sorry, that was not a winning bet.

Wow. And NFL football is gay? I hope that was mostly a joke, because your attempts to prove it were pathetic.

Re:But wait...

[zxnos]

exactly. if we take the logic for downloading music/movies. etc and apply it here its the same thing. slashdot should be defending this man!

TROLL -1

[Anonymous Coward]

"covering that base as we made the laws so far stretching it has to be.

Hell, you made me think about goatse. Mod him down.

Re:TROLL -1

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, you made me think about goatse.

I didn't start the fire, its always been burning inside of you.

The anarchist retard comment of the day

[KillerDeathRobot]

Thank you for the most fascist comment of the day.

Who the hell are you or anybody else to say what's a crime and what's not, not to mention what's a "suitable punishment"? Can't take care of yourself? Buy a gun and shoot the bastard. Hell, even 90 year old granny can do that. Can't buy a gun legally? Shouldn't have given up your rights...

Thank you for the anarchist retard comment of the day.

18-24 Months?

[RockClimb]

In November of 2003 I was getting about 175 spams per day. In December of 2003 I installed Spamassassin, set up ip# and domain name block lists, tweaked the rules and wrote my own, and wrote a user email/spam report system. I spent a good deal of time getting this set up and working out the bugs. My email server received over 145,000 connections in 2004, over 143,000 were spam.

I have the ability and resources to do these things but many internet users do not. While I don't have an AOL account, I still think he should have received more hard time. Put him away for a long time, maybe his cell mate will be a disgruntled AOL user who lost it after getting "one too many spams".... make other spammers and their helpers think twice.

Re:18-24 Months?

[Not_Wiggins]

My email server received over 145,000 connections in 2004, over 143,000 were spam.

While Spamassassin is awesome for filtering, I'm still upset at the lack of action taken by the government to address the 143,000 connections in your example; just because it was blocked doesn't mean that the spammers aren't causing "damage" in wasted bandwidth and computing cycles.

Re:18-24 Months?

[RockClimb]

I'm still upset at the lack of action taken by the government to address the 143,000 connections in your example

I don't know..... I'm pretty upset by the fact that the morons thought I wanted their crap 143,000+ times :) You would think that the (55x)reject messages I send to some of them would give them a clue.... some of the reject messages are long enough that their email servers break the connection after only half of it gets sent ;)

In aggregate, as a collection, they are...

[PornMaster]

The expression of the facts in a particular grouping can be copyrighted.

OpenBSD is FOSS, but you can't make ISOs of the official CDs and sell them because Theo holds copyright of the particular way the CD is laid out. You can make your own CDs/ISOs, with the same data, but not just copy his image.

The OpenBSD project does not make the ISO images used to master the official CDs available for download. The reason is simply that we would like you to buy the CD sets, helping fund ongoing OpenBSD development. The official OpenBSD CD-ROM layout is copyright Theo de Raadt. Theo does not permit people to redistribute images of the official OpenBSD CDs. As an incentive for people to buy the CD set, some extras are included in the package as well (artwork, stickers etc).

Note that only the CD layout is copyrighted, OpenBSD itself is free. Nothing precludes someone else from downloading OpenBSD and making their own CD. If for some reason you want to download a CD image, try searching the mailing list archives for possible sources. Of course, any OpenBSD ISO images available on the Internet either violate Theo de Raadt's copyright or are not official images. The source of an unofficial image may or may not be trustworthy; it is up to you to determine this for yourself.

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq3.html#ISO

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

beaked beans

Quack!

Hahaha..

[dep01]

"Welcome!! You've got jail!"

Re:And in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't work of course. His cellmate can always use the identity of another prisoner and go in through the "backdoor".

Stolen?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

interstate transportation of stolen property

But he didn't steal it! He infringed a trade secret! He didn't take anything away from AOL; he just made a copy! Why do we misuse --

Who cares? This guy deserves the word "thief."

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

"He infringed a trade secret"

You can't infringe a trade secret. You can steal a trade secret, you can misappropriate a trade secret, but you can't infringe a trade secret.

Re:Stolen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? This guy deserves the word "thief."

Just like the RIAA calls the music pirates thieves.

Re:Stolen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I care. May I suggest the term "asshat", or perhaps "no-talent ass clown"?

Re:Stolen?

[arbitraryaardvark]

Why not? You've made an unfounded assertion. "misappropriate" is a good label for what happened. 'steal' doesn't fit because the element of deprivation is missing. 3 entries found for infringe. infringe Audio pronunciation of "infringe" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-frnj) v. infringed, infringing, infringes v. tr. 1. To transgress or exceed the limits of; violate: infringe a contract; infringe a patent. 2. Obsolete. To defeat; invalidate. v. intr. To encroach on someone or something; engage in trespassing: an increased workload that infringed on his personal life.

