Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, NC now has the dubious honor of being the first spammer sentenced to jail for the felony of spamming. Virginia judge Thomas Horne sentenced Jaynes to 9 years in prison based on a jury recommendation after he was convicted of sending out 10 million e-mails a day. Jaynes, who sent out much of his spam using the name "Gaven Stubberfield", has held a position on the SpamHaus Registry of Known Spam Operations for a long time. Unfortunately the sentence has been postponed while the case is being appealed." Commentary on the sentence available at Forbes as well.

Comments

good move

[Coneasfast]

Defense attorney David Oblon argued in court that nine years was far too long given that Jaynes was charged as an out-of-state resident with violating a Virginia law that had taken effect just two weeks before. "We have no doubt that we will win on appeal," Oblon said outside court.

9 years too long? i don't think so. on what grounds would they win? did the people who bought penis enlargement pills give good feedback? when the law takes effect has no merit, he was sending 10 mil emails a day. just multiply that by 2 weeks.

He also has said the law is an unconstitutional infringement of free speech.

ok, let me come to your house, stuff hundreds of flyers a day at your front door, then say it's an unconstitutional infringement on free speech if i get stopped.

the article didn't mention what type of spam he was sending (but at 10mil/day, my guess is every kind).

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, let me come to your house, stuff hundreds of flyers a day at your front door, then say it's an unconstitutional infringement on free speech if i get stopped.

Excellent Example! I hate that damn physical spam WalMart, Safeway and Best Buy send me infinately more than I hate email spam, because it's much easier to set up a email filter.

Once those physical-mail spammers go to jail, I'll support this guy going to jail.

He also has said the law is an unconstitutional infringement of free speech.

Restricting any sort of speach online is a really just one step in practicing for legal and technological control of the content on the internet.

First they came for the spammers, but I wasn't a spammer, so I did nothing
Then they came for the copyrighted music theives, but commercial music sucks, so I didn't care
Then they came for the pornographers, but my tastes are mainstream, so I still didn't care.
Then they came for F/OSS, but windows was a kinda adequate replacement so I did little
Finally, they went after political blogs; but by then it was too late.

Personally, I'd prefer if software vendors simply provided anti-spam filters (perhaps captcha based) and bundled them in a way that people could understand and use.

There are easy technical solutions. Personally, I simply bounce all HTML email to the sender and ask them to re-send as text, and my account that used to have hundreds of spams a day is now quite plesant to read - maybe one text spam gets through every few days.

Re:good move

[tdemark]

It's not that I think 9 years is too long or too short, it's that I think it's not in line with other punishments.

You could commit a murder and probably get a similar sentence, if not shorter.

It really says something about society when you can get a harsher penalty for sending spam than you could for premeditated homicide.

- Tony

Re:good move

[Coneasfast]

Excellent Example! I hate that damn physical spam WalMart, Safeway and Best Buy send me infinately more than I hate email spam, because it's much easier to set up a email filter.

Once those physical-mail spammers go to jail, I'll support this guy going to jail.

this is completely different and a bad analogy, it cost these stores money to send it out, and they don't send out in massive bulk quantities, once a week from safeway? who cares.

dozens of penis enlargement emails a day? now that's a big deal.

First they came for the spammers, but I wasn't a spammer, so I did nothing
Then they came for the copyrighted music theives, but commercial music sucks, so I didn't care
[cut]

you know how ridiculous you sound? spamming has NOTHING to with free speech, it's all about advertising, go read the first amendment, i'm not even american and i know enough about it.

Re:good move

[JavaLord]

9 years too long? i don't think so

Consider the fact that here in New Jersey, a Rapist gets out in 3 years with good behavior. (They don't even call it rape here, it's 'sexual assault')

His crime was not a violent one, he shouldn't go to jail for 9 years. He should have to pay an insane fine, and be barred from going online for 10-20 years and give him 10 years probation. If he violates any of this, throw him in jail.

It's silly to throw someone in jail in a country where we already have an overcrowded jail system.

This man was simply a victim of being made an example of. There is no doubt that he should be punished, but 9 years in jail for a crime that just annoyed victims is a bit much. I'd much rather see rapists and murders get 20-40 years and let people like this get probation and fines. It's a waste of resources to lock someone like this up.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

people DO come to your house and stuff hundreds of flyers at your front door

not in one day they don't

Re:good move

[Macadamizer]

This isn't a freedom of speech issue. There are lots of restrictions allowed on "commercial speech."

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

this is completely different and a bad analogy, it cost these stores money to send it out, and they don't send out in massive bulk quantities, once a week from safeway? who cares.

I disagree with this. WalMart is a multi-billion dollar corporation who money gives them the ability to abuse the public postal service. Therefore they are spamming much more and come to think of it their "expense" is externalized on the environment with more trash than anything coming from email spam.

This is truly unfair treatment under the law and the "offender" in this case should win his appeal but I won't be surprised it the lower court verdict is upheld since individuals today are getting worst treatment in court than corporations.

Re:good move

[networkBoy]

Give him1 second of jail time per e-mail sent :-p

Re:good move

[Johnboi Waltune]

As you said, he is being made an example of. The 9 year prison sentence is just sensationalism to get this case into the news, so the message will clearly reach others who engage in this activity.

He isn't in prison now while the case is being appealed, and there is a reason for that. On appeal, his prison sentence will be reduced to a slap-on-the-wrist level, or to probation with a hefty fine.

However, the result of his appeal likely won't be widely reported.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for the spammers...

you know how ridiculous you sound? spamming has NOTHING to with free speech,

Neither does being comunist or jewish, which is what the original quote refered to.

The issue is cracking down on one community at a time to gain control over the medium.

Re:good move

[Zeebs]

Yea there isn't a high enough percentage of people in prison form the US. Lets put more NON-VIOLENT people who only commited a crime against property(If you tell me spam is a personal assault I'll come down there and smack you) Why not out grafitti artists in jail for 20 years, them sons a bitches attacked my PHYSICAL wall, and damaged it, can't just delete that. What about posters in major cities, 50 years, do you know how many posters they put up day, that can't just be deleted.

The problem is this is a technical problem not a social one. Fix it in code, not codify it in law.

Re:good move

[Best ID Ever!]

Once those physical-mail spammers go to jail, I'll support this guy going to jail.

How many of those WalMart flyers advertise fraudulent products?

Re:good move

[pilgrim23]

I totally agree. 9 years is a horrible sentence for spamming. We should be more caring more, sensitive, more in touch with our inner fetus....

-get a rope......

Re:good move

[gstoddart]

Consider the fact that here in New Jersey, a Rapist gets out in 3 years with good behavior. (They don't even call it rape here, it's 'sexual assault')

Well, sexual assault is a broader category which might include rape, but also includes less-violent offences. (Not that I want to detract from your point.)

I must say sentencing times always baffles me -- I saw one program on TV (on something like Animal Planet, it just incidentally got mentioned) in which one man was serving 9 years for three different charges, one of which was second degree murder. Another was serving 20 years for second degree burglary.

Now, I'm with you. I would have pegged murder as being worse than burglary, but what do I know?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, no you don't.

Learn the law and then come back. No one gets nine years for premeditated (1st degree) murder .

Re:good move

[peg0cjs]

That would amount to just under 4.5 years (based on 10M spam/day for 2 weeks). I think that since it takes about 2 seconds to DEL the spam, he should be sentenced to those 2 secs for actual damages + 1 sec punitive = 3 seconds per spam, or roughly 13 yrs. All in favour?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

9 yrs is too long. I live in an area of the country where Spammers have prurchased property with their ill gotten gains, and it's tempting to look at someone's million dollar home and say, screw them!

However, nine years for just spam, is simply too much time, it may not pass Constitutional muster. Much of what spammers do should be handled civil, which is being done as well. Now, if fraudulent credit card use is involved, etc, that's a different issue.

As for what a jury recommends...we should know better than that, by now!

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

By my accurate (I believe), calculations and based on 140 million e-mails (10 million per day over the course of the 2 weeks the anti-spam law was in place), that leaves him with a little over 4.5 years of prison time.

They sentence him to 9 years, he gets out on parole in half that time for good behavior. Seems like it's pretty good as it is.

Re:good move

[mdvolm]

Absolutely 9 years is too long. I hate spam as much as anyone, but c'mon!

Frankly, going to prison for sending spam seems silly anyway, we send too many people to prison for frivoulous things that would be more effectively punished in other ways. I'd rather leave prison for the violent criminals.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of restrictions of all sorts of protected speach as well. And it's wrong to say that commercical speach isn't protected - it's just that the protections have different extents -- for example, panhandling (a clear example of commercial speach) was protected under first ammendemnt cases.

Re:good move

[LabRat007]

I agree. A few years back our neighbor's 13 year old daughter and several of her friends were molested. The offender was sentenced to 15 years and served 3.

What the hell kind of world do we live in if a child raping bastard gets a potentially lighter sentence then a spammer?

I don't get it.

Re:good move

[Xtifr]

> Consider the fact that here in New Jersey, a Rapist gets out in 3 years with good behavior.

You're comparing apples and oranges here. Time-sentenced is not the same as time-served - the two are very, very different. A sentence of nine years may very well translate to as little as a year of actual time served (with good behavior)!

> It's silly to throw someone in jail in a country where we already have an overcrowded jail system.

That's a separate issue, and I definitely agree with you there. But I see no reason why a criminal spammer should be treated differently from any other sort of non-violent criminal, even while I may agree with you that non-violent criminals should, in general, be treated differently than they are.

Re:good move

[MightyMartian]

You wouldn't have much of a postal service without large consumer mail outs, or the price of stamps might be at least two or three times greater.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I'm with you. I would have pegged murder as being worse than burglary, but what do I know?

It depends who you stole from and who you killed, unfortunately.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

As I've said before in other spam topics, I will gladly pay 20 - 30 times more to mail a letter to eliminate this huge fucking waste of resources that is snail spam.

Re:good move

[DrSkwid]

They came for the palmists,
but I wasn't a palmist
so I did nothing.
They came for the bungee jumpers,
but I wasn't a bungee jumper
so I did nothing.
They came for the players' agents,
but I wasn't a players' agent
so I did nothing.
They came for the Charles Manson fans,
but I wasn't a Charles Manson fan,
so i did nothing.
They came for the refloxoligists,
but I wasn't a refloxoligist
so I did nothing.
They came for the camp TV chefs,
but I wasn't a camp TV chef
so I did nothing
They came for the Romos,
I laughed.
They came for the martial arts enthusiasts,
but I wasn't a martial arts enthusiast
so I did nothing.
They came for Eammon Holmes
and I think I'm right in saying I applauded.
They came for the Danni Behr
I said she's over there
behind the wardrobe.
Turn a Blind Eye
Sometimes it's best to turn a Blind Eye.
-- Half Man Half Biscuit

Re:good move

[raygundan]

I already said it once-- doesn't the quantity here mean anything? If he had sent a single unsolicited email, we could compare the punishment to any other single crime, and see if the sentencing made sense.

As it is, he was committing 10 million violations of this law a day for two solid weeks. If you commit that many rapes, get that many parking tickets, or kill that many people-- I guarantee the punishment will be higher than the amount of time he's doing for spam.

His punishment is on the order of 2 seconds of jail time per violation, which doesn't seem unreasonably long at all to me. He just did a lot of it.

Re:good move

[superultra]

When you murder someone, you're not interferring with business. But sending 10mil spams a day clogs up corporate IT infrastructure therefore costing money. The judicial system - all judicial systems - are based more on business cost than morality, and with good reason: morality is ambigious and dynamic, dollar values less so.

Re:good move

[terrymr]

ok, let me come to your house, stuff hundreds of flyers a day at your front door, then say it's an unconstitutional infringement on free speech if i get stopped.

We have a mail-main for that. Day after day of advertisements in my mailbox.

Then there's the advertising papers left in my driveway ... you'd that that was littering wouldn't you.

Re:good move

[fdrebin]

I think 9 years is pretty light, considering that I think the death penalty is closer to optimal for this kind of behavior.
It's seriously sociopathic behavior, you see, which puts it in the same class as murder, etc.

Re:good move

[ebyrob]

I disagree with this. WalMart is a multi-billion dollar corporation who money gives them the ability to abuse the public postal service.

Thing is, while paper spam is a minor annoyance, digital spam threatens to make email completely useless for communication. You may get 2-3 commercial mailings a day, which you can track to a given address, and "return to sender" if you so desire, but try running an on-line mailbox which receives 200+ spams a day without a (potentially false-positive) spam filter.

Basically, it's one thing if Walmart sends this stuff out unsolicited, it's quite another if they misrepresent themselves and try to "hack" the snail-mail system. (This is called fraud and mail tampering and will land you in jail quicker than you can say: "I want my lawyer!")

Sure, online the rules are a bit different (opt-in or opt-out requirements and no misrepresentation of who the sender is etc) but the benefits are different too (zero cost per message sent).

That said. I think 2 years would be plenty to send a message in this case. 9 *does* seem a bit excessive for the first offender ever convicted. (I mean, if he'd committed murder would he even get put away for 9 years? Of course, in our justice system a 9 year sentence, would probably result in more like 2 actually getting served.)

Re:good move

[Ironsides]

Uh.. Molestaion != Rape. Physically there is a difference. Psychologically there is not much. (just pointing out the difference) Personally if it was up to me, the guy would be dead. (Also why I do not like the idea of 'Parole')

Re:good move

[Duhavid]

It also depends on what you stole, for what reasons, and how you did it, and why you killed.

I.E. I am not denying that corruption may exist, but I think it more probable that the curcumstances had a lot more to do with the sentencing.

Re:good move

[Amoeba]

Lets put more NON-VIOLENT people who only commited a crime against property(If you tell me spam is a personal assault I'll come down there and smack you)

Talk about an effective way to teach people to differentiate the two...

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Punishment is one thing ...too much punishment is a waste of a human life....not to mention the cost of containing the guy for nine years. Nine years seems pretty long for a guy sending out junk mail. Honestly I think I would rather receive a lot of junk mail then send yet another series of people to our already over-crowded jails. We already lead the world in percentage of population behind bars...
I think that they only real end result of this will be a market adjustment where spam orginates beyond the grasp of Virginia law....
Maybe this belongs on the global outsourcing thread?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

It really says something about society when you can get a harsher penalty for sending spam than you could for premeditated homicide.

That is precisely as it should be. A single instance of premeditated homicide affects perhaps a few dozen people. The emotional damage and economic burden is difficult to guage because it's subjective, but there is a clear and obvious limit to it by virtue of the number of human beings affected.

A single instance of spamming affects perhaps millions of people. Again, the emotional damage and economic burden is difficult to gauge, but it is obvious that it is much, much higher by virtue of the sheer number of human beings affected.

There are few crimes where a single instance affects millions of people. One could argue that treason (punishable by death) has considerably more in common with spamming than murder does, again by virtue of the number of people harmed.

I am opposed to the death penalty for all crimes, including spamming and treason, but I believe that spamming is a much more serious crime than rape or murder.

Re:good move

[wayne]

9 years too long? i don't think so

Consider the fact that here in New Jersey, a Rapist gets out in 3 years with good behavior. (They don't even call it rape here, it's 'sexual assault')

His crime was not a violent one, he shouldn't go to jail for 9 years. He should have to pay an insane fine, and be barred from going online for 10-20 years and give him 10 years probation. If he violates any of this, throw him in jail.

Which is worse, hurting a huge number of people a little bit, or hurting a one or a few people a huge amount?

Anyone who has is on the internet has had to deal with the costs that these spammers shift onto you. It costs you in terms of your time, the cost of bandwidth, the cost of more email servers and email admins, lost email due to spam filtering, etc. There are also the people who lost money because the products they bought from the spammers either never arrived or weren't as advertised. Yeah, I've seen a lot of comments about "serves people right for buying from spammers", but blaming the victim of spammers is no different than blaming a rape victim for wearing the wrong clothes or being in the wrong part of town.

The world would be a whole heck of a lot better if billions of dollars per year didn't need to be spent on blocking spam. And no, there is no way that spammers can pay a huge fine. The amount of damage spammers cost society per dollar "earned" is far worse the amount of damage people who break car windows to get coin change do.

Re:good move

[Ironsides]

Punishment for first degree murder is 25 to life (with the option the death penalty in some states). Where are you getting less than 9 years from?

Re:good move

[Lorkki]

There is no doubt that he should be punished, but 9 years in jail for a crime that just annoyed victims is a bit much.

End-users are not the only victims here. Spam has cost much more than a mere annoyance to ISPs, organisations and jurisdictional bodies everywhere. It's a needless bandwidth hog, and spam filtering adds up to a significant black hole for resources worldwide.

It's a thing that should be taken seriously, although I agree that such a long prison sentence isn't the best way to deal with it.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

You Americans should do things the Singaporean way.. hurl the bugger into jail first, and meanwhile freeze his assets. So now you wish to appeal?

Carry on then, when you are serving your sentence!

Re:good move

[CokeBear]

True: Steal $300 from a 7-11, get 15 years. Steal millions from shareholders (enron style) get 6 months.

Re:good move

[Andy Mitchell]

I'm amazed how many people have disagreed with this posters assessment that this sentence was fair.

Lets do the calculation for how much time this spammer has wasted every day. If he sends 10 million spams per day and each spam takes 1 second of someone's time to delete then every day he wastes about 10000000/60/60/7.5/230 = 1.6 man years. Don't forget, that's 1.6 man years every day.