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

It doesn't matter what the dictionary says. If you go down to the court and file an action for "whatever" of a trade secret, the court will accept "theft of a trade secret" or "misappropriation of a trade secret." "Infringement" of a trade secret is not a recognized cause of action in any jurisdiction I am aware of.

My assertion may be "unfounded" based on whatever dictionary you used, but it is not "unfounded" based on my experience with trade secret law.

Re:Stolen?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

You can steal a trade secret

Which is kinda my original question: if the company still has the original information and only loses their exclusive ownership and distribution ability, then has the information been stolen?

It's the same situation with copyrighted materials: you didn't steal the material, you took away their exclusive right to copy. So why isn't that called "stealing"?

Re:Stolen?

[arbitraryaardvark]

Ah, the I may have misunderstood your point.
When you wrote

"You can't infringe a trade secret. You can steal a trade secret, you can misappropriate a trade secret, but you can't infringe a trade secret."

I thought you were making a claim about reality, rather than a claim about the name given to the cause of action.

The federal criminal statute is labled theft of trade secrets, but in the elements of the offense it is sufficient to allege misappropriation or infringement, and there need be no allegation of theft. Criminal statutes are construed more narrowly than civil causes of action, and the precise meaning of words matters.
The defendent here wisely accepted a deal.
I don't know whether there's prior case law interpreting the word "stolen" in this context.
We agree that the list is property. We disagree about whether, in English, the term 'steal' included 'copy without authorization.'

I used dictionary.com.

Now that I ponder the question, I believe a complaint stating infringement of a trade secret would be sufficient to meet notice pleading requirements under federal rules.
I think you are right that these torts are more often referred to as theft of trade secret.
The slashdot post-scarcity conceptual distinction between copying crimes and deprivation crimes probably hasn't been fully litigated by the courts, which are still operating more under a scarcity-based world-view.

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

Looks like we are on the same page now.

"Now that I ponder the question, I believe a complaint stating infringement of a trade secret would be sufficient to meet notice pleading requirements under federal rules."

That's probably true, but, unlike patent, copyright and federally-registered trademark infringment actions, trade secret actions are generally taken up in state court, which is why I suggested that YMMV.

But you are right, I wasn't very clear -- I was discussing the realities of a legal action, and not what the "definitions" really mean, or whether or not "stealing" a nontangible object is "stealing."

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

If I understand your question correctly -- and I may not -- you are wondering why you "steal" a trade secret, whereas you "infringe" a copyright, even though both merely take away an "exclusive right." I don't know if that is what you are asking, so I'll simply assume it.

There is a difference between trade secrets and copyrights (and patent and trademarks) that may not be obvious. With Copyrights, patents, and trademarks, you are being given an "extra" right (or extra set of rights) that you don't get with trade secrets. Basically, with trade secrets, you can only protect them as long as they remain secret -- once they are out in the open, that's it, there's nothing left to protect. So the law has made illegal the act of, for lack of a better name, "publicizing" trade secrets, and calls it "stealing" trade secrets, and that makes sense, because you are "stealing" the value of something, and the original owner cannot ever get it back. If the value is in keeping it secret, then once it is not secret, the value is lose, and that is something you have stolen from the owner. So we call taking a trade secret a "theft."

Now, copyrights and like are different -- here, they are already out in the public -- that's the bargain you make with the government to get the protections in the first place -- and so we have the governmentally-imposed rights that we give the holder of the copyright. Generally, whenever someone is interfering with someone elses "rights," we call that "infringment" -- you can infringe someone's right to control distribution of a copyright, but you can also infringe on someone right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as well. It's not the same as a theft of a trade secret -- even after an infringement, you still have something of value, so we call it infringement of a copyright instead of theft of a copyright (which could still happen in certain circumstances, but would involve stealing the right to enforce the rights, not the rights themselves).

Now, before everyone jumpsd in and says "hey, he just said copyright infringement isn't stealing," you need to be careful here. I said that copyright infringement didn't mean that you stole the copyright holder's rights to control his work -- you just "infringed" on them. What you have stolen is the economic value of the sale to you, and to anyone else who gets a copy of your infringing copy. I know, you'll say, "but I wouldn't buy it anyway," but you DON'T know that for a fact probably even for yourself, and certainly not for everyone else sharing from your copy. Even though YOUR infringement may not have "stolen" the economic value of a complete copy of the work from the copyright holder,your infringement HAS stolen some economic value, even if it is small and hard to quantify, and THAT IS stealing, no matter how you slice it.

I know I'm not going to be able to convinve anyone otherwise, but at least I made may arguments.

Re:Stolen?

[arbitraryaardvark]

We are both discussing the realities of a legal action.
Part of the discussion is about whether the indictment fairly described what happened, or was overcharging in order to coerce a plea.
At the December 21st hearing, the judge refused to accept a plea, which is unusual. At a second hearing, he pled guilty to conspiracy to spam, and to violating a statute which prohibits transporting stolen or fraudulently obtained goods. The indictment had alleged both that the list was stolen and that it was obtained by fraud,
so the issue of whether or not the list was stolen was not resolved in this case. Sounds like you are familar with this area -
has the term "stolen" in the transporting stolen good statute been defined by statute or case law to include unauthorized copying? Cite please?
It may well have been, but so far I haven't seen anyone in this thread point to such authority, so we're speculating.
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/usc ode/html/uscod e18/usc_sec_18_00002314----000-.html
(statute)

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

Well, I don't have a lot of time to do research today, but here's a couple of notes I found in West's annoted federal code:

""Stolen," as used in National Stolen Property Act, is not term of art and instead is broad in scope with wide ranging meaning. U.S. v. Pre-Columbian Artifacts, N.D.Ill.1993, 845 F.Supp. 544."

I didn't read this case, but my guess is this suggests that the dictionary defintion of "stolen" may not be controlling for the purpose of this statute.

"Proprietary information stolen from telephone company's "911" computer text file was capable of being "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" within meaning of federal statute prohibiting interstate transportation of stolen property. U.S. v. Riggs, N.D.Ill.1990, 739 F.Supp. 414."

Again, I didn't read this case to determine if the test file itself was stolen or not, but this seems to imply that if you simply steal the "information," that enough to be stealing under this section.

The Slashdot crew will like this one:

"Act of duplicating copyrighted aggregations of sounds without authorization constituted "stealing, converting, or taking by fraud," and thus such act could be prosecuted under this section. U.S. v. Sam Goody, Inc., E.D.N.Y.1981, 506 F.Supp. 380, 210 U.S.P.Q. 318."

So there's a case for ya that says copyright infringement can be considered "stealing, converting, or taking by fraud," at least as far as this statute is concerned.

And finally, here's another quote from the same case which also suggests that the act of infringing a copyright is stealing:

"Unauthorized duplicates of copyrighted sound recording were "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," as required for fraudulent taking of such recordings to be violation of this section, even though actual tapes on which such unauthorized duplications of sounds were placed were not stolen. U.S. v. Sam Goody, Inc., E.D.N.Y.1981, 506 F.Supp. 380, 210 U.S.P.Q. 318. "

Anyway, for the purposes of this code section at least, "stealing" appears to have a pretty broad definition, and this guy's theft of the user lists is certainly the type of "proprietary information" that will fall under this statute.

Re:Stolen?

[arbitraryaardvark]

OK, you've done what I asked for, cited a case, so you win, and I'll let it drop.

But first I'm going to bicker midly about your examples, and tell some war stories, before I fall asleep in my rocking chair.

National stolen property act - different statute, seemed to be dealing only with tangible goods.
Sam Goody dealt with the fraud prong of the statute, rather than the stolen goods prong.

Riggs was operation sun devil, the case that set up the steve jackson games case. Here's more:
http://www.savage.net/public_html/net/phrac k.html
The following March a Federal grand jury was told that the document that Knight Lightning had printed in Phrack was worth 80 thousand dollars and was extremely dangerous to the public. The grand jury brought a Federal indictment against Knight Lighting. He faced 31 years in prison for the interstate transportation of stolen property, wire-fraud and violations of the computer fraud and abuse act.

"In July of 90 we went to court...the witnesses took the stand to try and prove that I had not just committed the crimes they were saying i committed, but to prove that the actions I took were crimes in the first place. The defense never had to put on a single witness, by the end of the week, the governments case had completely fallen apart. The now famous 80 thousand dollar E-911 document was proven to be [publicly] available for no more than 13 dollars from Bellcore."

Because the information was publicly available the case against Knight Lightning was dropped and the trial ended after only 4 days. Knight Lightning however is stuck paying off $100,000 in legal fees, the US government is immune from being sued. "Anything I had ever saved up for college has gone into paying it off."