This is damaging the economy. Damaging the economy means less income for governments round the world, which means less money is available to pay for health care, road safety improvements, famine relief etc. He is not just wasting time he is hurting people.

Certainly many of us have spam filters, and they do help. But they are no a magic bullet, we often manually check our spam folders for false positives, still have to filter some spams manually as the filters don't catch everything and so forth.

Email used to be a fast and reliable way to contact people, now its unreliable thanks to all the spam filters we have put in to mitigate the hassle caused by assholes like this spammer.

Re:good move

[sTalking_Goat]

I agree. I hate SPAM as much as the next guy but it makes me nervous when non-violent, especially computer related crimes, start having hefty sentences. A good deal of the outcome of trial has to do with previous cases.

If a prosecutor in the future can link Joe Spammer and Tom Bittorent user somehow and Joe spammer got 9 years, what do you think Tom's chances are?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends who you stole from and who you killed

And most importantly on who you are and who you know.

Re:good move

[dgatwood]

Wal-Mart is paying the entire expense of delivering those advertisements. That is not the case for spam. ISPs and recipients end up bearing the vast majority of the burden for spam.

A better analogy would be if Wal-Mart sent hundreds of thousands of those ads out and sent them C.O.D.That would be a felonious act, as sending something C.O.D. without the permission of the recipient is considered mail fraud. This is no different except that it is being done electronically, and at a vastly larger scale than would be practical via postal mail, hence doing vastly more damage.

But the actions of spammers are worse than that. To be comparable, as people start asking the post office to refuse delivery of C.O.D. junk mail, Wal-Mart would have to start taking steps to conceal the nature of the C.O.D. mail to get it through anyway. That would make it mail fraud -and- harassment. Not to mention that it would also be mail fraud if those penis enlargement things don't really work, but that's a separate issue.

If you ask me, nine years is getting off really easy. This guy -had- to know that what he was doing was morally and ethically wrong and caused direct financial harm to hundreds of thousands of people. He did so with malice aforethought. He was barely getting by upon strict interpretation of the letter of laws whose intent was clearly to make such activity illegal. The laws changed so that the letter of the law matched the intent. He ignored them and got nailed.

I say make an example of him. Let him spend a few years behind bars thinking about what he has done, and make his release conditional upon him spending several additional years gathering evidence against other spammers to help haul them into jail as well. It's time to take back the people's internet from those who would destroy it in the name of advertising. I know that getting ad messages shoved in my face isn't the reason -I- pay an ISP for internet service, and I'd wager the same goes for everybody this guy spammed.

Re:good move

[ebyrob]

and be barred from going online for 10-20 years

This is just silly. I'd waaay rather go to jail for 2 years than not be allowed online for the next 2 decades. Sheesh, what's the next punishment going to be? You can't read or write because you committed defamation?

It's a waste of resources to lock someone like this up.

I disagree, this is exactly the kind of person that should be locked up. He's damages society and is unrepentant about it. He belongs behind bars. Of course, I also agree with ~20 years for rape and 40 years to death for murder, but the fact one part of a system is broken doesn't mean you break another in hopes of fixing it.

Re:good move

[JohnFluxx]

Wow, based on very little knowledge about the circumstances you declare you would kill the guy. People like you make me fear for tomorrow.

Re:good move

[Aeiri]

this is completely different and a bad analogy, it cost these stores money to send it out, and they don't send out in massive bulk quantities, once a week from safeway? who cares.

Ah, so if I go out and kill someone with my hands, I'm doing something wrong, but if I buy a bat to kill the person with, it's alright.

I'll keep that in mind...

Re:good move

[sakshale]

It really says something about society when you can get a harsher penalty for sending spam than you could for premeditated homicide.

I suspect that society would be better off if it used community service and financial penalties instead of jail time for nonviolent crimes. As much as I dislike SPAM and SPAMMERS, nine years in jail just doesn't feel correct to me.

Re:good move

[KarmaMB84]

I think it's highly disturbing that he's going to jail for 9 years over a 2 week old law in a state he doesn't even live in. What kind of message is this sending? States can drag outsiders into their courts because they passed a law 2 seconds ago making you a criminal?

Re:good move

[TexVex]

Talk about an effective way to teach people to differentiate the two...

I think nine years is too long; it creates a tax burden. The bastard cost all of us money by spamming, and in jail he'd continue to cost us money.

I think America should institute public flogging instead of jail time. While I for one don't give a shit if this guy rots in jail or gets off with a fine, I would definitely tune in and watch him take a lash for every million spam messages sent. That's some reality television I could go for. And I bet you he'd never forget the lesson, and anyone else thinking about committing a crime would hopefully think twice.

Forget about "cruel and unusual punishment". Punishment should be cruel, otherwise it isn't punishment. And flogging is only unusual in the context of modern times; it wasn't too long ago that gallows and whipping posts were commonplace in this country. Just beat the man senseless, bandage his wounds, and let him be on his way.

Jail is just a place for criminals to network and get educated in how to commit other crimes.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no doubt that he should be punished, but 9 years in jail for a crime that just annoyed victims is a bit much.

Just annoyed victims huh? 10,000,000 emails per day times 365 is 3,650,000,000 emails per year. That, my friend, is abuse on a massive scale. Just for kicks, here are a couple of rhetorical questions for you to ponder about:

• Who pays for the bandwidth?
  
• When added up, second by second, how much of our time do you think he wasted when he made us process all those emails?
  
• Do you really believe that violence is the only true metric for crime? How about corporate criminals that rob companies of billions of dollars per year? (and I'm not even scratching the surface on that one)

It damages our infrastructure. I could go on and on about this.. My point is, you can do a lot of damage and cause a lot of suffering without using violent force.

How can you feel bad for this guy?

Re:good move

[AviLazar]

I have to totally agree here, our countires priorities and uniformity of the laws are haphazard at best. Each state is different, sometimes the counties in the states are different. People going to jail for 9 years for spam, but can go to jail for 5 years for murder! That is a complete atrocity. Personally, an overhaul of our laws should be in order - and 9 years is way too long. Fine him a huge amount, and i mean big (take the car/house/etc) that he bought with his profits - then stick him in jail for 6 months to a year.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. They could serve the community by providing "conjugal visits" to the real prisoners. Let's face it, as spectacled, 140 pound weaklings, they would anyway. Plus if they're providing that service face-to-face, it gives them an opportunity to sell all that V14GR4 in person, rather than by violating spam laws...

Re:good move

[Eggplant62]

Okay, how about court-ordered employment for the guy. For the rest of his life, he has to work as a mail carrier on a walking route, making the lowest possible wage a mail carrier can make. He can work like that until he's delivered 140 million pieces of mail.

I think *that* would be justifiable.

Re:good move

[zymano]

And Alan Ralsky is still spamming and is the number #1 spammer according to Spamhuas. even with the stupid Verizon lawsuit.

When are the fucking ISP's going to be forced to shut these assholes down.

I forgot , they make money off them.

The Internet consortium needs to start shutting down ISP's if they don't act.

Isn't this like telephony fraud ?

Re:good move

[dahlek]

I agree, jails should be about removing someone harmful from society first and about punishment second. This man just needs to pay fines, do community service and wear an electronic lock on his ankle for a few years... If the idea is to prevent future spammers by fear - make this guy pay big-time, suck money from each of his income checks and tax returns until he dies, but jail - I don't think so...

Re:good move

[samweber]

But is it really out of line with other sentences?

After all, if a kid goes joy-riding in a car, that's grand theft, (even if the car is recovered undamaged), and that's a major jail sentence. And there was a guy sentenced to 15 years for copying three dvds from a video store. And then there are all the people doing major time for having small amounts of drugs on them, never having harmed a fly (other than themselves).

Perhaps the sexual assault sentences are the ones that are out-of-line?

Re:good move

[AviLazar]

Murder the CEO of a company, you are disrupting business. Also, last I heard the value of life, in the eyes of the law, is more valuable then money.

I think this sentence is ridiculous to say the least. Our countries priorities are ass backwards to say the least. Each state (and county) has a different ruleset, and murder can net someone two to three years in jail (sometimes less) while spamming is 9 years! Oh my that is just horid. Personally I think he should lose all the nice money he got from the spamming, including any assets he spent the money on. The money should be turned over to pay for the legal fees, the rest can be distributed to computer crimes departments so they can upgrade their equipment/training (honestly even if he had 14 million bucks in assests, giving 1 dollar per e-mail account would cost the gov't more money and is of little value to the people get the 1 dollar).

If they really want jail time, six months to one year will scare any computer geek spammer. But 9 years is ridiculous and insane.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

An Annoyance? An Annoyance?!!

This dude alone would have literally forced hundeds of companies to spend and upgrade their hardware and spend tons of man hours in fighting his spammings off their networks ...

i say give him every minute of 9 years ...

Re:good move

[Amoeba]

Forget about "cruel and unusual punishment". Punishment should be cruel, otherwise it isn't punishment. And flogging is only unusual in the context of modern times; it wasn't too long ago that gallows and whipping posts were commonplace in this country. Just beat the man senseless, bandage his wounds, and let him be on his way.

No. Punishment should be designed to instruct/teach the perpetrator or cause aversion (in perp and others from the example) to repeating the action that caused the punishment. There is no "get even" purpose in justice (idealogically at least). I'm not disagreeing that at one time flogging was (and probably still would be) an effective punishment and served as a deterrent but your statement that punishment should be "cruel" I strongly disagree with.

Re:good move

[Johnboi Waltune]

When I lived in Malaysia, I would read the English language newspaper, and I always got a chuckle out of the crime section. "So-and-so was found guilty of whatever and sentenced to 6 strokes of the rotan." The rotan is a long, flexible wooden cane that they use to whip your ass with! I believe there is a similar punishment in Singapore.

The "rotan" would be an excellent punishment for spamming.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

...from a misread Google search summary. Sorry about that.

Regardless, there are some seriously horrible things that you can do to a person (or persons) and still end up with less than 9 years in prison.

- Tony

Re:good move

[Anders Andersson]

Agreed, prohibiting people from using computers or accessing the Internet means their freedom of speech is infringed. Has anybody ever been banned from using a typewriter or a pencil for having committed a crime using either of those tools? Say, an author killing his wife by throwing his typewriter at her?

You might just as well have your mouth sewn shut for repeated cases of slander. Fitting, perhaps, but not reasonable or even legal.

Re:good move

[geniusj]

He was sentenced to more. Mr. Spammer has not served his time yet. He could only serve 1.5, who knows...

Re:good move

[AK Marc]

You could commit a murder and probably get a similar sentence, if not shorter.

One murder deprives one person of 60 years. 10,000,000 spam deprive 10,000,000 people collectively of (for argument sake) 60 years. So, why is it more acceptable to harm many people a little? Or is it that the sentence is in line with murder because the collective harm is the same?

I'm tired of the "should someone go to jail for fraud" complaints when billions were stolen from millions of people (Enron, etc.). The harm is greater when you affect more people, not less. Yes, it is morally worse to kill someone violently than inconvenience many people at once (murder is a sin, bugging someone isn't), but the harm to society is the same, so I think that the punishment should be the same.

Re:good move

[Aeiri]

Talk about an effective way to teach people to differentiate the two...

The derivative of any non variable is 0.

Re:good move

[Eggplant62]

Google on long-arm statutes. Yes, it's legal, possible, and probable that if you sit on your computer in Michigan and send spam into Virginia, you can and will be prosecuted. It worked in Verizon v Ralsky.

Re:good move

[glassgnost]

More to the point: Does Walmart print flyers that appear to originate from K-Mart -- send them by putting them in JC Penny's mailbox -- postage due -- pitching fraudulent products -- etc?..

Re:good move

[mdvolm]

Gee, why stop there, let's also make sure that he has to wear one of the ugly old vintage 1950's mail carrier uniforms and prevent him from ever washing it. And then force him to wear velcro boxer shorts so he gets chafed the whole time. Oh, and let him wear decent hiking boots but force him to always have a big rock rolling around in each one.

Or possibly probabation/community service would be more appropriate?

Re:good move

[Anders Andersson]

Mathematically speaking, spammers waste thousands of human lives every year, except that the "killing" is distributed among millions of Internet users so that nobody actually dies from pressing delete. I'd say it's in the same ballpark as 9/11 from a strictly economical point of view, though I don't have any numbers good enough for comparison. However, CNN has yet to provide live coverage of the ongoing attack. It's difficult to find a good photo angle on the Internet.

Re:good move

[TexVex]

There are two valid definitions of "cruel" here. One of them is "causing suffering; painful". The other is "finding satisfaction in the suffering of others".

I stand by my statements; punishment should be cruel both ways. Forget sanctimony as well.

Do the victims of a crime not deserve the catharsis of justice served, vengefully? People need closure for traumatic events. I'd bet good money that if an assault victim could stand there and watch his attacker be flayed open by a whip as punishment for the crime, the victim would begin to heal emotionally much faster.

When I say I'd tune in to watch people being flogged, it's only intriguing to me so long as the people being beaten actually deserve it. I'm not cruel in the sense that I want to hurt the innocent.

And if I ever lose control and take my anger out on someone else's (or public) property, or get drunk and go for a drive, or commit any other kind of offense where there is a real victim (either particular individuals or society at large), I'd stand up and take my whipping and not whine about it.

Cruelty is not the same as injustice.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

You could commit a murder and probably get a similar sentence, if not shorter.

Tell that to the people on death row. They spend an average of 11 years there. Longer than the spammer's sentence and you know he will be let out early.

Re:good move

[corpsiclex]

Uhh, but it doesn't take anything NEAR one second to delete most email spam!
I can't even remember the last time I saw spam in my inbox. I don't know the numbers, but I'd say at least divide that number in half, because it definitely doesn't take a spam filter one man-second to erase each message.
*insert counter-argument involving anti-spam companies helping the economy*

Re:good move

[BasilBrush]

No one ever gets SENTANCED to 2 to 3 years for murder. This guy has been sentanced to nine years. That doesn't mean he'll serve 9 years.

Re:good move

[BasilBrush]

Why do people keep comparing time off with good behaviour for other crimes against the full sentance for the spammer. The spammer won't serve 9 years either, with good behaviour. You are deliberately not comparing like with like, which weakens your case.

Re:good move

[EmperorKagato]

It is time. Time to stand up to our representitives and senators.

Re:good move

[DustMagnet]

Wow, based on very little knowledge about the circumstances you declare you would kill the guy. People like you make me fear for tomorrow.

We have lots of information. The guy didn't deny much of what he did. He claims he was sending millions opt-in message a day. I don't believe he really thinks all those people wanted messages. Clearly the jury felt the same way.

Still, I don't believe in killing except in true self-defense.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

9 years is reasonable.
The point of jail is to rehabilitate the person. IF I were to assault someone, 3 years would pretty much teach me a lesson and I don't think I'd do it again. But, IF I was making half a million dollars from spamming, I wouldn't mind spending 3 years in prison - that is, If I got to keep my money. 9 years, however, would make me think twice.
-vince

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless, there are some seriously horrible things that you can do to a person (or persons) and still end up with less than 9 years in prison.

Name one.

If this really is Tony, next time you are clearly wrong apologize under your real name and don't change the argument.

Re:good move

[deblau]

I've said this before. It's apples and oranges. His crime wasn't violent, but it was incredibly expensive. Don't compare spam to violent crimes like rape and murder, compare it to corporate crime. How much lost productivity did he cause by making all those millions of people go thru their email for hours and hours? And do you really think he can afford to pay that much money? That might make you feel a bit better about the jail time.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

And similarly, if spammers didn't fund ISPs and telecoms, you'd pay more for internet services.

Re:good move

[Ironsides]

Sounds like you think I am talking about the spammer. I am talking about the child molester in the parent post. If you'd've met victims of child molesters, you'd feel the same way.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Nine years IS too long for spamming, I don't care how much you do it. The punishment for involuntary man slaughter is less time than that!

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Psychologically there is not much.

You are one insensitive bastard.

Personally if it was up to me, the guy would be dead. (Also why I do not like the idea of 'Parole')

For trying to water down the crime of rape and belittle rape victims everywhere, you deserve the same.

Re:good move

[benna]

This is just absurd. You point out how broken the sentencing system is in a number of cases and then propose that the way to fix it is to up the other sentences to maintain some ratio? 15 years for copying three dvds is ridiculous whether a murderer gets 1500 or not. And don't get me started on the drug war.

Re:good move

[tankenator]

I appreciate your attempt to get karma by cracking what you think is a joke, but prison rape is no joke. Part of the reason it occurs (and rape by my definition includes coercion as well as outright physical attacks, the coercive techniques are much more devious and dangerous as they are more likely to involve eventual prostitution and less likely to incur the authorities attention) is that there are: 1. Large numbers of men in close quarters with no sexual outlet. This has obvious ramificaitons, especally when the population is young and testosterone laden. 2. Large populations of people with nothing to lose: life sentences mean there is no hope of good treatment, and if one is the top of the food chain size wise and not fearful of others in fights etc. then predatory behavior will result. 3. Lack of genuine conjugal visits. This fosters the dissolusionment of the family bond, already weakened by moving of the prisoner far from his home. If the prisoner ever has any hope of being released, this increases his likelihood of recidivism greatly. Prison is no joke, and prison rape is especally no joke. Lest you think I'm overblowing the problem, the majority of prisons in this country are "minimum" security (but due to overcrowding there are individuals incarcerated in these with life sentences) These places tend not to have the overt physical rapes, but the insidious coercive type is rampant, with the wink wink, nudge nudge of the 'corrections officers' Stop prison rape now

Re:good move

[benna]

perhaps, but even with good behavior he's still going to spend way too much time in prison. I think 1 year maximum is reasonable, and only in extreme cases. Fine him for all he's made and more but incarceration is not the proper remedy for spam.