If there was anything at all that came out of the E-911 case against Craig it was that there was a large public awakening to the rights of electronic journalism and to government intrusions to suspected hackers. Organisations like the EFF and CPSR were formed to look into people's rights and uphold civil liberties on the internet. Jim Warren started CFP (Computers, Freedom, Privacy) as a direct result of the Operation Sundevil raids and the case against Knight Lightning. Phrack is still being published* and can be obtained via WWW, anonymous ftp or by subscribing. Phrack is still free to individuals but has now been copyrighted. Corporations and security professionals are expected to register their subscriptions.
---
* Phrack had its last issue recently. In 1992, I was having lunch with Craig at CFP 2, listening to Bruce Sterling talk about the hacker crackdown,
at a table with eric b. and emmanuel goldstein and an irs agent, with phiber optik wandering around and some kid who'd hacked his way in by stealing my credentials, and he told me a bit about his side of the case. I came away from that weekend wanting to be somebody who fought for free speech on the internet. I've failed rather miserably at it so far (majors.blogspot.com), but I gave it a shot.

Re:Stolen?

[Macadamizer]

Well, I did preface my examples with the facts that a) I hadn't read them, and b) I just pulled the cases off of West's annotated U.S. code for that particular statute... I've had a 60+ billable week this week putting the finishing touches on a Markman brief, so I didn't spend the time to vet the cases before posting them -- thanks for being gentle!

Interesting stuff there about hackers and the like. This stuff we've been talking about is a bit out of my area, I spend most of my time litigating and prosecuting patents, with a little copyright, a little general commercial lit, and some labor and employment law to spice things up...

Enjoy your rocking chair...

Intellectual property

[bonch]

Since he's being charged over stolen property, I'm assuming Slashdotters are okay with the concept of intellectual property in this circumstance.

Re:Intellectual property

[timeOday]

I think people are seeing this as a spammer issue instead of an IP issue.... which it really isn't. Companies buy and sell these lists all the time, and use them for spamming all the time, and it's all perfectly legal. The only difference here is AOL is annoyed because they didn't get their cut.

Re:Intellectual property

[iminplaya]

Nice try. Intellectual property isn't the issue here, as much as you like to constantly bring it up. Apparently you didn't read the article either. No mention of IP there either.

Re:But wait...

[Macadamizer]

Slashdot: If it's not a tangible object that someone else can be deprived the use of, it's not property!

U.S. Courts, U.S. Law: If the law says its property, its property.

That's why the courts come up with all of these crazy rulings that slashdotter's just can't seem to get their heads around...

From what I can gather...

[bonch]

Going after people who harvest and spam your e-mail address is Good. Going after people who harvest and pirate somebody else's music is Bad. How's that moral relativism smell?

Re:From what I can gather...

[de1orean]

hmmm.... interesting. i'd like to see some actual debate about this. not petty trolling/flaming, but people actually debating this. i'll try and kick it off.

i download "copyrighted" material, mostly music, mostly w/o paying. i also upload my own music (that i write/record/etc.)and share it freely.

i guess the main difference b/t what i do and what the ex-AOL guy did is i don't profit from any of my "harvesting" (or any of my musical endeavors, truth be told).

does the guy desreve to do hard time? probably not.

thoughts?

Re:From what I can gather...

[Anonymous Coward]

Going after people who harvest and spam your e-mail address is Good. Going after people who harvest and pirate somebody else's music is Bad. How's that moral relativism smell?

According to the article, up to 7 billion emails may have been sent following the sale of that email list. Let's pretend only half that much were sent, that is 3.5 billion (which gives about 38 emails per person; a reasonable amount over the course of a year). Furthermore, lets pretend only 1 out of 10 of these emails reached it's recipient. That makes 350 million emails to delete. Now, if you were deleting them at the rate of 1 per second, it would take you 11 years to delete them all. Assuming you were paid 10 dollars an hour to do it, you would have been paid close to a million dollars at the end of that time. And I think this is a rather low estimate, reflecting a best case scenario of the consequences of this guy's acts. So yes, it is good to track down spammers.

How can you compare that to instances of copyright infrigement, where copies are made of music which would not have been bought anyways? The copyright owner loses nothing in this process. Moreover, those who get caught cannot even defend themselves from lawsuits, since the very act of defense would cost more than to caugh up a few thousand dollars to super-rich monopolies. The punishment is totally disproportionate to the crime. So no, I don't think there is any "moral relativism" at work here.

Re:From what I can gather...

[Anonymous Coward]

Going after people who harvest and spam your e-mail address is Good. Going after people who harvest and pirate somebody else's music is Bad. How's that moral relativism smell?

Smells like teen spirit!

Open Source
Pirate Music
Welcome to SlashDot!

Re:From what I can gather...

[ScentCone]

where copies are made of music which would not have been bought anyways? The copyright owner loses nothing in this process.

How about standing in a room with the teenager who claims to really like the music (enough to seek out a way and take the time to download it), and the artist who created the music. The teenager has to say to the artist, in so many words: "I like your stuff enough to go to some trouble to get it, but not enough to pay you to entertain my with it. Oh, and you have no choice in the matter. Now, sing for me for free!"

Because the only thing that would make you right is if the person would not have otherwise obtained the music. Take away the ability to easily steal it, and at least some of those hypocritical fans would see the light and buy it.

The copyright owner loses nothing in this process

Nothing, except the living he/she would have made if the person who just dodged paying for the wares they're now enjoying would have paid for it. That's like saying that concerts by artists you really want to see are worth paying money to go see until you notice someone holding a fire exit door to the arena open for you to slip in... and then, because there was a way to get around paying, that, by definition means that the artist should have to like singing to you for free.

Re:From what I can gather...

[ScentCone]

i download "copyrighted" material

Why put that in quotes? If the person who creates the material wants to assert their ownership of it, is there any ambiguity? No more than there is if AOL asserts ownership of their operational databases.

Not paying for something (which its owner has said he thinks you should pay for) that you none the less take anyway... that's avoiding a cost, and that's profiting. But why split hairs? Just because you want to give away your own musical creations doesn't mean that you've now got the rights to waive someone elses rights. The owner is the owner - period! The owner might be generous, or short sited, or just trying to make a living (or trying to get rich). Doesn't matter... it's the material creator's/owner's call on how is material is disseminated, and at what (if any) price.

If the guy vandalized AOL's office building in a way that cost as many man hours, customer good will, and bad press coverage as this event did... that person would be in hot legal water. If he physically walked off with anything else within those walls, the same. Taking something intrinsically valuable, with the express purpose of using it against the wishes of the people that own it... that's a criminal breach of trust, and damaging to a lot of people, their jobs, and their investments. Not to mention his contribution to even more spam choking our collective networks.

Re:From what I can gather...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no human right to private property.

read some karl marx, you twit.

Re:From what I can gather...

[ScentCone]

there is no human right to private property

Ah, well, if Karl Marx says so, then it must naturally be correct. You can tell by the fantastic, peaceful, prosperous societies that followed his advice. Of course, the ones that did, and have since managed to provide a decent standard of living and some growth in those countries' overall capacity for their people have... shifted back over to private property. Which, of course, makes sense. Without any prospect of taking that which your do with your time and making from it a life that you can pass to your family, or use as you see fit, all you are is a slave. Karl Marx's ideas certainly did make a lot of slaves (and murder millions of people).

Re:From what I can gather...

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you have no business talking about morality. Until you learn that all people should be treated with respect, you should keep your mouth shut.

Re:From what I can gather...

[Anonymous Coward]

Karl Marx's ideas certainly did make a lot of slaves (and murder millions of people).

Of course the capitalists did no such thing...right? You shouldn't blame a man's ideas for perverted, twisted applications of said ideas. The ideas were/are valid. Every bit(more actually) as the idea of capitalism which, by the way, continues to murder millions as we speak in its "little" wars to secure cheap resources. Khrushchev said, "We will bury you." He was wrong. The capitalists will bury themselves. This hysteria we have over property rights will do us all in if we aren't careful. Nobody cares about the millions being killed when there's money to be made, as long as the killing is done offshore. And to be fair, neither systen has ever been tried in their pure forms, and probably never will be. Contrary to communist ideals, governments will always try to maintain their power, And contrary to capitalist ideals, equal opportunity for everybody is out of the question..

Re:From what I can gather...

[ScentCone]

equal opportunity for everybody is out of the question

Right... because people have the good or bad luck to be born more or less capable than other people, or in the middle of circumstances more or less desirable/likely (weather, geography, local customs, etc) to result in great opportunities. What Marxism does, though, is ensure that no one has opportunity towards their own ends, and by their own standards. Free trade between people and groups of people does not include "little" wars or any other kind. When non-free countries run by mafia-like (not capitalist) idiots in places like Japan (see the Pacific theater of WWII, which they caused themselves - they were not capitalists, they were a feudal society), Germany (again, not capitalists, but a Fascist government in imperialist mode), or Iraq (Saddam wanted more coast line for oil export capacity... so he invaded Kuwait and started the recent ball rolling) and so on. There's nothing capitalist about those nations' actions. There's a lot of Stalin in Saddam, though, and a lot of Marx in Stalin.