Re:good move

[Threni]

> It really says something about society when you can get a harsher penalty for
> sending spam than you could for premeditated homicide.

It's just another demonstration of how the law is used to protect money and property, rather than the non-rich.

Re:good move

[benna]

Yes, but corprate CEOs are inherently evil. Some guy trying to make a buck (or a million), should not go to prison.

Re:good move

[ebyrob]

I agree. I hate SPAM as much as the next guy but it makes me nervous when non-violent, especially computer related crimes, start having hefty sentences. A good deal of the outcome of trial has to do with previous cases.

There's a lot of pretty nasty white-collar type computer crime you can commit that deserves a lot worse than 9 years in jail. So, the mere fact "computer crime" can get you in trouble, isn't by itself a bad thing, it just shows that computing is maturing (hopefully in good ways).

If a prosecutor in the future can link Joe Spammer and Tom Bittorent user somehow and Joe spammer got 9 years, what do you think Tom's chances are?

Well for starters this is why you should be up in arms over the fact that COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS BEING TURNED INTO A JAILABLE FELONY. Once upon a time this was a civil matter whose merit was hotly debated, and in my opinion it should remain a civil matter. spam endangers a whole communications infrastructure, copyright infringement merely lowers the value of an incentive to create.

As for Tom, her chances should be the same whether she uses a "K0M-PU-T4R" to do her infringing or not.

Re:good move

[Andy Mitchell]

I can't even remember the last time I saw spam in my inbox.

My "personal" email is first filtered through Brightmail at the ISP. About 60 emails per month make it past the first "layer" of filtering. I have no way to know how many false positives are eaten. After that Thunderbird acts as a 2nd layer moving spam to the junk folder.

My work email relies just on Thuderbird's built in "learning" spam filter. Spams get past the filter every day. It marks legit email as spam often enough that I have to check the junk folder for false positives. I can't afford to risk not replying to a customer issue or missing a genuine email about a real business proposal.

Sure there are probably better spam filtering solutions but why should we waste our valuable time to becoming spam filtering experts so we can install and configure the best solution?

Spam filtering is like taking a pain killer for the headache you are getting from a brain tumour. It might make you feel better and let you get on with your life for a while but its not dealing with the actual problem.

*insert counter-argument involving anti-spam companies helping the economy*

That's like arguing AIDS is a good thing because without it there wouldn't be a decent market for protease inhibitors and antiretroviral drugs. Or, that we shouldn't throw thieves in jail as the problem is that we have easily broken glass windows. Should we all install iron bars and polycarbonate glass?

Re:good move

[spiritraveller]

on what grounds would they win?

It may be based on jurisdictional grounds, since he is not a Virginia resident.

For a state to exercise personal jurisdiction against an out of state defendant, the constitution requires "Purposeful Availment" of that state's laws.

I don't see how he could have purposefully availed himself of Virginia law when he was sending emails to people who could be living anywhere in the world.

Re:good move

[nmb3000]

This is an interesting idea.

I bet many people here have read Starship Troopers. In it, Heinlein makes quite a point that physical punishment is used, and used effectively in the timeframe of the book (the future most likely). Several references to a public flogging pole where people could be sentenced to receive a number of lashes by the state. Then again later in the novel, for crimes committed while a member of the Federal Service one may be flogged publicly, at least public to other soldiers.

Here's an excerpt I've always liked from Starship Troopers, p.115 (© 1987 paperback). Mr. Dubois, the teacher of History and Moral Philosophy is discussing the best way to raise a puppy analogous to the problems with "juvenile delinquents" of years past (our time) with his students, one of which is the main character:

"Many. I'm raising a dachshund now -- by your methods. Let's get back to those juvenile criminals.

The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class . . . and they often started
their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often
caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their
noses rubbed in it? Rarely. News organs and officials usually kept their names secret -- in many
places the law so required for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had
never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any
punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."

(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.)

"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as
sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was
rarely invoked; it was regarded as 'cruel and unusual punishment.' " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do
not understand objections to 'cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in
purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment -- and pain is
the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning
when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected
survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological
nonsense.

"As for 'unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump
at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"

"Uh . . . probably drive him crazy!"

"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the principal of
this school last had to switch a pupil?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped -- "

"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to
deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals -- They probably were not spanked as babies; they
certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for a first offense, a warning
-- a scolding, often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with
sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and
convicted several times before he was punished -- and then it would be merely confinement, with
others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble
while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation --
'paroled' in the jargon of the times.

"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and
viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then
suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthd

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good suggestion. Perhaps you should take it and learn the law yourself. Plus a bit about the penal system.

Yes, 1st degree murder carries a longer sentence. But other forms of homicide, which killers frequently plea down to, carry very short sentences. Much of the penal system also provides early release for good behavior. My mother received 8 years (maximum sentence) for manslaughter in a case that was very likely murder. She got out after 4.

There is also the beauty of how sentences get served. I knew a man (yeah, he was a friend of mom's) who committed a double homicide. He was sentenced to two 20-year sentences, but those sentences were allowed to run concurrently. With good behavior, he was released after 10 years.

So send some spam, get 9 years. Kill a couple people, get 10. Hmmmm.

Re:good move

[BasilBrush]

Fines are not a good idea for spammers. How do you think a spammer is going to earn the money to pay a fine?

I think wasting as much of the spammers time as he has wasted the time of others is a quite reasonable punishment. And as others have estimated, that's a least 9 years, just for the 2 weeks worth of spamming in question. Never mind all the years before that that they couldn't do him for. No sympathy from me.

In reality he'll be out much earlier than 9.

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

The judicial system - all judicial systems - are based more on business cost than morality, and with good reason: morality is ambigious and dynamic, dollar values less so.

Are you trolling or being facetious? I hope facetious. If not, do you really think that money is more important than human life? If I kill a hobo on the street, I get a slap on the wrist since there was no money lost. However, if I kill a billionaire CEO, I get life since I lost a lot of money for a very rich man?

Re:good move

[maxpublic]

The harm is greater when you affect more people, not less.

Only a total asshat would equate spamming to murder. No matter how much spam this guy sends out, it will never be equivalent to ending a human life.

If you think otherwise you're in serious need of therapy.

Max

Re:good move

[NitsujTPU]

You're absolutely right.

Spam is inconvenient and annoying. It may be a crime to send it, but it isn't as serious a crime as we treat it.

The same goes for most computer related offenses though.

Re:good move

[maxpublic]

There's a reason Heinlein's work is referred to as "juvenile fiction". This is a prime example of why that's so. One has only to look at history to see that beating the living daylights out of your kids made them no less likely to go out and commit violent crimes when they got old enough to do so.

Unless, of course, you think there's some mythical golden age we should all return to, whose basis lies in corporal punishment. Go ahead, enlighten me: when was this golden age, exactly?

Max

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

No one ever gets SENTANCED to 2 to 3 years for murder.

Sure they do. Down here in Sunny Florida, I have heard of two examples. 1. A drunk driver killed an innocent driver. The drunk guy got "involuntary manslaughter". I guess getting trashed and driving is "involuntary". 2. There were these two girls (I think 18+, but still young) that shoplifted some bathing suits. They ran out to their car and the security guard tried to get them to stop. They just ran the poor guy over and killed him! At trial the "brilliant" judge ruled that the girls could not be tried for murder since the killing was not done during the act of a felony, but a misdemeanor shoplifting crime! The girls as most will be tried for "negligent homicide" or some really low crime that will probably give them both a few months in jail with probation. SICK, SICK WORLD!

Re:good move

[LuYu]

this is completely different and a bad analogy, it cost these stores money to send it out, and they don't send out in massive bulk quantities, once a week from safeway? who cares.

This sounds dangerously close to charging for the priviledge to speak. Should only the landed gentry get a seat in Congress?

you know how ridiculous you sound? spamming has NOTHING to with free speech, it's all about advertising, go read the first amendment, i'm not even american and i know enough about it.

So, how do you define free speech? Is it political speech and not commercial speech? Or is it public speech and not private speech? Or is it short speech and not long speech? The First Amendment is certainly not specific about that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

I do not see anything about advertising in there, and I am glad you are not a judge.

Free speech should not be limited to one person's conception of what should be protected. All speech should be protected. This is especially true today when attacks on "spam" or "child pornography" or "piracy(/theft)" or "hackers" are being used as springboards for the advocacy of new laws to lock down speech on the Internet. There is a massive effort underway by governments and monopolists to make the Internet look like an evil, lawless place. This way, laws like the DMCA and laws to filter and monitor speech on the Internet can be passed.

So, cleaning your inbox is a little incovenient. Big deal. It is much better than losing the Internet as we know it. Read Code and think about the fact that most of the things this book predicted in 1999 have already or are rapidly becoming true.

Re:good move

[maxpublic]

He's damages society

That's a bullshit argument. You can't "damage society", only individuals or property. 'Society' is that nebulous work of fiction people refer to when they want to justify some lame-ass opinion or action without having to explain themselves and provide some fact-based rationale for their views.

For the lefties it's "the good of society" and for the righties it's "for the children". Both are horseshit, by any reasonable measure.

Max

Re:good move

[maxpublic]

Nice argument, but the fact that you used the word "closure" means you deserve a good whipping right here and now. I'd say ten lashes would do the trick.

Max

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

Wow, no wonder you posted as a pussy AC!

You stated:

A single instance of premeditated homicide affects perhaps a few dozen people.

Then:

A single instance of spamming affects perhaps millions of people.

Then:

I am opposed to the death penalty for all crimes

Umm, so why exactly are you opposed to the death penalty? It clearly sound as if you think financial damage is "much, much higher" than the value of life. From your post is sounds as if you think that if I cause 1 Billion in damage to a corp that it would be a greater crime than if I killed just one person. You know, I keep telling my self that people like you really don't exist in the world, that most people are decent. However, reading what your wrote behind your AC shield, is making me start to doubt that most people are decent.

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

That is "first degree murder". There are plenty of ways to kill a person and not get "first degree murder". Read my post about two such cases. Heck, the easiest way is to just get drunk and get in a car and slam into some one. You will probably just get "vehicular manslaughter" or something with a much, much lower sentence.

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

How about just kill them with your car? In New York, you can get away with 0 - 16 months. Google is your friend. I just search for "average vehicular manslaughter sentence".

Here is a good bill proposed in 1999 to deal with criminals. Well maybe it is a just a little too extreme, but most of it I think is right-on-the-money. Make sure you read the whole thing, it is not that long ; )

Re:good move

[LuYu]

Basically, it's one thing if Walmart sends this stuff out unsolicited, it's quite another if they misrepresent themselves and try to "hack" the snail-mail system. (This is called fraud and mail tampering and will land you in jail quicker than you can say: "I want my lawyer!")

Excellent argument. The question that springs to mind is: Do we want to regulate the Internet the way we regulate realspace?

How important is anonymity on the Internet? Should that be protected? What if the types of spoofing that are illegalized in the spam laws are also used to guarantee anonymity for political or other important speech? Are we going to live in a world where every transaction, every web page we view, every phrase we utter, is all logged and identified and cannot be obfuscated?

Who should be punished for spam? The spammers or their customers? Are not the vendors responsible for buying this advertising? In order to buy things, people must eventually commit transactions in realspace. This may be through the postal service or from a store. This places it in the same category with the Walmart scenario.

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

Oh, and before anyone attacks me as a flamebait, I was being somewhat faceitious. That bill went a little overboard when it proposed death by hanging for someone that commits 3 misdemeanors! Three parking tickets and it is time to pull out the noose : )

Re:good move

[samweber]

Pardon me? I never proposed any way to "fix it up"! And, yes, 15 years for copying dvds IS ridiculous, which is exactly why I brought it up!

Re:good move

[BasilBrush]

So number 1 wasn't murder, and number 2 hasn't even been tried yet. So you haven't contradicted my point at all.

Re:good move

[arkhan_jg]

Depends upon the nature of his emails, I'd say.

If they're only annoying because of quantity, but otherwise legitimate services, then I'd agree that jail does seem a dangerous path to be going down. I don't subscribe to jail being a good deterrent for minor offences.

OTOH, if the mails he were sending were badly fraudulent or dangerous, i.e. dodgy mortages, fake viagra (who knows what's in it?), credit card fraud, 419 scams etc then I think jailtime is deserved.

If someone defrauds a lot of people of a lot of real money (as opposed to the theoretical loss that RIAA et al use - $15,000 a track is rediculous) then jailtime is just. The bigger the fraud, the longer the sentence should be.

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

Huh? So if I kill you with my car because I was piss drunk it is not murder? If I run you over while I am trying to get away from another crime I committed, it is not murder? Man, you have some serious issues! Killing a person against thier will for _any_ reason is MURDER!

Is there _anyone_ that you actually love in life? A wife/husband, child or family member? If so, pretend I killed them when I was driving down the road piss drunk. Would you stand up in court and fight for me so that I didn't get a big sentence because I didn't "murder" your loved one? I am glad I am not related to you. You obviously have no heart or love for life in you.

Re:good move

[planetoid]

How about letting a Great Dane hump him?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

It's silly to throw someone in jail in a country where we already have an overcrowded jail system.

No it isn't. It's just business. And a very good business it is...

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

If you see the words "high quality", all of them.

Re:good move

[superultra]

Well, neither really. It stinks, and it's not "right," but that's just the way it is right? You said it yourself; kill a poor man and you get nothing, kill a rich man - interfere with the flow of money - and you get much much more. That's how it works.

Hence this man's 9 year prison sentence. It has nothing to do with its relation to rightness as the parent poster had said it should; instead, it's about the money.

Re:good move

[SCVirus]

"10 mil emails a day. just multiply that by 2 weeks." Only emails recieved by Virginia residents would count. "ok, let me come to your house, stuff hundreds of flyers a day at your front door, then say it's an unconstitutional infringement on free speech if i get stopped." UHUH... that a bull-fucking-shit analogy, a spammer isn't going to send 100's of emails to each person. Making spam a criminal offence is just dumb, hell I support it as it helps me out, but its still FUCKIN DUMB. You wanna compare what violent crimes you can commit and get less then 9 years?

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

It has nothing to do with its relation to rightness as the parent poster had said it should; instead, it's about the money.

Well, I think it sucks, but I also think your right. It is pretty sad IMO.

Re:good move

[plague3106]

Excellent Example! I hate that damn physical spam WalMart, Safeway and Best Buy send me infinately more than I hate email spam, because it's much easier to set up a email filter.

Once those physical-mail spammers go to jail, I'll support this guy going to jail.

Although I don't like those either, I'm not getting literally hundreds of them a day either.

Restricting any sort of speach online is a really just one step in practicing for legal and technological control of the content on the internet.

Sorry, I don't count business ads as speech. I especially don't consider speech forced onto its recipients to be a right either. What about my choice to ignore your speech?

Why should users / ISPs be forced to spend money because of the actions of a spammer (who doesn't have to spend money). Again, normal spam costs the sender, not the recipients or USPS.

Re:good move

[plague3106]

Its not that he doesn't have love in his life, its that he doesn't want our legal system ruled by emotions, he wants it ruled by logic and reason and justice.

Murder is done purposefully (by definition). Manslaughter is not. Intent SHOULD be considered. The DD case is NOT voluntary, since said driver didn't INTEND to kill someone; it was an accident. Brought about by some poor judgements, but an accident none the less.

Same goes for the two girls (who are also handicapped in their decision making because of physiological issues).

So no, killing someone for any reason is not murder, as much as your logic-less mind would like it to be.

Re:good move

[benna]

Sorry, I guess I must have missed your sarcasm or something. I figured "Perhaps the sexual assault sentences are the ones that are out-of-line?" meant you thought they were too low compared to other things.

Re:good move

[AstroDrabb]

So no, killing someone for any reason is not murder, as much as your logic-less mind would like it to be.

Bzzzt, sorry champ, I have more logic than you can understand. I will try to keep this simple for you so as not to go over your head. You come to my area, I don't like you, I plan to kill you (but want to get away with it), I get drunk, I get in car, I find you, I run your over or slam into you, you die, I get slap on wrist since I did not INTEND to kill you, I get away with a _very_ small penalty for killing you, good legal system, do what one wants, no penalty, just say you didn't INTEND to do it, no problem.

Was that clear enough?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

> I suspet that society would be better off
> if it used community service and financial
> penalties instead of jail time for nonviolent
> crimes.

No, "community service" reminds me very
much of the Soviet approach to punishment.
Many times community service punishments
are political and socially motivated. It's
forces people to violate their concious. In
America imprisonment was meant to serve to
purposes. 1) Separate dangerous people from
society, 2) Put people in place that would give
them time to contemplate the wrongness of their
actions and to hopefully make them understand
that they can't do it anymore. But one thing
prison was not meant to do was to force anyone
to be debased by serving someone else's cause
or organization. Of course prisons in America
are currently in a crisis and are total horse-
shit insitutions. No wonder guys who go in for
minor crimes come out worse than when the went
in but that's a differnt story.

> As much as I dislike SPAM and SPAMMERS, nine
> years in jail just doesn't feel correct to me.

Ya think!

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

An individual correctly charged incidental manslaughter is not likely to represent a significant threat to society.

Such an individual cannot produce tax money while in prison. Actually, s/he ends up spending a good deal of it.

Cases such as the one you have provided are rare.

Thus, it is inefficient, expensive, and illogical to implement a system where manslaughter is considered equal to first degree murder.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

You're saying a man DESERVES TO DIE, because he said that there is not much difference psychologically between being molested and being raped?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

The hobo is worthless, his death inconsequential.

However, logically it is still not black and white. An individual who is willing to commit murder represents a threat to society, and may eventually kill an individual of worth.

The potential harm the individual may cause if left free must be compared to the potential benefits they may bring to society. For the average taxpayer, imprisonment is most logical.

As far as money goes, most humans - including myself - will likely produce nothing of worth save tax money and tax payers for society. In this manner our monetary as individuals can be measured.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

s/monetary/monetary value/

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

> Wal-Mart is paying the entire expense of
> delivering those advertisements. That is not
> the case for spam. ISPs and recipients end up
> bearing the vast majority of the burden for
> spam.

Wrong! The spammer isn't being prosecuted because
he used to much bandwidth on the Internet. He's
being prosecuted because he violated a law or
court order which said he wasn't supposed to
send unsolicited emails. And please explain
why it's okay for Slashdotter's to use untold
amounts of Interet bandwidth squaking about this
or that "crisis" but its not okay for others to
use the same amount of bandwidth for whatever
purpose they feel like including "spamming".
No, the OP is correct. This is just another
glaring example of American injustice and
hypocrisy. If it's not okay for a spammer to
send me an unsolicited email then it shouldn't
be okay for Wal-Mart to send me an unsolicited
advertisement to my U.S. mailbox (paid for or
otherwise).

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, spare us the emotional drivel.

He was being logical, and should be modded up for it.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

> One has only to look at history to see that beating the living daylights out of your kids made them no less likely to go out and commit violent crimes when they got old enough to do so.

If you beat them hard enough, I guarantee you they won't be committing any violent crimes. Seriously though, would you leave your brats unpunished when they fucked up? I'm not talking about the extreme "beating the livind daylights out of" punishment you gave.

Re:good move

[mOdQuArK!]

Murder the CEO of a company, you are disrupting business.

Actually, if it weren't for all the publicity that would occur, I suspect that most well-organized businesses would recover from a CEO's murder with little or no difficulty. All of the day-to-day work is taken care of by the real workers, and the executives only real job is to figure out where the company is supposed to waste its money.

Re:good move

[mOdQuArK!]

Killing a person against thier will for _any_ reason is MURDER!

No, murder implies that the killing was done on purpose. Most people would differentiate between an act like that, and killing somebody by accident.

That being said, I find it hard to believe that those two girls killed that security guard by accident...

Re:good move

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

So, how do you define free speech? Is it political speech and not commercial speech? Or is it public speech and not private speech? Or is it short speech and not long speech?

Nothing against free speech in any form, for as long as:
1. it is not forced upon me (i.e. I have the freedom to choose not to listen)
2. it does not force financial costs on me even if I don't want to listen to it

(those two points as far as spamming goes; in general, there would have to be a few points more).

The first amendment guarantees you the right to voice your opinion, NOT the right to force everybody and their dogs to pay for that privilege of yours, or even to listen to you.

Re:good move

[mOdQuArK!]

Puppies aren't expected to use logic to reason why they should adjust their own behavior.

(That being said, I highly suspect quite a few human beings of being immune to logic with regards to their behavior patterns...)

Re:good move

[mOdQuArK!]

You can't "damage society", only individuals or property.

If you cause a little bit of damage to a large enough number of members of society, then there's probably a reasonable argument that you have "damaged society" (at least it would make commom sense to most people). How MUCH damage is a whole other issue.

Re:good move

[ThresholdRPG]

Huh? So if I kill you with my car because I was piss drunk it is not murder? If I run you over while I am trying to get away from another crime I committed, it is not murder? Man, you have some serious issues! Killing a person against thier will for _any_ reason is MURDER!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Murder is a legal term. Please go research it.

Everything you listed is a KILLING, but it is not murder.

Please educate yourself.

Re:good move

[degotas]

And here in Texas they like to talk about the death penalty, but just as disgusting is the fact that you can get parole for murder. It is usually reserved for cops and the rich.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Naa, with the way technology is headed it will get more and more critical in everyday life. Even creating life or death situations with intenet criminals. Cyber threats need to be dealt with now to help ensure the safety of future technologies and how it affects people.

Re:good move

[LinuxLuver]

"States can drag outsiders into their courts because they passed a law 2 seconds ago making you a criminal?" ....and the "crime" was non-violent, no one was threatened or abused, the means to commit the crime (net connections and servers) all legal and paid for...and no property was stolen or damaged. I don't like spam, either......but I dislike stupid law even more.

Re:good move

[hairyfeet]

the problem i have with that is bandwidth isn't an unlimited resource.When you have these scumbums sending who knows how many billions of emails that slows us all down.Picture someone in a van going thirty in the fast lane making sure no one can pass until he plasters them with flyers.It is a drag on everything.I'm all for your free speech up until the point that it starts costing me.If they are just trying to hand out flyers on a corner,No prob,I can avoid.But these guys are dragging down our highways and they are OUR highways,Not theirs.They take without giving anything but grief.If they add enough to the infrastructure out of their profits so it doesn't slow us down,Then i'll just filter.Until then,Bust their @ss!

Re:good move

[BasilBrush]

I haven't got a problem. You have a problem. Your problem is not understanding the law. Your problem is reacting emotionally instead of rationally. If a person has a car crash and someone is non-deliberately killed during that accident, then no that is not murder. That is an accident. If the chances of having an accident are greatly increased through drink or drugs, then that is negligent. It is manslaughter. But it is not murder. You are missing the important element of the crime of murder - the intent do do harm.

Your intention to bring our nearest and dearest into a hypothetical is just a symptom of you acting emotionally rather than rationally. That's no way to discuss legal issues.

Re:good move

[hairyfeet]

The problem is this-It doesn't really matter what you say or think anymore if you don't have about 1.6 million or so to stuff in the right pockets.Give the pres and congress a few more years and corporate rights will be the only rights.The only choice you'll be given is vote for rich,spoiled coporate @ss kisser a or rich,spoiled corporate @ss kisser b.IMO i think we are looking at what the roman empire would have looked like right before the fall if they'd have had tech.The greed is unsustainable.The rich love the power too much to do anything but take more.The poor starving masses outnumber the rich by incredible numbers.All it's going to take is a man with true charisma to light the powderkeg.The only question mark is will the man be ganhdi or hitler in style?Sad to say my money is on hitler style as it's easy to build up the poor's hatred for the "old money spoiled insiders"that control a lot of the wealth and power.

Re:good move

[tdemark]

Name one.

Fine:

Aggravated rape of an 11 year old could net you 5 years in CT. If the victim were 6, the minimum is only 10 years, which is damn close enough to 9 years for comparison.

If this really is Tony, next time you are clearly wrong apologize under your real name and don't change the argument.

Just for you: Apology withdrawn.

- Tony

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Good example - You do realize, that physical violence is just as bad a way of raising a dog as it is a kid. here is a good book on the subject.

Yeah, by hitting dogs and kids you can make them fear you; but is that really the lesson you're trying to convey? If so, why?

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

He got a long sentence because spamming costs large Corporations money, one of the worst crimes you can commit in this day and age. Money, not common sense, runs the world unfortunately.

Re:good move

[AK Marc]

Only a total asshat would equate spamming to murder.

Because you say so. Can you explain why taking 1 year from 60 people is OK, but 60 years (and thus their life) is not OK?

Re:good move

[Jozer99]

Most premeditated homicides I have heard of get 25 to life. The only homicides I have heard of to get less than 9 years are the ones resulting from accidents involving drunken teenagers.

Re:good move

[JerkBoB]

These places tend not to have the overt physical rapes, but the insidious coercive type is rampant, with the wink wink, nudge nudge of the 'corrections officers' Stop prison rape now

Frankly, I don't have much sympathy for people in prison. It's supposed to be an unpleasant place to be. I don't think that officially-sanctioned rape (e.g. rumors of South American rape dogs) is right, but prison is full of sociopaths. If you don't want to be raped, or beaten, or humiliated, or subjected to whatever else happens to those who are less able to defend themselves from predators, DON'T DO THE CRIME!

As I see it, the only way to eradicate sociopathic behavior in prisons is to either spend a lot of money that no one wants to spend or do things that would probably be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" (e.g. full chemical restraint for all prisoners).

I go back and forth on my feelings about the state of the US justice/penal system. One on hand, I think it needs a complete overhaul, and on the other hand, I think that the larger problem is that society is failing large segments of the population. So many young minority males end up in prisons because they don't have anything better to do, and because they don't have a social structure that reinforces non-sociopathic behavior.

Bah. I think overall if I were going to spend any money, it would be on trying to improve the lot of people BEFORE they get themselves into prison. No one wants to talk about it or do anything, though. Humans being humans, no one trusts those who say that they'll take those increased tax dollars and really improve the lives of those who are in need of help. I certainly don't. So I grow more cynical every year, and focus on improving the lives of those I love and care about. Everyone else can screw themselves. Isn't that the American Way (tm)?

Re:good move

[plague3106]

If your logic was so iron clad you'd realize that 1) this is a highly unlikely scenario and 2) you'd have to be drunk enough to not be able to reliably control the car, and thus would have trouble hitting your intended target and 3) you stated that you did in fact intend to kill me.

Anyone that attempts your little scenario is likely highly unstable to begin with, and proving so should be trivial.

So, given this post, and the one to which I replied, I stand by my assertation that you are without logic and reason.

I'd like to add another log to that fire; if in fact you were as logical as you claim, you'd also understand that no legal system can even be perfect, because we as humans are not perfect beings. You'd also understand that our system is setup on the premise that its better to let a guilty person go free than for an innocent man to be punished.

The number of laws was supposed to be minimal, so that the government can't just throw people in jail on a whim, which is the current state of affairs now (unfortunatly).

Re:good move

[BasilBrush]

For someone who describes himself as a "Senior Programmer" you're a bit of an idiot.

Re:good move

[Anonymous Coward]

no

No "making examples".

That's a horrible idea.

The example it shows is that the judicial system is capricious.

--somebody who has been made an example of.

Re:good move

[rishistar]

Well in Florida it appears that you will soon be able to 'defend yourself' against someone who 'you feel threatened by' . So as long as you are the 'right kind of person' you will soon be able to get away with murder.

Just waiting for the tragedies to occur when Jeb signs this one off.

Re:good move

[NitsujTPU]

You're partly right, but then completely wrong.

You should deal with computer threats.

For instance, if someone uses a computer to kill someone, that's murder.

If someone uses a computer to rob a bank, that's robbery.

If someone uses a computer to spam, that's about equivalent to what publisher's clearinghouse does... but they're not sitting in jail.

Re:good move

[JohnFluxx]

I was talking about the child molester as well.

Re:good move

[AviLazar]

Doesn't killing someone in the process of a crime get considered murder? Those girls, while trying to escape from comitting a crime (so they were still involved with the crime...the get-away part) killed a person by running him over. First off, they did they even try and dodge him? But not including that - they were in the process of their crime.

Involuntary manslaughter due to drinking and driving is a lame sentence. No the driver may not have intended to kill anyone - but most adults have heard that drinking and driving is not a good idea. I am sure most 16 year olds (some states allow drivers at the age of 16) hear of it. If you haven't heard of it on tv, newspapers, magazines - you could NOT have missed all the DD posters at your local DMV.

Did you know, if you know you have HIV/AIDs and you give it to someone (without letting them know AHEAD of time that you have HIV/AIDs) you only get involuntary manslaughter. HIV/AIDs is a practical death sentence, a person gives it to someone and gets off with a minor involantary manslaughter.

Our court systems blow - there is very little consistancy.

Re:good move

[Ayaress]

How many of those WalMart flyers advertise fraudulent products?

Never shopped at WalMart, eh?

Re:good move

[Deven]

For anti-spam laws to have any teeth, jail time is necessary. Perhaps not 9 years, but at least a year or three. Monetary penalties are meaningless -- this guy was grossing $750,000 per month. He can probably afford to pay a million-dollar fine and continue his business. Banning Internet access is pretty hard to enforce, and spammers are already in the business of cloaking their activities. Jail time is the only deterrent that will actually cause a spammer to think twice about what he's doing.

And they may be making an example out of this guy (what do you expect for the first conviction?), but it's a stretch to call him a "victim" -- the true victims were the people receiving his 10 million spam messages every day. Even if it only takes you 1/2 a second to delete each message, that's over 1,388 hours per day of time his spam cost other people. This spammer is hardly an innocent victim.

Also, he forged return addresses to hide his identity, because he knew what he was doing was wrong. That is not innocent behavior, and it's the reason he received this sentence -- the Virginia law he was convicted under does not criminalize mass email unless you mask your identity as well. If he used a valid return address (which could be easily filtered), he would have been immune to this law. RTFA.

Re:good move

[tankenator]

Fitting nickname......... All joking aside, there is much that can be done to prevent prison in the first place. Treatment facilities for one. Another is apropriate sentencing. I am aware of at least one person, involved in a scheme to blackmail a catholic priest on the issue that said priest molested his girlfriend, that got 6 years. There was no threat of violence. Yet another man convicted of rape recieved only three years. Both are housed at the same facility. Yet society still feels that "a felony is a felony" I agree that much needs to be done before people go to prison, but it isnt only minority groups that need this. Those after prison, many disadvantaged by lack of sufficient education, and subtle racism (if of a minority group), are further eliminated from most employment, and so are forced by the situation to fall back into the easiest way to survive--crime, whether it is theft or robbery or fraud or drug dealing. Is this what society wants???? Yet prosecutors constantly tout their conviction rates--how about recidivism rates? It is said that 10% of the american population has a history of felony conviction. I would be willing to wager that a disproportonate number of them are in the lower income bracket. Many are very motivated and intelligent, yet now have the additional stigma of the felony rap..........and no way of 'expunging' the conviction. 100 years ago there was a method of escape. This is no longer available. To the detriment of society at large Improving society at large doesnt take serious tax dollars or otherwise spending what limited resources we have, it would behoove us to observe how the unions of prison guards (oh wait theyre 'corrections officers') push for ever more prisons, and lend 'support' to prosecution candidates which are viewed as 'lock em up' types (thereby ensuring their jobs). When america (excuse me, the us) awakes, we will likely all be either locked up, or 'corrections officers' And that, I'm afraid, is the american way.

Re:good move

[ebyrob]

Well... I suppose I could have said "He harmed a whole lot of individuals in a small way, which collectively added up to quite a bit of harm." It just seamed easier to say "He's damages society" (Boy I need a spell-checker).

In any case, I don't think I was using "society" in your "bullshit manner" in this case. If you can show where I'm wrong here I'm all ears. I really don't see how spamming is any different than releasing a virus on the internet. Writing a virus is not harming any individual but many members of a community or "society". If your argument holds in one case (spamming) but not the other (virus proliferation) please explain.

Sounds good!

[ylikone]

Please, lets just go around and gather all these spammers up and put them in prison so I can read my email again without parsing out the 90% spam.

Re:Sounds good!

[Uptown Joe]

We use Erado (www.erado.com) for spam filtering (and content/ virus filtering) We are up to 97% of the messages being blocked. 87% of those messages are to non-existant users (wrongname@domain.com). It's good to see that they are starting to stop these guys, but I'll bet it will only get worse.

- Joe

Heh heh...

[FlyByPC]

Spam in the can, anyone?

Re:Heh heh...

[Rude Turnip]

If by that you mean "bad meat" in the can, here's to wishing!

Re:Heh heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it looks like his next "position" will be the receiving end of doggy-style in the showers .....

A better punishment

[Jason_D_Berg]

I think it's time for a good ol' fashioned tar and feathering...Now where'd I put those chickens?

Re:A better punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. I think it would be best if all the spammers would just ask forgiveness from all the people they spammed. Simple email would do.

Re:A better punishment

[DaHat]

Bah, tar and feathering is good if you want to shame someone... I think stoning and crucifixion needs to come back as possible sentences for some crimes.

Re:A better punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone see the tar & feathering on Carnivale? Of course it's just a TV show, but they portrayed it with some realism. It's almost like pouring napalm on someone. Sorry to take the fun out of your comment :(

BTW, Carnivale is the best show on TV.

Re:A better punishment

[spun]

I saw that. My wife couldn't watch that part, she had to leave the room and have me tell her when it was over. Tarring and feathering is a horrible way of torturing someone to death, not just an embarassment.

Re:A better punishment

[Moonlapse]

...typed out to everyone by hand.

Re:A better punishment

[Fizzog]

"I think stoning and crucifixion needs to come back as possible sentences for some crimes"

I volunteer to get stoned.

Any takers for crucifixion?

Re:A better punishment

[sharkey]

Now where'd I put those chickens?

Where'd you locate your most complex SCSI-based setup? THAT'S where you'll find your chickens... the carcasses, anyway.

Re:A better punishment

[quarmar]

Call HBO!

Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Restricting any sort of speach online is a really just one step in practicing for legal and technological control of the content on the internet.