Re:From what I can gather...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this? The world according to FOX? The stuff about Saddam gave you away. I take it that the U.S is a little angel that never practiced this crap. When a person is beaten down in a capitalist society, it's just bad luck?? And all other systems are evil? I don't think so. Too me, Marxism just doesn't permit exclusivity. Capitalism thrives/depends on it. Break away from the tube, and read a book, mmmkay?

what fuckwit modded this "insightful"???

[de1orean]

seriously.

Re:what fuckwit modded this "insightful"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, looks like you snagged an anal-recursive moderator. :) I'll watch for it in M2.

Re:But wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

not convinced, sorry.

"steal

vt.

stole stolen stealing[Old English stelan]
To take or appropriate without right or consent and with intent to keep or make use of see also robbery theft

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law 1996. Merriam-Webster's, Incorporated. Published under license with Merriam-Webster, Incorporated"

So unless he deleted the data from the original systems there was no 'stealing', and even if he did it would still be shaky as it's questionable if information is a physical thing. There might have been unauthorised access to a computer system or theft of electricity or CPU cycles or something similar, but stealing (in my eyes at least) nope.

If I used the term dog to mean cat, it doesn't mean that a dog is actually a cat to anyone but me.

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Sygiinu]

Yes it is.

Hey man, you and the rest of the hang the spammers crowd need to realise that it cuts both ways. If you want a free and open Internet you have to accept the spam. Don't like spam? Then don't give out your E-mail address to people likely to spam you. Still get spam? Write yourself a spam filter.

I don't like spam, but I'd rather have spam than an over-regulated Internet and I think that spending 5 minutes of my time each day dealing with the spam that gets through the filters is much better than some guy having to go to prison with all the psychological torment that might/will cause, not only to him but his innocent family and friends as well. Not to mention that sending people to prison harms the economy.

Even Later in the prison showers...

[Anonymous Coward]

The chorus sings, "Your cheeks are so pale!"

Moral relativism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moral relativism is modus operandi for liberalism.

Consider the political demographic of this forum and suddenly hypocrisy seems normal.

Go ahead, mod me troll instead of refuting me. You'll only illustrate my point.

Re:Moral relativism.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just parroting FOX. You obviously wouldn't recognise hypocrisy if it came up and bit you on the ass. No point in refuting an idiot.

Wrong charge

[iamacat]

It should be copyright infrigement or breach of privacy, not theft. We might not mind in this case, but we don't want 12 year old girls using Kazaa to be charged with grand theft and put in jail.

Re:Wrong charge

[afidel]

Well, he pled guilty to a conspiracy charge, which may be correct. He did in fact conspire to steal trade secrets from AOL. What the prosecutor says to the email and the legal wording of the filing are probably very different things. At least that's what I got by reading the article and reading between the lines.

He sold it?

[AstroDrabb]

Smathers used another employee's account to steal the data, and sold it to a Vegas-based online casino operator.

So this guy sold this information and is getting in trouble for it? Well that sounds fair. However, what about the Vegas company that purchased the "goods"? Are any legal proceedings taking place against them? Or is anything a corporation does "OK" with the government and the DA's office?

I haven't heard anything against the Vegas company that purchased this information. Why is it OK for a company to carry out these acts but if a citizen does the same acts, he/she is fined a few hundred grand and sent to jail for a year or two?

Re:He sold it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is Amerika of course, you didnt think this was still a gov't by the people for the people did you? They abolished that secretly in the 70's and the power players have been consolidating ever since.

Re:He sold it?

[nettdata]

However, what about the Vegas company that purchased the "goods"? Are any legal proceedings taking place against them?

Well, according to TFA, "yes".

Re:He sold it?

[ScentCone]

They abolished that secretly in the 70's

This claptrap gets modded as "interesting"? That's an interesting tinfoil hat, anyway.

Re:He sold it?

[ari_j]

Interesting? Hardly. Of you want big government and interference with commerce, the period you want is 1937-1995. The Supreme Court let FDR cut its balls off in 1937 ("A stitch in time to save nine." comes from that event) and it took until 1995 for Rehnquist to give the dosage of testosterone into the Court that pushed it back to telling Congress that the "interstate commerce" clause of the Constitution doesn't involve frickin' everything. (During the cited period, a federal law was applied to a subsistence farmer, because somehow he was "affecting interstate commerce.") Before 1937, the Court struck down half of the New Deal. From 1937 until 1995, not one law was declared unconstitutional for going beyond the commerce clause.

The 70's were nothing for government having its hands in business.