First they came for the spammers, but I wasn't a spammer, so I did nothing
Then they came for the copyrighted music theives, but commercial music sucks, so I didn't care
Then they came for the pornographers, but my tastes are mainstream, so I still didn't care.
Then they came for F/OSS, but windows was a kinda adequate replacement so I did little
Finally, they went after political blogs; but by then it was too late.

Personally, I'd prefer if software vendors simply provided anti-spam filters (perhaps captcha based) and bundled them in a way that people could understand and use.

There are easy technical solutions. Personally, I simply bounce all HTML email to the sender and ask them to re-send as text, and my account that used to have hundreds of spams a day is now quite plesant to read - maybe one text spam gets through every few days.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Psyborgue]

I can see your point to a certain extent and this law will have to be watched carefully to make sure there are no abuses. I think, for the time being, spam is pretty clear cut.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[winkydink]

Personally, I'd prefer if software vendors simply provided anti-spam filters (perhaps captcha based) and bundled them in a way that people could understand and use.

And what, the software vendors have been holding it back much the way conspiracy theorists like to say oil companies do with the formula that converts water to gasoline?

There are easy technical solutions. Personally, I simply bounce all HTML email to the sender and ask them to re-send as text, and my account that used to have hundreds of spams a day is now quite plesant to read - maybe one text spam gets through every few days.

I'm sorry, but your analysis grossly oversimplifies the issue. I'll let others pick it aprat in detail.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[stubear]

Spam is often commercial speech and commercial speech is not fully protected by the First Amendment.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Restricting any sort of speach online is a really just one step...

If it wasn't for your creative spelling I would have probably called you a spam apologist (or even a spammer) after reading your first line.

There are easy technical solutions.

Either you're ignorant or you really ARE a spam apologist. Do you really think internet bandwidth is free? Who do you think pays for it? A number of years back I recall a statement from AOL that indicated something like 25% of the cost of their subscriptions was solely due to the cost of managing the spam that their systems get flooded with. I don't know about you, but I think a LOT of internet users would love to get 25% discounts on their monthly bills. And just how well do you think your filters will work when most mail servers are so clogged with spam that they can't even deliver the 0.00001% of e-mail that's legitimit?

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=145482&cid =12179871

Re:Does more harm than good.

[realmolo]

There AREN'T "easy" techical solutions.

The only real solution is to creat some kind of centralized registry for mailservers. To run a mailserver, you'd have to prove you weren't a spammer, prove your server is configured correctly, etc.

Then, every mail could be checked against the "registry". Basically, a universal "whitelist" system. Obviously, you'd have to have some kind of key-based encryption scheme in there to verify which servers are actually whitelisted.

Of course, doing this would require worldwide cooperation, and most places that run mailservers would have to update/fix their stuff. So it'll never happen.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

yhbt, yhl, HAND!

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam is often commercial speech and commercial speech is not fully protected by the First Amendment.

you oversimplify.

NO speach is
"fully" protected under the first ammendment. The first ammendment does protect different types of speach (including commercial speach) to different degrees.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

There AREN'T "easy" techical solutions.

Uh, there are. I even described the one I used - bounce HTML emails. Captcha's are even better.

The few known techniques to get around a captcha do not scale; so if popular ISPs started using them, they would be the end of spam.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not THAT kind of solution.

Give tokens to people you know so they can e-mail you. Replace any mailto: version of your address to a http: address where people have to go through hoops to get a valid token to mail you. Block any token that is being used to spam you, automatically redirecting the sender to the webpage with the hoops to get a fresh token.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think internet bandwidth is free?

It could be if we let spammers subsidize it.

Who do you think pays for it?

Well, in the case of the postal service, the spammers (bulk mail outfits, walmart, etc) subsidize the service for the rest of us. Based on that, I'd say the spammers pay much of the internet costs, making it affordable for all the AOL users.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[geminidomino]

Personally, I simply bounce all HTML email to the sender and ask them to re-send as text, and my account that used to have hundreds of spams a day is now quite plesant to read - maybe one text spam gets through every few days.

You may well be blocked from my mailserver then, since you are either to stupid to realize that 99% of spam FORGES THE SENDER ADDRESS or you are just to incompetent to care that you've probably been bombarding innocent 3rd parties with your idiotic setup.

Re:Does more harm than good.

[NitsujTPU]

That is inaccurate. By using PKI, you could whitelist only those users with authorized signatures. This would require no modifications to existing infrastructure, people would just have to do it.

What makes this guy different?

[Just Some Guy]

I didn't RTFA. For the benefit of cretins like me, would someone explain what was special about his case that warranted that sentence? Why is he headed to prison when so many other spammers aren't?

Unfortunately the sentence has been postponed while the case is being appealed.

Um, I know we hate spammers, but isn't that how the system is supposed to work so that people have every chance possible to prove their innocence?

Still, the temptation to make a ironic Viagra spam joke here is pretty strong.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit 9 years is a LONG time, but he KNEW what he was doing was very, very wrong.

pumping out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need

...

Prosecutors say he grossed up to $750,000 per month.

This guy is a hard up criminal, and now he going to do time like one.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not exactly how the system works. Now that he's been convicted, he is, in a legal sense, guilty. Not innocent. The question for the appeals court is not innocence or guilt (that's already settled), it's whether it was good or bad law/law enforcement.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[mooingyak]

From what I understand he's the first to be prosecuted under a new law. It's not that they don't want to go after anyone else, it's just that they haven't yet.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[Fussen]

Yeah, if this guy goes to jail, it's all over nothing after that.

The US locks down a little bit more.
The grip gets tighter.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[cyberformer]

He's not denying the crime, just challenging the law against it isn't fair. (It's the spammers' familiar argument that the First Ammendment gives them the right to DoS your Internet connection.) So

The main aggravating factor seems to be that he wasn't just sending out ads: He was actually defrauding people who replied, to the tune of $millions. This suggests that some charges might stick even if the Supreme Court does find that spam is a constitutional right.

I wonder is he considering skipping bail.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[nycbicyclist]

The reason he's headed to prison when so many other spammers aren't is that he was stupid enough to be caught and convicted. Most crimes of all types go unprosecuted. If we waited until we caught all the rapists and murderers before punishing any one of them, then we wouldn't be punishing any. The people who are crying "He's being made an example of" have it exactly right -- that's the way the system works and it's doubtful we could implement a better system. The idea is to catch the criminals we can, impose a sentence with some sting, and let that act as a deterrent to those who might be contemplating something similar.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[mr.newt]

Will somenoe please explain to me why, exactly, spamming is wrong? Coherent, rational explanations only please, i.e. no appeals to emotion.

Re:What makes this guy different?

[mr.newt]

To clarify, I don't mean "why don't we want spam in our inboxes," or "why is spam annoying," I mean "why should spamming be illegal?"

Re:What makes this guy different?

[HardJeans]

It should be illegal because it doesn't just annoy consumers...It annoys corporations.

From This link:
In 2003, spam cost U.S. businesses more than $10 billion in productivity loss, according to some studies. Other research shows that U.S. enterprises spend an average of $49 per e-mail user per year to handle the extra load imposed by spam.

Though a biased source, I'm sure it has some legitimacy. And if you fuck with the U.S. economy(in a bad way), you should pay.

what do you call this sentence?

[winkydink]

I call it a good start. I'd maybe add some language keeping him away from anyhting to do with networked computers for a while as well. 100 or so years should be enough for him to learn his lesson.

good start

[unk1911]

hope this will set a good presedent in the courts so we could get more spammers put away

--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com

Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[chrisnewbie]

Damn that's long He should have killed someone or rob a bank, they would have sentenced him for less

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[Ubergrendle]

I hate spammers, I truly do. But for a crime in which a) nothing was physically damaged or destroyed, and b) no people or animals were harmed, I think this is appalling. Ruin him financially for his criminal commercial activity, but 9 years of hard time should be reserved for capital crimes in my mind. Physically removing him from society and suspending all of his personal rights for a good 10-20% of his lifespan (maybe more) is harsh.

I'm sure manslaughter convictions have been much, much, less severe on average.

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, it's not jail, it's prison. A person can only be put in jail for up to one year. If the sentence is any longer than that, you're going to prison.

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[Anonymous Coward]

capital crimes are by defintion, deathable. So 9 years for a capital crime seems pretty lenient.

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[McD!ck]

I did a piece a while back on average sentences. The statistics are mind-blowing.

# Rape (all types) (116 Days Average sentence)

# Nonnegligent Manslaughter (2.7 Years average sentence)

# Robbery (PHYSICALLY robbing a "brick and mortar" place) (46 days average sentence)

# Aggravated Assault (11 days average sentence)

# Larceny/Theft and Motor Vehicle Theft (2 days average)

That should kind of put this in perspective for you. NOTE this is time they served in prison. Data comes from 1995 if that helps any.

McD

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[Fussen]

Who didn't know that the brand Spam would send a man to jail for 9 years.

Come on. It's Spam with Spam on the side AND a glass of Spam for free!

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[Software]

Bank robbery would have been a poor choice of substitute crimes. First, it's a federal crime, so you're going to federal PIMTA prison, not state. Second, it's very unlikely that robbing banks would have grossed $750,000 a month, as stated in the article. Third, since bank robberies result in arrest 57.7% of the time (in 2001), it's unlikely he would've gotten away with it.

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[BasilBrush]

To get those figures, you are averaging a lot of people at zero because they didn't go to prison, presumably. Otherwise you screwed the maths up.

Note that 9 years ISN'T the average time a spammer spends in jail.

Re:Spammer Sentenced to 9 Years in Jail

[McD!ck]

I am not sure how the numbers were calculated as it has been a LONG time since I worked on this. I know that these were all convicted (as in guilty). The rest I don't remember. Sorry. . .I could try and find out again if you are interested.

McD

sentence recommendation

[lambent]

I recommend that he receives a 1 second sentence for each spam that he sent.

I think everyone can agree that's fair.

Re:sentence recommendation

[Anonymous Coward]

4.4 years? That's still a bit severe.

Re:sentence recommendation

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing the math, if he sent 10 million spams a day, each day of his spamer's life costs him 115 days of jail.

How many days did he sent spam for ? That could cost him more than 9 years...

Re:sentence recommendation

[Anonymous Coward]

At 10 million e-mails per day over the 14 days that the law was in effect, one second per e-mail would work out to be a 4.44 year sentence. So it looks like he's getting 2 seconds per e-mail.

Put that way, it doesn't sound all that unreasonable. (Although I still think I'd prefer they gave him a hefty fine, maybe a cent per e-mail).

Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Illissius]

...but 9 years in jail is just a little bit extreme, don't you think? A big fine would be more appropriate, imho.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree 9 years is too much for sending spam, but if this teaches the lesson for other spammers then it was a good thing.

Don't get me wrong, I hope spammers die a slow death, but 9 years? Will I get 2 years for sending too much love letters to an unknown person?

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[zappepcs]

Yeah, I agree, 9 years is a long time... lets tell everyone his name, leave him wandering around in the public view so that everyone that gets angry with email can look him up and give him a drive-by thank you.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[YrWrstNtmr]

A big fine? So if you're a 'successful' spammer, you get off with merely a slightly lighter bank account?

Not.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Grrr]

Since there's no way to tabulate all of the resources and staff time (worldwide) his efforts consumed, and no way to distribute a collected fine... yeah, I think theft on this scale calls for a hefty sentence. It's a shame such sentences aren't more common.

<grrr>

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Timesprout]

9 years is fucking ridiculous, and why only for spammers. What about all that unrequested direct marketing I have received over the years, why not jail a few CEO's and marketing people for that? And TV advertisers, how dare they intrude in my living room every day. Jail a few of them as well, and dont get me started on billboard advertisers, how dare they interfere with my line of sight, they should be beaten and then jailed.. and then beaten again.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

My solution:

The big fine is 95% of the money you made spamming. Now go and get a honest job. By the way, YOU ARE LEGALLY FORBIDDEN FROM USING ANY SPAM BLOCKERS FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS.

(The punishment should always fit the crime)

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Skraut]

Ah, but by spamming the way he did he broke the law. There is no law against advertising on the Television, Billboards etc.

Heck there is no law AGAINST sending unsolicited email, but sending without following the regulations is against the law.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[SwissCheese]

Did your tv turn itself on and tune itself to the advertising channel?

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[ChuckSchwab]

I must hastily say, there is quite a difference between TV advertising/billboards and spam. Firstly, the existence of television programming is dependent upon the advertisement, whilst email is not dependent upon spam. Secondly, people watch TV, accepting that there will be advertisements, whilst they in no similar way accept spam as a cost of using email. Thirdly, TV advertisments are invited by the content providers, whilst email providers certainly do not invite spam.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I don't agree. Spam is theft, pure and simple. It also can, and does, cause significant damage to ISP's, corporations, etc. As an admin who has been on the receiving end of huge floods of spam I know what a nightmare it can be. It can cause long mail outages, which can have a detrimental effect on a companies operations. It can saturate network links, which can result in higher costs for the users of that link. I haven't heard of any recent cases but there are companies that have been forced out of business because of the actions of spammers. (the whole flowers.com incident comes to mind)

In other words, the theft and damage caused by spammers can be huge. It may be spread out in tiny pieces over the accounts & servers of millions of individuals and companies, but it adds up to a huge amount.

If somebody stole $10,000,000 by hacking into a single bank should they be sent to jail any more or less than somebody who steals $1.00 from 10,000,000 unwitting internet users? What about the second, third, or 500th spammer? At what point will it take you to decide you don't want to keep paying $1.00 to each spammer that comes along?

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Styros]

If all you do is impose a big fine, he can just declare bankruptcy, and you won't collect a thing. So, the end result is no jail time AND doesn't pay a penny. How is that a punishment?

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

9 years and a felony conviction is absolutely, positively, without a doubt, faaaaaaaaaaar too severe for what this guy did. Have a heart people.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Marthisdil]

too bad your opinion means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Personally, I hope he exhausts all his appeals, gets fined a ton of money AND put in jail. Fuck all the spammers.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[ChaosCube]

I agree with your sentiment, but how much of a fine would be a sufficient deterrent since it is claimed that he grosses $750k/day?

I think that 9 years in prison is a bit excessive, since he did not actually steal anything, mame anybody, or kill anyboy, as far as I know (DRTFA). Sure, he broke the law, but 9 years!? I think someone is trying to make an example out of him. If that's true, then it's shameful.

As an analogy, look at the sentencing disparaties between someone convicted of murder or voluntary manslaughter and those who were convicted traffiking cocaine, X, or LSD. Yeah, I do believe that "drug dealers" are imprisoned longer. I don't like spam at all, but was 9 years worth of harm really done? What about telemarketers? Sure there's a No-Call list, but why aren't they in jail? Sure, they couldn't possibly match 10 million emails per day, but they have the skill to call you exactly when you don't want to be called (eating, fornicating, whatever). Those are just my thoughts on the subject, feel free to flame away.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[nightsweat]

If he serves three, forfeits the proceeds from his activities and is banned from using a networked computer for three additional years, I'll be happy.

Nine years is too much but a fine would be a joke and would not prevent him from spamming again.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Guppy06]

Is it worse to steal $10,000 from 1 person than it is $1 from 10,000 people?

Simply because it's been spread out among a lot of people doesn't mean that this guy wasn't using his time and computer to defraud people and hijack their computer resources for his own illicit gain; we're talking about everything from quackery to black-hat cracking. If this was all focused on a single individual, we'd all be talking about how light a sentence that 9 years would be. I don't think we should let up because the victims were numerous and the individual harm is less noticible.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[FidelCatsro]

Main problem with a big fine is that chances are he will pay the fine with the money he makes with spam. either that or file for bankruptcy /fake own death.
9 years Prison for this is OTT when you consider the punishment for most other crimes ...however if i had ever heard of a great crime that deserves some community service then this is it.
Chances are these people are not dangerous (prison) , certifiable(mental health institution)or poor(fines ..((fun)).They are perfect for having their funds frozen and being sent into community service for a few years.
Ofcourse , i can not really think of a better punishment and perhaps im just a bit soft however all i want is spam stoped and i think having the funds and assets from the crime frozen and a few years service is enough to deter anyone(and i mean all the funds from the spam)

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Kwil]

It should be at least 100%. You shouldn't be allowed to profit from a crime no matter how small the profit is.

Banned from internet access is of course a given.

In addition, I don't think a few hundred hours of community service would be necessarily a bad thing either. He's wasted society's time and money, now society gets to get it back.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[lightspawn]

...but 9 years in jail is just a little bit extreme, don't you think? A big fine would be more appropriate, imho.

Even if he had sent only 10 million emails overall, not per day, that's still less than five minutes per offense.

How about a fine of $1 per offense? Do you think that's too harsh?

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison time is necessary. Fines will not achieve much against spammers. The spammer will move his spamming revenue to a safe haven, and then declare bancrupty to avoid having to pay the fine.

Thus much said, 9 years look harsh. Is there a "three strike" law coming into play here?

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[PriceIke]

Why yes, it did .. all broadcast channels are advertising channels.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Nos.]

This is the first post I've seen with a reasonable alternative to the sentence. Bankrupt the guy. Unless he can provide documentation of other sources of income, take every dime. If he can provide documentation, make sure the IRS goes over his records with a fine tooth comb. Ban him from all telecommunications usage except telephone. He can have a cell phone, but he cannot have any type of data service on it, including text messageing. Finally, a significant number of hours of community service. These of course could be instead served as jail time, but would be up to defendant.

Re:Now, spamming is a Bad Thing...

[Experiment 626]

What does it mean to send a spam mail anyway? There's fraud, since the claims in spam are bogus. Harassment, as it is thrust upon people who have made clear their intention not to receive such things (if I'm blocking "viagra" changing it to "v1agra" is deliberate harassment). Theft of service, as the victims' bandwidth costs money. Computer tresspass, as spammers build their zombie bot nets. Spammers also engage in misrepresentation, send pornographic material to minors, create a public nuisance, and plenty of other criminal activities.

And yet for each offense, which involves a whole array of illegal activities, this guy gets what, a fraction of a second in prison? And you complain about this punishment being "a little bit extreme"? Hardly. How about we tabulate up every law he broke in the course of his spamming career, and give him nonconcurrent sentences for each offense he's committed. I imagine it would add up to a lot more than 9 years.

9 years?

[bcmm]

Did he defraud people with suger pills as well or something? 9 years in prison for annoying people seems a bit harsh...

It is VERY annoying though, and he did irritate millions.

Re:9 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> It is VERY annoying though, and he did irritate millions.

If we start sending people to jail for annoying others, you may as well label the entire planet a jail.

Re:9 years?

[GigsVT]

As has been pointed out, it's more than annoyance. If someone was dumping 50 gallons of jello on your front porch every day, it would be more than annoyance, you'd have to waterproof your basement, set up fences to keep them out, maybe security cameras, etc.

Someone doing it once as a prank is one thing, someone doing it every day for years is a serious cost, with real monetary damage.

It's the same with spam. At some arbitrary point it crosses the line from being an annoyance, to something that must be dealt with using real resources and incurring lots of expense.

Re:9 years?

[bcmm]

I see what you're saying. From an email user/busness's point of view, he might as well have stolen the money they spent on filter software and a few big HDs for the mail server.

Re:9 years?

[X.25]

Did he defraud people with suger pills as well or something? 9 years in prison for annoying people seems a bit harsh...

It is VERY annoying though, and he did irritate millions.

Although I agree 9 years is bit too much, I don't think he got 9 years because he 'annoyed people'. He got 9 years because he 'annoyed very big companies'.

Wow, 9y is a long time,

[Killswitch1968]

Do you think he got more time for choosing an alias as stupid as "Gaven Stubberfield"?

Re:Wow, 9y is a long time,

[eelke_klein]

Did you know you actually got it partly right? He got nine years because he was masking his identity! From the article:

Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.

Re:You got a real purty mouth...

[Just Some Guy]

Child molesters don't tend to last long in prison...I'm thinking spammers won't last too long, either.

What - do you think Kevin Mitnick started a gang while he was in there?

No offense to residents of our correctional institutions, but I doubt most of them are in there because they went postal on their mailserver.

Thoughts...

[DarkHelmet]

I know this is NOT going to be a popular opinion here on slashdot... but...

9 years! That's an awful long time if you think about it. Especially for doing something that's pretty much being a mass annoyance.

I can understand going to jail for doing something fraudulent. Maybe that was the case with this fellow, even though no mention of fraud was mentioned in the article, and seemingly he wasn't charged with that either.

Some aspects of emailing deserve jailtime. Sending phony ads to phish people, yes. Using exploited computers to send spam, definately. But aren't there crimes for those already?

Also, consider the fact that it will cost roughly $50,000 / year to keep this guy in jail. That amounts to 450,000 dollars just to keep this guy from spamming us.

Taxpayers of Virginia, is keeping this guy off the street really worth that much to you? Taxpayers of any other state, would you really want to adopt laws like this?

One more thing about criminalizing spam that makes me uncomfortable is the whole free speech thing. Sure, it's speech that most of the time we don't want to hear, but if I send mass emails from my own machines without breaking into anything and without defrauding anyone, should I go to jail for this? After all, it seems nowadays that it's in style to characterize any speech that doesn't agree with American policy as terrorist-sympathizing. Does spam count as free speech too?

By all means, slashdotters let me know any rational arguments you can think of for criminalizing spam that doesn't include other forms of crime already.

Re:Thoughts...

[QuantumRiff]

I actually agree with you, as unpopular as it might be.. Send him for 1 year. That's plenty of deterrent. Do we really want people thinking, "well, i could get rich spamming but the punishment is pretty high, guess I'll just deal crack?!"

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

$450000 to prevent 32850000000 spam messages equals... ~ $0.00001 per spam, yes - it seems reasonable. ;)

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason prisons cost that much is because the prisoners are babied and coddled. Keep em locked up or get em to work digging ditches and landfills, give em donated books instead of televisions and weight benches, and cut back on the pampering.

These fools are in a prison, not a Hilton. Time to stop treating them like guests.

Re:Thoughts...

[C10H14N2]

I think the greater point here is that he's being charged for crimes committed before they were crimes and which as many have pointed out are questionable as to if they should be considered crimes at all.

Yes, if you defraud or outright steal (think: hijacked zombie computers), sure, that should be criminal. If you merely annoy from the comfort of your home, using your hardware, that should be purely a civil matter for which you should suffer perhaps severe penalties, but not incarceration.

Re:Thoughts...

[Otter]

1) Note that "nine years" typically means that he serves three. Even so, I agree that it's pretty harsh, especially for an out-of-stater violating a just-passed law. As someone else noted, presumably they're trying to send a message. Or maybe they judge just really hates spammers.

2) The violation here was forging headers, not for spamming per se. Whatever you think of that law, it hardly supports your drama about being jailed for disagreeing with US policy.

Re:Thoughts...

[johnny cashed]

Yes, I agree. 9 years in prision is too much. Did he commit fraud? The article says junk products and pornography. But there are plenty of junk products peddled by regular junk mail. I've spent a total of 36hrs. in jail myself. Trust me, 9 years for this sounds like bullshit. He isn't a violent person (at least his crime didn't involve violence). Prision should be reserved for people who are violent to the general population. Not for non-violent crimes. Hell, He grossed over $750,000/month. Fine the shit out of him and put him on probation. Add community service too. But prison? come on.

Re:Thoughts...

[edremy]

That amounts to 450,000 dollars just to keep this guy from spamming us.

And how much was he costing us? My small college just had to shell out for a spam blocking server because the load from the 60-70% of our email that was spam was killing our mail server. Then we had to have our network tech spend time installing it, configuring it and of course making sure it doesn't kill stuff like the dozens of mailing lists most faculty are on. And I'm not even counting the time people on campus have wasted dealing with spam mail.

We're a small place, and I'm sure spam is costing us five figures annually. I can't imagine what it costs a major ISP or college.

$50k a year to stuff this guy in PMITA prison is nothing. Speaking as a Virginia taxpayer, let's get 100 more and make it 5 million/year. After that perhaps spam will go away and we can stop wasting vastly more than that dealing with their crappy ads.

Re:Thoughts...

[DrEldarion]

Something tells me that people who spam aren't exactly the type to deal crack.

Re:Thoughts...

[jbr439]

What would be especially interesting would be to compare this sentence to that of people convicted of, say, armed robbery, rape, manslaughter, etc.

I know that up here in Canada violent criminals often seem to get rather light sentences; and a 9 year sentence would seem quite high indeed.

Personally, I am quite happy to lock up violent offenders, especially repeats, for a long time. But, I agree with the parent post - 9 years for spamming is just bizarre.

OTOH, I would love to see those high-level Liberal Party of Canada hacks and politicians who stole taxpayers money rot in jail for a good portion of their lives. Of course it won't happen, but one can dream.

Re:Thoughts...

[SamNmaX]

I actually agree with you, as unpopular as it might be.. Send him for 1 year. That's plenty of deterrent. Do we really want people thinking, "well, i could get rich spamming but the punishment is pretty high, guess I'll just deal crack?!"

This sounds a lot more reasonable. Almost no one has gotten in trouble for sending spam before, and then all the sudden this guy gets hit with by an out of state law and gets sentenced to 9 years. Too many people have this notion that once someone is found guilty of a crime, they are monsters that deserve no sympathy. 9 years is a long time to take from someone, and such a punishment should be reserved for more serious crimes. In terms of the deterent effect, well, most spammers went in thinking there was going to be no punishment. The vast majority of them will scamper away from this 'industry' if they realize they could go to jail for any amount of time. Sure, if you give the death penalty for spam, there will be a lot less spam, but having any sort of criminal punishment will go a long way. There is no need to be draconian.

Re:Thoughts...

[TheFlyingGoat]

While spammers would argue that spam DOES count as free speech, I'd argue that it doesn't. While the content of the spam itself might be covered by free speech laws, the method of delivery is not. The problem with spam isn't that it's annoying, it's that it uses resources that someone else has to pay for. I don't know that it can be defined as theft, but in a legal sense it seems like it would be related to trespassing.

Try doing this... go to a school, stand out front, and start reading some xxx stories over a megaphone. See how long you stay out of trouble. While the constitution allows us to say anything we want, the law places restrictions on the circumstances of the delivery.

As for the $450,000... that's extremely cheap when you figure this guy is sending out 1 million spam per day. If you discount spam filters, bandwidth costs, and just look at an employee having to delete each of those messages it gets pretty expensive. You're looking at $2,737,500 if it takes a $6/hour employee 1/2 a second to delete each message.

Re:Thoughts...

[Darth Maul]

"Taxpayers of Virginia, is keeping this guy off the street really worth that much to you? Taxpayers of any other state, would you really want to adopt laws like this?"

Yes. I'm a resident of VA, and I would gladly pay for this. The real reason being that this sets a precedent.

Re:Thoughts...

[wayne]

9 years! That's an awful long time if you think about it. Especially for doing something that's pretty much being a mass annoyance.

Sure, spam, like most forms of theft, is really just annoying. Someone steals your car? Well, there is a whole bunch of paper work to go through, but eventually you will get a new car from your insurance company. Sure, a huge amount of money has to be poured into the system in order to make the car theft just an annoyance, but it isn't like anyone was really hurt.

The same thing goes for almost all white collar crime. Embezzlement, fraud, stock manipulation, they only cost money, which is just an annoyance.

Yeah, mail admins and anti-spammers have sunk a HUGE amount of time, effort and money into trying to reach the unattainable goal of 100% spam recognized and 0% ham rejected. And, when they do a really good job at it, people say things like "spam really isn't that much of a problem", and "my lost email is way more of a problem than spam".

If you add up all the money that 10 million spams/day costs, I think 9 years is pretty reasonable, if not on the short side. But then, I think a lot of white collar criminals get away with far too little jail time also.

Re:Thoughts...

[Concern]

There is the civil angle, which says, this guy inconvenienced me, he offended me, he cost me some money. That angle is pretty strong, and we can all get on board with saying... spamming should result in fines, say, an order of magnitude larger than any profits you could ever hope to generate from the activity.

Then there is the criminal angle, which says, this is the equivalent of harrassment on an inconceivable scale. He sent my kids, along with 40 million other kids, solicitations for drugs and porn. By contributing to the spam epidemic, he disrupted commerce to a degree that really goes beyond any civil conduct. I don't know if this guy in particular was involved with drugs, porn, stock scams, or the other staples, but this is perfectly apropos for many spam operations, so let's proceed with the hypothetical case where he is. You know what, this seems pretty solid to me too. I mean, say he spent his days stealing mail from the postal service, and his nights exposing himself and soliciting on streetcorners. This is orders of magnitude less harmful than what most normal spam operations do. Yet both of those activities will definitely get you tossed in the slammer. Interestingly, messing with the mail is by far the worse of the two activities, in terms of ciminal sentencing guidelines.

Yeah, you know what, I blanch at 9 years hard time for this guy too. But strictly speaking it appears more or less consistent with our (admittedly highly inconsistent) criminal legal standards.

Prison in any form is a highly undesirable way of dealing with crime. It has lots of pretensions to rehabilitate, but its main use is as an ugly, often counterproductive deterrent. You will undoubtedly find a great variation of opinions among slashdotters about criminal justice reform, from the hardcore Heinleinian "eye for an eye" or even "two punishments, public caning or death" types, to ultra-new-age "treat crime like mental illness" types. My only contribution is that probably there is not enough "real" public humiliation in being a criminal these days. Crime in America is frequently a private affair. Well, then again, we are certainly bringing it back for sexual abusers. Am I saying I would be happier if we just forced the guy to bankruptcy and gave him an hour-long public spanking? Not exactly. But, food for thought.

Re:Thoughts...

[Battle_Ratt]

"10 million e-mails a day"
"doing something that's pretty much being a mass annoyance."
I think we should do some math. If what he did was illegal, then lets set the punishment at a fair cost.

• So 10 million e-mails
• Assume 1 second of wasted time on average per e-mail.
• 10 million seconds
• 166,666 minuets
• 2777 hours
• 115 days

So if he was sentenced to 115 days for every day he was in operation and there are 3285 days in 9 years.
The guy would only have to have been in business for 29 days to have wasted more peoples time that he is going to have to spend in jail.
Sounds fair to me.

Re:Thoughts...

[TheFlyingGoat]

Did my math wrong (long week). It would be $1,140,625 over the course of 9 years.

Re:Thoughts...

[ChuckSchwab]

One year would be a deterrent, IF everyone who sent lots of spam went to jail. However, in the real world, only a tiny fraction of spammers will get caught, so it makes sense to adjust the sentence so that the risk (magnitude of negative outcome times probability of negative outcome) is great enough to deter.

Re:Thoughts...

[siliconjunkie]

Keep in mind that this guy was not just "being a mass annoyance", he was defrauding 10,000 to 17,000 individuals a month selling a "FedEx refund processor" that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a Web site of delinquent FedEx accounts.

This guy made $750K per month defrauding people with his sham product, so before you say "wow! 9 for just spamming, realize that spoofing email headers was just his mechanism for delivering his con game to millions of people per day in order to take advantage of that "sucker born every minute" that falls for get rich quick schemes that require them to send $30 to "find out how they can get rich quick with FedEx refunds".

I don't feel sorry for this criminal. Considering the guy will be out in 3 years with good behavior, I think the punishment is a fine fit for the crimes this man commited.

Then again, my /. sig (usually) points to a SpamVampire script designed to run up spammer's bandwidth bills, so I suppose you may want to take everything I say with a grain of salt, as I really don't like spammers.

Re:Thoughts...

[ChuckSchwab]

This noble defense of light spamming sentences, stated on a post with his email displayed in such a way as to avoid being spammed. Hello performative contradiction.

Re:Thoughts...

[UnHolyRam]

I think the greater point here is that he's being charged for crimes committed before they were crimes Wouldn't that make the law he was charged under an ex post facto law? Shouldn't they only thing he be charged for is any occurence of the violation after the law was passed?

Re:Thoughts...

[Detritus]

Virginia abolished parole for felons who committed their offenses after 1994. Nine years is nine years.

Re:Thoughts...

[Skraut]

If no one had ever gone to jail before for commiting murder would it still be a crime??

The punishment has to start somewhere. As stated in many other situations, ignorance of the law is no excuse. He was responsible for knowing the laws and how they pertained to his actions. The Can Spam act went into effect in 2003, had he met its regulations he would have not been found guilty under this Virginia law. He had 2 years to clean up his act, and did not.

I'm sorry but I just don't buy the whole "But it only went into effect 2 weeks ago" argument. There is no 14 day legal grace period on anything. If your city lowers its speedlimit from 35 to 25, and the day later you go through at 37, you better expect a ticket.

Re:Thoughts...

[DarkHelmet]

Okay, there you go. The ABC article seemed a little light on information about this guy.

But then, why not charge him with fraud? After all, that's crime already exists.

Why charge him on spam alone? It's kind of like breaking a window to get into a house, robbing the people inside, and gunning them down, only to get charged with destruction of property.

If he is a fraudster, then he is a fraudster. Get him on that count, right?

Re:Thoughts...

[rossjudson]

Don't stop there with your economic analysis. If this guy was sending tens of millions of spam messages a day, how much was he costing companies and people, all over the country? $450,000 is small beans compared to what the economy as a whole is saving by having this turd in jail. Good riddance. 9 years sounds about right to me.

This guy woke up every morning and crammed 10 million people's mailboxes full of porn and offensive bullshit. He did it when it's against the law, and knowing it is an immoral activity.

Screw him, and let's move on to the next one. Hopefully we'll see the same result.

Re:Thoughts...

[Cloud K]

9 years is ridiculous!

I mean, I don't know what the sentences are over there, but here in the UK I'm pretty sure people have had less for manslaughter!

I despise spam as much as anyone else, but I couldn't compare it to the seriousness of killing someone. Sure, I can see how it's a criminal act (upsetting all of society) vs. civil (issues between individual people and/or businesses) and so some jail time is warranted. But come on... 9 years....

Re:Thoughts...

[Luthair]

Sentances don't work as a deterrent, people don't know the length of penalties, and no one thinks they'll get caught.

The 9 year sentence is particularly rediculous when compared to what corrupt CEOs who ruin financial lives get (ie, Enron). An Annoying Bastard gets more time than thieves.

Re:Thoughts...

[Otter]

OK, that puts a different spin on it -- nine years served is pretty damn harsh, especially given the details of this case.

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

You speeding analogy is flawed. Going 37 would be illegal in both cases, so you should indeed expect a ticket. It would be better to say something like 28MPH, which would not have been illegal the day before.

Re:Thoughts...

[jejones]

One more thing about criminalizing spam that makes me uncomfortable is the whole free speech thing. Sure, it's speech that most of the time we don't want to hear, but if I send mass emails from my own machines without breaking into anything and without defrauding anyone, should I go to jail for this?