Re:He sold it?

[tootlemonde]

"A stitch in time to save nine." comes from that event

The old saying "a stitch in time saves nine" is much older than 1937. I think you are confusing "a switch in time to save nine". This version of the old saying was a humourous play on words at the time of the Supreme Court decisions. Those decisions upheld parts of the New Deal and ended FDR's plan to increase the number of justices to 15 from 9.

The phrase is mentioned inter alia here and here.

Re:He sold it?

[ari_j]

Oops. You are correct. I know the history but got the word wrong, and yes - what I was saying is that the switch made involved backing down from FDR; and the Court didn't step forward on the issue again for 58 years.

Re:He sold it?

[ari_j]

And I just noticed that I began a sentence "Of you..." instead of "If you..." Clearly, I had too much to drink last night.

Tangible property, odorless gas, and the E911 case

[Anders Andersson]

A database isn't tangible property.

I would agree with you, but look at how the court argued in United States vs Riggs back in 1990 (yes, the famous E911 BellSouth document case) about applying the "interstate transfer of stolen goods" rule to an electronic file. When the issue of tangibility was brought up, the court briefly compared the electronic file with "a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas", arguing that the "interstate transfer" rule could reasonably be applied to the gas in spite of its "intangibility". Now, even an odorless gas does consist of very tangible atoms, and it seems to me like a rather weak argument for applying the law also to what is essentially a transmission of information. If a TV station broadcasts a movie without paying royalties, is that "interstate transfer of stolen goods" too?

In the E911 case, the "value" of the stolen document was heavily inflated, quoted as $79,499 when a paper copy was actually available from Bellcore for $13.

There are actually two pieces of intangible property involved here. One is the original work as such, the database that may have cost a lot of time and money to compile. The other is an electronic copy of said original, perhaps available for a modest fee. I believe that in both the E911 case and this AOL case, only the copies have been transferred. The difference is that copies of the E911 document was available for sale, while the AOL customer database appearantly wasn't. How do you determine the "value" of something that isn't legally available for sale? Are we talking black market prices with respect to the copy (what someone is prepared to pay for it) here, or estimated damages to the database owner caused by the misappropriation of the information in it?

When a copy of a printed book is stolen, the value is considered to be the retail price for the copy (and that copy is quite tangible). No license fee for a reprint or damages for copyright infringement is ever involved. If an original manuscript is stolen, that is quite a different thing. But if you make an unauthorized copy (on paper) of an unpublished manuscript?

Flexible legislation

[Anders Andersson]

A sometimes common perception among Slashdotters is that the law is immutable and easily defeated by technology, but a look at how the law has changed over the past several hundred years shows that the law does eventually catch up. It's my understanding that interstate transport can now include e-mail as well as the historic methods of postal mail and, as you've mentioned, cars.

The law (either the statutory text or its interpretation) is amended to deal with new realities, that's true, but it doesn't happen automatically. Some laws are widened in scope, others are not, in either case because of a reason. If not, totally different laws might end up applying to the very same circumstances, leading to mutually contradictory rulings. How come electronic publishing has been subject to the "interstate transfer of stolen goods" rule long before it's covered by freedom of the press statutes? The AOL database case isn't about publishing, but many other cases of electronic information transfer (such as the E911 case) are.

After having establisheded different legal frameworks surrounding different things like postal mail, telephone services, newspaper publishing, broadcast radio and television, banking, trade, private property, workplace environment, healthcare, public administration, law enforcement, education, scientific research, innovation, and national security, it shouldn't come as a major surprise that having all those laws apply to said activities when taking place within the same piece of machinery on your desktop may become a little messy if not done with proper consideration.

AOL

[xmp_phrack]

so easy to abuse, no wonder it's number one!

Just the Fed Out of Control (Again...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another case of where the Fed makes
up a bunch of so called "laws" and just
start's piling stuff on. It isn't about
what's right or wrong or just or unjust.
Its about the Fed doing whatever they want
to anybody they want whenever they want.
You think you have constitutional protec-
tions? Ha! Don't make me laugh.

Re:Just the Fed Out of Control (Again...)

[ScentCone]

so called "laws"

So, what would this thief have to do in order to pass your test of righteousness? Maybe... kill a security guard while stealing the company data? Or is that still OK? Where do you draw the line? Or is theft OK, as long as you're not actually putting someone in the hospital?

Re:But wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where in that definition does it say anything about physical property? You as so many other stupid slashdotters cannot read a simple definition correctly. That definition is exactly what he did.

"If I used the term dog to mean cat, it doesn't mean that a dog is actually a cat to anyone but me."