You can't send mass unsolicited emails without defrauding someone. Spamming is like making mass telemarketing calls... collect, so that the people at the other end have no way not to pay for them.

Re:Thoughts...

[schon]

While spammers would argue that spam DOES count as free speech, I'd argue that it doesn't.

And you would not be alone.

"[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of speech is threatened but because their profits are; to dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans the principles for which the First Amendment stands."
- US Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin:

"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain."
- Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court (emphasis mine)

I'd say you're in good company.

Re:Thoughts...

[SamNmaX]

If no one had ever gone to jail before for commiting murder would it still be a crime??

Murder is clearly immoral. Spam, although incredibly annoying, has some arguements (which I don't agree with for it). Either way, I think making spam illegal in many cases is approriate.

The punishment has to start somewhere. As stated in many other situations, ignorance of the law is no excuse. He was responsible for knowing the laws and how they pertained to his actions. The Can Spam act went into effect in 2003, had he met its regulations he would have not been found guilty under this Virginia law. He had 2 years to clean up his act, and did not.

But, he's not from Virginia, yet he's being required to follow their laws. Email addresses don't come with a marker saying what state they are going to, so it's not fair to try to require him to avoid one specific state. Unfortunately the article doesn't provide much details into exactly what he did beyond basic spamming (fraud?) so I don't know how the Can Spam act applies for him.

I'm sorry but I just don't buy the whole "But it only went into effect 2 weeks ago" argument. There is no 14 day legal grace period on anything. If your city lowers its speedlimit from 35 to 25, and the day later you go through at 37, you better expect a ticket.

While ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, you must admit that it's impossible for anyone to know what every law requires of them. Laws are not just what's passed by the legislature, but also includes precidence in court, rulings against laws due to constitutionality, enforcement by police, prosecution, etc. Being a major spammer he probably did know of the law, but I doubt he figured that him, being outside the state, would be required to follow it. And with no previous examples of the laws enforcement, he likely had no idea what kind of punishment to expect from breaking this law.

All this doesn't get to my main point, which is that 9 years is unnecessarily draconian for fighting spam. This is a white collar crime. Most of these types would likely be scared off from it with *any* jail sentence. If this isn't enough for some spammers, make the punishment go up for second/third/more offences. Unlike something like murder, if some spammer doesn't learn their lesson the first time, the cost isn't so great (just more annoyance). There are crimes that require large sentences, but this isn't one of them.

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, is he going to jail for spamming of for comitting fraud?

I could agree with a prison sentence in some cases of fraud, though generally I think prison should be reserved for violent offenders. Prison time for sending spam? Hey, I hate spam as much as the next guy, but we need to start looking for solutions to problems other than locking people up. Probation, fines plus restitution, and being banned from using the internet for 5 years would be a more reasonable sentence. Better still, we should address the root cause of spam: old protocols that are unsuitable for the modern internet.

Re:Thoughts...

[Software]

>"he's being charged for crimes committed before they were crimes"

From TFA:

Defense attorney David Oblon argued in court that nine years was far too long given that Jaynes was charged as an out-of-state resident with violating a Virginia law that had taken effect just two weeks before.

The law took effect two weeks before the spamming. It was a crime to do what he did two weeks before he did it.

Re:Thoughts...

[Trillan]

I am so very tired of the free speech argument. It is tangental at best. If he had sat at his computer and simply explained in a loud voice to it for two weeks about how to enlarge its penis, nobody would care. If, on the other hand, he'd gone around and painted every overpass in the country with his message, he would have been charged. His rights end when they intrude on the rights of 10,000,000 other people per day.

Now, as for the sentence being too long, it probably will be reduced. But it shouldn't be. Consider: This man is in the top ten list of spammers. He sent 10,000,000 spam per day. He's been around for years.

Let's assume one year. Granted, they're not charging him with that full year, but I'm looking at strictly the impact of his crime. Let's call it roughly 3,650,000,000 emails per year. So he's getting roughly 0.000000002 years or 0.07 seconds per email he sent. Look at it another way: Each of those emails probably takes roughly 1.5 seconds to deal with. That works out to 11 years of economic damage for every year he spammed.

Re:Thoughts...

[dvdeug]

Do we really want people thinking, "well, i could get rich spamming but the punishment is pretty high, guess I'll just deal crack?!"

Yes.

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

intention is the key... manslaughter is accidental, you didn't intend that it would go so far as death, or you were just careless. You still get punished -- but not as much as if you deliberately set out to kill someone.

Now, did this guy do his theft and fraud by accident or carelessness? OK, the sociopathic scum was certainly careless: he didn't care at all how many resources he wasted, or the millions of people he annoyed while defrauding hundreds or thousands of people...

Re:Thoughts...

[X.25]

9 years! That's an awful long time if you think about it. Especially for doing something that's pretty much being a mass annoyance.

I couldn't find how much he *cashed in* with his activities, but I'm fairly positive it also influenced the judge's decision. If he collected $10M, for example, I'm sure it would look much different than if he earned $2,000. On the other hand, jury and judge might have been spammed by him as well, so... :)

Yes, 9 years is a long time. What bothers me is not the fact he's got 9 years, but that many rapists/murderers get much less.

Re:Thoughts...

[ebyrob]

Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.

So there you have it. Every email he got in trouble for *was* fraud because it was disguised. You could look at this as email fraud, much like we have mail fraud. If you think you can win a mail fraud case on first amendment grounds, try breaking into a post-office mail-box sometime, even if it is just to retrieve a letter you "mailed by accident". Or, more to the point, try sending 1000's of unsolicited snail-mailers with an incorrect return address. (And no, not just a P.O. Box, put other people's addresses on them and mail them out using the big blue post-office box.)

Re:Thoughts...

[siliconjunkie]

But then, why not charge him with fraud?

I'm not totally sure, but I have been asking the same question since this guy was caught. The media has been very focused on the "first convicted spammer" scenario and it seems that's all we get to read about. IANAL, but I imagine that Jaynes was careful to skirt the grey areas of mail fraud legislation and that his business did not *technically* break any laws (indeed, many of the articles cite the fact that Jaynes has been marketing this so-called "FedEx refund processor" via old fashioned bulk mail channels for many years, so I would guess this guy has done his homework regarding fraud laws so the prosecutors decided to attack the case from a different angle (and one that could potentially set a precedent, apparently).

I'm not suggesting that courts stand for "bait and switch" prosecution where certain individuals are imprisoned with trumped up charges that do not reflect the reality of the crime (this seems to happen quite a bit in "hacker" cases). I also do not necessarily agree with the new laws that he has been charged under (the potential for law enforcement and others in power to abuse legislation like this is huge).

Essentially, I see it as a real "bittersweet" victory for spam hating internet users. I'm glad to see a spammer/scammer being punished for spamming/scamming, but I think the media focused too much on the spamming and not enough on the scamming. I can totally see how this is not necessarily a "good thing" overall for "My rights online".

Re:Thoughts...

[danharan]

Obviously this guy was to stupid to realize that with all that money, he should hire a good lawyer.

Re:Thoughts...

[Trillan]

He's worth approximately $24 million, all as a result of spamming. I'd go to jail for one year for $24 million. I mean... daaaaamn. That's roughly $66,000 per day. I could put up with a lot of abuse for $66,000 per day.

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxpayers of Virginia, is keeping this guy off the street really worth that much to you?

I've lived in Virginia for 19 years.
I have never been prouder of this fact than I am today.

Re:Thoughts...

[quarkscat]

This joker has been sentenced to 9 years in prison. Considering the number of SPAM emails that he sent out, this is like 5 minutes per email (maybe!). If you also factor in the theft of time from the recipients, as well as the theft of internet bandwidth, 9 years is not anywhere near enough time (unless it is "hard labor", like breaking big rocks into small gravel by hand). This is not, by any means, an issue of "free speech", any more that if I send you 100 letters per day, disguised as something else, trying to defraud you with phoney goods, and making you pay the COD charges on each letter, to top it off.

Actually, they used to summarily hang cattle rustlers and horse thieves back in the good old days -- that didn't cost taxpayers anything more than a length of rope.

Re:Thoughts...

[aztracker1]

I fI could spend a dollar a year, per spammer to put 10-20 of the worst offenders away for a few years, I'd be willing to pay my share... I spend more time than that is worth a week in cleaning the false positives from my spam folder.. if there are over a few million people in virginia, then the distribution of said cost isn't that bad...

Re:Thoughts...

[Steve B]

Taxpayers of Virginia, is keeping this guy off the street really worth that much to you?

Given the economic damage caused by spam, sending the message, "DON'T SPAM OR THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU" is cheap at ten times the price.

One more thing about criminalizing spam that makes me uncomfortable is the whole free speech thing.

For the thousandth time, this is not a free speech issue. It is a property rights issue.

if I send mass emails from my own machines without breaking into anything and without defrauding anyone

Since Jaynes both broke into things (by bypassing anti-spam filters) and defrauded people (see the records of the court case) on a mass basis, this comment is irrelevant.

Does spam count as free speech too?

No. It counts as theft of other people's computer resources.

By all means, slashdotters let me know any rational arguments you can think of for criminalizing spam that doesn't include other forms of crime already.

If you can find any examples of spam that don't include other crime (note that any attempt to evade anti-spam filtering is a circumvention of other people's computer security), let us know.

Re:Thoughts...

[Steve B]

nine years served is pretty damn harsh, especially given the details of this case

Actually, given the details of this case (defrauding large numbers of people out of hundreds or thousands of dollars each) nine years is much too lenient.

Re:Thoughts...

[aperez]

What makes the sentence for this case dangerous is that it may as well set a precedent that all dealings within the technological world deemed unwanted or even 'illegal', whichever chosen by the first large corporation or corporate association to jump on to this, may be sentenced to ridiculously lengthy prison-terms.

Not only is this disparate in length compared to more substantial crimes, as mentioned before, but a typical knee-jerk reaction by the techno-illiterate from one ready to be in the spotlight due to his "making an example" of someone clearly stretching internt etiquette to it's breaking point (etiquette, since never has or should the internet been or be governed by any single entity).

Punish the man, by all means, but by putting him in the same place where pedophiles, rapists, murderers, thieves, and the sort (as well as those wrongfully accused and incarcerated), are seperated from the rest of society, you insult the system of that which he would be introduced to.

Let the judge and jury decide his culpability, but also let those who are truly capable of understanding his crime sentence him.

One could take this as many things, from being an ill omen of the pervesion of justice within the digital world to come, or as a distinct symptom of technological (among others) ignorance within our society.

* pours water on the smoking keyboard due to prolonged fire-spitting

Re:Thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, then. 1 year + $24 million fine.

Re:Thoughts...

[Trillan]

How much of that do you think is still cash?

Re:Thoughts...

[danila]

BTW, I don't feel sorry for the victims either. And I think this really is a perfect situation: the greedy suckers lose their money and the spammer goes to jail.

Re:Thoughts...

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I don't buy Crack and have never come into contact with Crack dealers.

I don't buy anything via spam, but have to check my 30-50 mails a day for false positives (two in 6 months) and false negatives (3-5 a day).

My point? A Crack dealer will destroy a few lives, people who let their lives be destroyed. A Spammer will annoy and try to defraud millions.

Maybe that Spammer should have his sentence reduced a bit on appeal, but the sentencing of these arrogant antisocal barstewards should cause them some pain. 3 years is probably enough.

Makes me wonder...

[punxking]

How will that go over in prison?

Convict: What are you in for?
Jeremy Jaynes: um... spam.

He's somebody's bitch for sure...

Re:Makes me wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure he won't be selling V|4Gra in the prison.

Re:Makes me wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

His Viagra spam just turned against him, in quite a "hard" fashion.

Re:Makes me wonder...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

He's somebody's bitch for sure...

Hmm. I don't agree with that. Being put in prison should be punishment enough, without the HIV risk.

Still, it's interesting and amusing to wonder whether they'll have to keep him in solitary to keep him away from the nonces on account of the violence they'd do to him... :-)

Re:Makes me wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

There was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench, there was... mother rapers... father stabbers... FATHER rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me, and it was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible and criminal guys sitting there on the bench! And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of em all, was comin over to me and he was mean and ugly and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat down next to me and said "Kid... what'd you get?"

I said "I didn't get nothin, I had to pay a million dollars, and stop sending garbage".

He said "What were you arrested for, kid?"

I said "Spamming" ...and they all moved away from me on the bench.

(No apologies, but thanks to Arlo Guthrie for an awesome song)

aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes...

[tuxette]

What kind of "status" would a spammer would get in jail? (For example, child abusers are the lowest form of life on the prison evolutionary scale.) And how it will affect their behavior after relase, and how it will affect the behavior of spammers who haven't been caught but may end up fearing what awaits.

Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Thaelon]

I mean fuck. 9 years in jail? for sending emails? Don't get me wrong I hate spam as much as the next guy, but JAIL?

I think he should be sentenced to 9 years of phone tech support at minimum wage with no raises and no opportunity for advancement.

OR

He should be forced to be a human spam filter at AOL for 9 years at minimum wage with no raises and no opportunity for advancement.

I'd rather go to jail than face that cruel and unusual punishment.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[FreshFunk510]

Let's put it this way. What if I stole $0.01 from a bank? Do I deserve 9 years in jail? Now let's say I did it 1,000,000x ($10,000). Now do I deserve 9 years in jail?

This guy did not send a couple emails. He sent 10,000,000 emails a DAY. Do you know how much that can cost companies? It translates into real money lost. Try talking to any sysadmin that's had to deal with this.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[WormholeFiend]

I think he should be sentenced to 9 years of phone tech support at minimum wage with no raises and no opportunity for advancement...

You forgot to add "in Bangalore".

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[DarkHelmet]

I watch TV. I watch it for a few hours a week.

Commercials take up roughly 25% of the time in television programming. So that comes to roughly 1 hour a week for the 4 hours of TV I watch.

So, for the 100 million or so people who watch TV as much or more than I do, that's 400,000,000 hours. Multiply that by a very marginal minimum wage of $5 / hour, and that's 2 billion dollars.

Those criminals! Taking away that much time in productivity from us humans...

But then, sure, I know this was done in jest. But then, what about any sort of thing that takes up time. For instance, solitaire. I recall that being the #1 computer related time loss for companies.

So say you add up all the hours of solitaire done by people in the workforce. That adds up to a lot of money. Does that make Solitaire a criminal program for stealing money away from other companies?

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[djan]

Also, remember that HE FORGED HIS RETURN ADDRESS, which was the real reason that he was slammed. The Virginia law said "no - can't do that". Forgery and evading the responsibility of replies made it serious.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh I think the parent meant in terms of cost of Sys admins buying and deploying Spam Filtration systems, the cost of the traffic generated to the mail servers etc etc. Backbone providers needing extra servers/bandwidth needed to support delivery of said advertisement email..

Those types of costs are very real and they do add up.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

That has got to be the stupidest anology I've ever heard. (both of them). It's your choice to watch tv, isn't it? If you don't like the commercials, step outside.. breath in the fresh air. As for Solitaire, if companies have that big of a problem with it, they can get rid of all the games on the system. How can they stop the spammers from using resources? Give me a break.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Spy Handler]

No, 9 years is actually barely enough punishment in my opinion.

Kill one person, or give a small cut to 10 million people, about the same in terms of jail time. In principle.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[SpongeBobLinuxPants]

Kevin Mitnic was in jail for what, 7 years (guessing)? To put it in comparison with 9 years for 'annoying' emails. I don't like spam either, but 9 is a bit much.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[cpghost]

t translates into real money lost

Not only money, but precious time from every victim. Assuming that everyone spends just 10 seconds a day scanning spam or throwing that junk away: how many wasted centuries does that amount to?

That one guy sending out 10,000,000 emails a day has probably stolen many, many combined lifetimes from his victims. The punishment should really fit the crime, and 9 years of jail is really way too low a sentence!

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[FreshFunk510]

Exactly.

Last I checked, spam emails took over 50% of online traffic. The real number was actually up towards 60-80%. You just see 5 junk emails in your inbox but multiply that by millions of people who have emails and this is definitely costing people/companies real money. I'm not talking about lost productivity but real resources such as email servers, sys admins wasting time fighting spam, software packages PURCHASED just to fight spam, SMTP servers that are brought down when they are exploited, etc.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[FreshFunk510]

I'm not trying to debate how many years the guy has gotten. I'm saying that it's short-sighted to simply say "he sent annoying emails." Refer to my other replies for more details on how spam cost companies and people real money (not just in terms of time lost but resources spent fighting spam). You simply don't see it.

Just look at the resources companies (hotmail, yahoo, google) put aside to fight spam. There are real engineers being paid to spend their days in and out to fight spam. Not only that but the majority of email sent today are spam and the hardware needs to support that.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

apt-get install spamassassin - whats the problem?

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[SpongeBobLinuxPants]

I completely agree with you. I'm just saying Kevin was convited for, basically, breaking and entering (with computers) and theft (of data), not to mention the FBI manhunt. 9 years for spam is a bit much, especially compared with other crimes, such as rape.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[FreshFunk510]

Try telling that to Joe User.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[cpghost]

Commercials take up roughly 25% of the time in television programming

You can always decide to watch TV or not. If you're using Email for a living, you don't have a choice. By watching TV, you (reluctantly) agree to have 25% of your time diverted to commercials. If you don't like this, get pay TV commercials-free channels, or rent DVDs. But how would you "opt out" of spam other than by switching e-mail addresses every so often?