Kind of fitting because that is exactly what you are doing.

Menace Off The Street

[Anonymous Coward]

Whew! I'll sleep better at night knowing
this guy is doing hard time. I mean, after
all, he was *such* a menace. My God, stealing
screen names and selling them! Hmmm, how much
time did that guy do that was caught on tape
smashing Reginald Denny's head with a concrete
brick. Oh, yeah, no time. Yep, America, a just
country if there ever was one.

Re:Menace Off The Street

[ScentCone]

Whew! I'll sleep better at night knowing this guy is doing hard time.

Well, considering that guys like this literally keep system admins up at night (not sleeping better) as they clean up after the billions of pieces of trash that his "customer" sends out, choking up businesses and private e-mail accounts... fewer of him, and I'd actually, literally sleep better. As for the brick-smashing guy, well, that really sucked. Also, the guy that broke into my car and stole my LAN tools deserves to actually, truly die. I'd like to take care of that myself, and will never have the chance, and neither will the cops. But, this clown who sold out his employer's data (and their customers' trust) for a smallish pile of cash knowing that billions of spam messages would soon plague millions of people... he's an ass, and now he gets to cover his for a year or so.

Kevin Mitnick may agree

[johnpaul191]

he was locked up in an unusually rough situation for his non-violent crimes. if he was on trial today i bet he would be hit with some patriot act violations and locked up as a terrorist.

i know a million other people face the same thing, but his is a case most people here should know about.

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam
Spamity Spam, it's Spamity spam

Shut Up!
Bloody Vikings...

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the AC (hey, why should I log in with -1 karma, when I can post anonymously at 0?) who started this thread and I am glad to at least see someone who shares my point of view.

I guess I was flamebait but god damn, the only way to be guaranteed that WE as individuals have the right to send emails is to guarantee that EVERYONE ELSE as invididuals has the right to send emails -- yes, with WHATEVER CONTENT THEY WANT.

Re:For Chrissake, Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I get about 80% spam. It IS nothing to me. I can deal with seeing some ads for Viagra.

Spam will cease to be a problem when it CEASES TO BE AN EFFECTIVE METHOD OF SELLING SHIT. Spam is a problem, but it's NOT a problem caused by spammers. It is a problem caused by a consumer frenzied society of blame-others people.

Does that mean you use AOL?

[Mo B. Dick]

Lamer!

Re:But wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Redundant? Some moderators need to learn how to tell time.

Yes, but even your cellmate gets tired.

[SarahKatt]

The horrible thing is that this joker will probably have net access between rapings. Alot of prisons (especially minimum and low security), allow the inmates some form of internet access. A hypothetical situation here, but he could get online, pull this list off of some offsite file dump, and sell it again and again. While I'm not saying this guy would be dumb enough to do this, I do wish to state that if the punishment is to fit the crime, he should have gotten the same treatment that most hackers do: From sentencing until $X years later, you cannot touch or interact with a computer. As a potentional victim, I would find this more acceptible, on top of a much higher fine, in lieu of jailtime.

Re:Yes, but even your cellmate gets tired.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot of prisons (especially minimum and low security), allow the inmates some form of internet access.

What prisons have you been in, little girl? Having been a guest of the federal government at two different minimum security facilities, there ain't no internet access. Of course, there was no ass pounding, either...unless you really wanted some.

LOL@FEDERAL PRISON

[ChemShadow]

I've been a felon for wire fraud since i was thirteen, nuttin happened to me other than 29 months in wales detention in wisconsin and 29 months in a group home ( www.norriscenter.org ) and 3 years probation. I'm 17 in 2 days. I paid(well, my parents) paid $201,000 in court fees and restitution. we are broke now. :(

Prison is punishment and a deterrent.

[DigiShaman]

Actually, the two DO go togeather. Prison is SUPPOSED to be a deterrent. Prison is NOT supposed to be a place of free shelter with feature comforts. It's supposed to be harsh as hell.

In fact, rather then having prisoners rott away and spending my tax dollars, I would rather the system mirror that of what happens in Singapore. That is to say if you rob a store, you should have your ass beaten till skin breaks. I mean, total pain and torture...but not enough to physically mame you for life. Just enough to drill it in your thick skull that it is NOT ok to do crime.

We are all children in life. The only difference is some of us learn our leasons in life so as not to repeat them as we get older.

Re:Prison is punishment and a deterrent.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I take it then that it's safe to say that you want to repeal the 8th amendment?

Hell no! I won't go AOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they bought AOL addresses to spam with, they probably don't only spam AOL addresses.