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try telling that to any user when they lose an important email to a false positive.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Cyno]

But he did it without pointing a gun at anyone. If someone cracks into a bank's computers and transfers $10,000 to their personal account they should get punished, but not 9 years in prison. A couple years would be more than enough, IMO. But personally I'd rather see them lose all their money and property and have to start over again.

Make the punishment fit the crime.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

So...real money=real lives??? Oh my God! Think of the money! If you hurt somebody when you rob that penny from the bank, then yes, you should be jailed the same time as for $10,000. If you get caught in the marketing crossfire of spam, to damn bad. Tell the morons out there to quit buying.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[mushroom blue]

you're serious?

it's your choice to use email as well. unless something changed while I was asleep, and we somehow gained a constitutional right to spam-free inboxes, this should have been tried in civil court.

but it wasn't, and now a person is going to jail for costing corporations money, by employing extra sysadmins to filter out spam.

yeah. I think that's worth 9 years, don't you?

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[mushroom blue]

repeat after me:

It is not a criminal activity to compell someone to spend money.

I'm sure those engineers that are being paid to spend their days in and out fighting spam would prefer to be unemployed, and the spam problem solved.

I'm sure the vendors making the hardware are oh so upset that people are buying more hardware to deal with the spam "problem"

I hate spam and spammers more than anything, but I also respect the United States Code, and this law, when challenged at the federal level, will more than likely be shot down. and then people will blame "activist judges".

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[mushroom blue]

eek. apparently the bold tag didn't close. sorry about that.

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[aztracker1]

The difference is, in this case, the advertisers are *paying* for the shows you are watching.. stuff you get in physical mail, is *payed* for by the advertiser... the spam you get is payed by *you* for the honor of being bombarded with useless e-junkmail.. *I* don't want to pay in time, and or money for crap I did *NOT* ask for..

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[aztracker1]

yes I do.. the fact is, he committed forgery to deliver said email.. may not have a right to a spam free inbox, but if all the spammers *HAD* to use real headers in the emails, and have legitimate reply-to emails, that *were* the senders of the message, would be a lot easier to deal with spam. I think 9 years (of which he'll probably actually server 2-3 (early parole/release)) is more than fair...

Re:Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime?

[FreshFunk510]

Actually more details on the story brought to light the fact that he elicted money for FAKE services and accepted money for it. Last I checked that was illegal.

Not "Unfortunately "

[alephnull42]

Unfortunately the sentence has been postponed while the case is being appealed."

Not "Unfortunately" - the right to appeal is a Good Thing (TM).
The right not to be punished while the case is under appeal is also a Good Thing (TM)

Re:Not "Unfortunately "

[iminplaya]

Damn you! You beat me to it! Now, all I can say is "I agree!!" and get modded redundant. I guess the submitter isn't a great believer in due process, much less appropriate punishment. Jail for everybody! That way Nike and Walmart can move their factories back to the US and say that their products are American made.

Re:Not "Unfortunately "

[Anonymous Coward]

Trademark Guy , meet XML Tag Guy .

Re:You got a real purty mouth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, except for the fact that child molestation has exactly nothing to do per se with spamming (that is, the two activities are in no way morally equivalent, or even close)....

Actually, never mind. There are no exceptions. You're a moron. The kind of oaf who equates selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door with intestinal rape of infants and sheep. There's just no comparison.

Yeah, spamming is bad... but it's not child porn, you fucktard.

Is this reasonable?

[DeathPenguin]

Does he really deserve jail time for spamming? Shouldn't we just stick him with a huge fine, freeze any offshore bank accounts, and leave him financially ruined? Yes, spammers are scum. Yes, I hate them too. But something bothers me about sending people to jail for that long for crimes that couldn't really cause physical harm to anyone else. Maybe a little time would be good, say 8-14 months. 9 years seems excessive to me. If the appeals court rejects the case and the sentence sticks, he'll spend more time than some rapists, murderers, and child molestors. This almost sounds like something the RIAA would have done to P2P users.

Re:Is this reasonable?

[ravenspear]

freeze any offshore bank accounts

US law enforcement officials can rarely touch offshore assets. That's the whole reason the illegal operations have them offshore in the first place.

Hooray!

[Mr. Cancelled]

While I still prefer the "beat the tar out of them" method of deterring spammers, this is a step in the right direction.

Althought past studies have proven that most of the worlds spam comes from the good ol' US of A, I have to wonder if punishments such as this will actually slow down the flow of spam, or if it'll push the criminals out of the country, and increase the amount from foreign countries. As much as I hate it, there's still a lot of money in Spam it appears, and I'm sure that there's quite a few countries who would turn a blind eye to the problem for the right cash (I'm looking at you China!)

Re:Hooray!

[X.25]

As much as I hate it, there's still a lot of money in Spam it appears, and I'm sure that there's quite a few countries who would turn a blind eye to the problem for the right cash (I'm looking at you China!)

Not a problem. It is rather easy (for me, at least) to block whole A/B classes in China, since I certainly don't visit any Chinese sites, nor do I expect any Chinese emails. It won't affect me a bit.

However, it's bit harder to block IP ranges with dedicated server companies, since there are many useful sites stuck (unintentionally) in ranges where spammers operate.

So, if spammers end up spamming Chinese users only, they'll end up being prosecuted in China, which is (I'd say) worse than 9 years in jail ;)

He's the poster boy

[EvilStein]

If he gets 9yrs in the pokey, hopefully other spammers will sit back and say "oh, uh.. maybe I should find another revenue source.."

Maybe not, though, because to a lot of spammers, anything you didn't opt out of meant that you opted in. Bastards.

Ummm....

[suwain_2]

I hate spam. It's really abnoxious.

But 9 years in prison for it? You could easily spend less time than that for a violent felony.

And if, as might be the case, the sentence was due not to sending mail, but due to using open relays / forging headers... We already have laws against fraud and the like.

I despise spammers, but this guy's going to spend 3,287 days behind bars. For annoying people.

Re:Ummm....

[FreshFunk510]

This is just the perspective from the average Joe consumer who uses hotmail or yahoo mail.

Think about this from the perspective of corporate companies. Everyday real money (significant amounts) are being spent to combat spam. Real resources must be hired, time is spent and hardware is acquired in order to accomodate spam. This translates into a real expenditure for enterprise-leve companies.

I'm not saying it's completely justified but I don't think you have the full picture.

Re:Ummm....

[pclminion]

But 9 years in prison for it? You could easily spend less time than that for a violent felony.

EXACTLY. People typically serve less time than this for murder.

What does this mean?

It means you are better off if you kill the witnesses.

Re:Ummm....

[garote]

Remember those investment bankers, about 15 years ago, who caused a bunch of savings-and-loan outfits to collapse like dominoes, while the government was left to bail out the hundreds of thousands of people whose deposits were FDIC insured? How the bankers flew to and fro on private jets and ate $50 steaks, while everyone else paid billions in taxes, and thousands of people lost their jobs and met economic ruin because of the chaos the bankers caused?

Yeah, none of those guys got nine years either.

Re:Ummm....

[mushroom blue]

which is why this should have been tried in civil court, instead of criminal. last I checked, wasting the time of a business was not a criminal matter. nor was the amount of money they spent dealing with him.

if people were put in jail for costing people money and wasting people's time, the developers of every MMORPG are screwed.

Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

9 years? This is ridiculous. Nice society we live in were sending some (well, a few million a day) emails gets you harsher jail time than killing someone.

Re:You got a real purty mouth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody mod this guy flame-bait or dumba$$ or something. This at worst cost some people some fictional money, I don't think we need to be advocating violence, regardless of how annoying it is. What's the point of sending this guy to jail? That just costs us all money. Why not let him out on the street but make him pay reparations for the next 10 years and not use a computer. I didn't RTFA either so maybe he was a spammer and a child molester and then I don't really care what happens to him but if he's just a spammer? Come on...

Re:You got a real purty mouth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think convicts get much spam?

Now let's get the STreet Spam crowd

[AmericanInKiev]

What about the same adds nailed to your telephone pole?

9 years anyone?

AIK

Re:Now let's get the STreet Spam crowd

[muckdog]

Well it sounds like he also did the equivilent of ripping the telephone pole out of the ground and sticking it in the middle of the interstate so more people could see his flyer.

Jail

[XFilesFMDS1013]

Bet he's sorry now htat he sent those penis enlargement pill e-mails to incarcerated felons.

Re:Jail

[javacowboy]

Bet he's sorry now htat he sent those penis enlargement pill e-mails to incarcerated felons.

He'll be even sorrier if he actually sold those penis enlargement pills to those felons, especially if one of them happens to be his cellmate :D

Re:Jail

[houghi]

Bet he's sorry now htat he sent those penis enlargement pill e-mails to incarcerated felons.

If they worked he will not be happy and if they did not worked they will not be happy. Fucked either way.

ridiculous

[BigBossBert]

This is just stupid. Most people (other than slashdot readers) actually appear to like getting spammed, since they keep buying the shit. This man is just doing them a favour.

Re:ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, BigBossBert. I think we should focus on that aspect of the problem. Once people know they're getting ripped off, they won't fall prey to spam. Maybe there's more that could be done on that front...?

9 YEARS!

[bigbabich]

Way to heavy a sentence when compared to violent felonious sentences. Still...burn him....with fire!

Woohoo!

[thed00d]

I was really hoping for the death penalty on this conviction, but ya take what you can get.

Seriously though, this guy will probably be out in 2 years, maybe 3. I think a more applicable punishment is removing these people from using electronic means. Like what the FBI and Secret Service used to do the "hacker" community. Take away their right to use a computer. Jail time or no, thats what is really going to stop these people from sending out spam.

Just my 2 cents.

What're you in for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inmate: What're you in for?
Spammer: I sent spam to 10 million people everyday.
Inmate: Damn. How long you here for?
Spammer: 9 years.
Inmate: Damn. They give us Spam for breakfast everyday. Someone should convict the correctional system.
Spammer: What are you in for?
Inmate: Murder.
Spammer: You must be here for a while then.
Inmate: Nah. I was only sentenced for 6 years.
Spammer: Damn.

WOWOWOW!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free dong enlargement pills! No obligation! No hassle! You'll have to wrap your man missile around your waist to pull up your pants! Go to http://www.goatse.cx/ for more info and to see a ruined bowel!

Re:WOWOWOW!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm, you do know that address no longer points to anything, don't you? Sheesh, you call yourself a troll? You're just a failure, and a lazy one to boot!

Re:Re:WOWOWOW!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it does point to something. Just not a ruined bowel. Anyway, by now, everybody either knows what the URL once pointed to, or is retarded, so it doesn't really matter, as nobody will be clicking the link anyway.

Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Utterly rediculous that such a sentence would be handed down for such a miniscule "crime."

Should have done something better with his time.

[n0dalus]

9 Years!?
Just think how much more money he could have made through fraud or robbery to get a 9 year jail sentence. I bet he's kicking himself now.

If he ever goes to jail....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gaven Stubberfield", has held a position on the SpamHaus Registry of Known Spam Operations for a long time

If he ever goes to jail chances are good he'll be held in an entirely new position.

Hope he didn't spam any fellow inmates with Penis Enlarging Herbal Viagra messages.

Deterrence

[jfengel]

I can't give you a rational argument for criminalizing spam that you don't already know, but I can explain the sentence a bit.

I suspect that the real reason for the stiff sentence in this case is deterrence. He's being punished not just for his sins, but for the sins of everybody else who spams, to let them know that the law is real and that there will be serious punishment for getting caught.

Everybody who continued to spam after the law was put in effect wasn't merely being annoying: he was deliberately and consciously doing something illegal. Whether it should be illegal or not, he was flouting a law designed to reduce vast quantities of annoyance, as well as forcing people to spend large amounts of money and time fighting that annoyance.

So I agree that the punishment doesn't fit the crime (and you're hardly the only one to say that here on Slashdot.) Nor am I a huge fan of "making an example" of somebody; it seems a violation of the eighth amendment forbidding "cruel and unusual punishment".

With a bit of luck this is the harshest sentence ever to be handed down. That "luck" would be a bunch of spammers say, "Whoa, we've got to get out of this business". It won't be enough, but if it results in half as much spam I'll be half as annoyed, and I won't be crying any particular tears for this guy while it happens.

Or they may just move offshore, or use zombies, or hide better, etc. Hell, to avoid this law you need only move out of Virginia. But I suspect that at least a few spammers will decide that it's not profitable enough to risk jail now that jail is a very real possibility, and that's a few billion fewer spams we'll receive.

Re:Deterrence

[idiotnot]

Hell, to avoid this law you need only move out of Virginia.

Did you bother to RTFA? Spamking, there, is a resident of North Carolina. The statute says if the traffic passes through Virginia, the law applies. Some insane percentage (70%?) of internet traffic flows through northern Virginia (UUNet, Sprint, etc have backbones there), and the world's largest ISP is headquartered in Virginia.

Re:Deterrence

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nor am I a huge fan of "making an example" of somebody; it seems a violation of the eighth amendment forbidding "cruel and unusual punishment" , well get a clue. Punishment is by it's very nature cruel and unsusal, it is meant as a deterrent as you pointed out. It is supposed to deter. If is was namby pamby, it would not be punnishment. For every big crime that gets reduced sentences, crime goes UP. Kill them all for minor violations and soon you have a perfect world. Why pay to house criminals? JUST SHOOT THEM. There actually ARE people who do not fuck with other people in any way. Let them inherit the earth. Low-lifes need not be coddled. Kill then all and let some devine being sort it all out. Oh, and start with the politicians and their families. They are the worst criminals...

Re:You got a real purty mouth...

[ip_freely_2000]

"Child molesters don't tend to last long in prison...I'm thinking spammers won't last too long, either."

Mod the parent a -1, Moron.

There's a bit of a difference between a spammer and a child molestor. If you need the difference explained to you, then you're just stupid.

Personally, I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I think nine years is a bit harsh. I think there are other crimes that are much worse that don't seem to get as long a sentence.

Time for a deterrent

[havaloc]

While 9 years might be a little harsh, I'm sick and tired of the spam problem, and he should be punished. If he actually goes to jail, I think it might make others think twice. Spamming pretty much equals theft in my eyes (as in bandwidth and time). What really made this article real for me is that I received an email from Gaven Stubberfield not a few days ago.

take in the @$$

[nashy-nunu]

9 years of being someone's bitch.

Silly.

[RightSaidFred99]

I know we all hate spammers and all, but this is just silly. There are people who have beaten someone to death, shot someone, etc... who get lighter sentences that this. He could appeal on "cruel and unusual" alone. Suitable punishments for spammers are things like: _Huge_ fines, enough to bankrupt them and put them in severe debt. 30-60 days in jail Home arrest after the jail time Being forbidden from going near a computer for 1 year etc... Don't let your nerdish tendencies blind you to real justice (and injustice) just because you really hate spammers.

Re:Silly.

[HrothgarReborn]

While I am shocked at the length of the sentence "cruel and unusual" have to do with type of punishment not length. Also when you look at the dollar amounts involved both as damage to recipient systems and money he made from the scam combined with the fact that he was hiding his identity and therefore commiting fraud, it will probably not be far out of line. There has been a surprising amount of mercy expressed for him from the Slashdot crowd but he knew how much money he stood to make and if he knew to hide his identity he must have understood it was wrong to do so.

Re:Silly.

[RightSaidFred99]

You are, simply, incorrect. If I sentence a Jay-Walker to 5 years of prison - that is called cruel and unusual punishment. It's a simple process, there is no ambiguity.

Re:aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes

[gstoddart]

What kind of "status" would a spammer would get in jail? (For example, child abusers are the lowest form of life on the prison evolutionary scale.)

Probably none what-so-ever. He's not reviled like child molestors. He's got no street-cred like bikers and gangsters or any of the 'real' criminals.

Just another low-interest, white-collar guy who would have to fend for himself.

Though, from my minimal understanding, that doesn't exactly put him in a good position either.

I hate to say this..

[Anonymous Coward]

.... but both the sentence, and the reaction from the ./ ppl to this is shamefull....

We have rapists, murderers, gang members, drug dealers, drunk drivers, child molesters and the likes being released after a year, 2 years, some 3 or even 5 years, BUT we will expend as much as possible over annoyances... and sentence them to a much harsher period than the ppl that "slip" through...

Look, I hate spam as much as the next person, been dealing with it JUST as long as most of you have, but I have a serious issues when the judicial system cares more about spam then MY PROTECTION.

I wouldn't be surprised if some murderer or rapist was released to make room for the spammer...

Let us not forget who PAYS for this sentance, and all said and done, he will most likely still be rich when he is released...

Punishment is due, but the system continues to fail...

(Plus, spam created jobs as far as I am concerned)

Re:I hate to say this..

[Anonymous Coward]

(Plus, spam created jobs as far as I am concerned)

Without a doubt one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard. Hip hip hooray for crime! It creates jobs! MAN, you can take that analogy pretty far, too. Just think about it.

Re:wrong sentence

[conteXXt]

sounds like you are volunteering?

A Fair Sentence--

[DrDebug]

If I were the judge, I would get a bit creative and sentence the spammer to one second in jail for each generated spam e-mail.

Let them think on that for a while.... Heh.

(For those of you who are mathematically challenged, that would be approximately 11.5 days per 1 million email spam messages).

Re:A Fair Sentence--

[Anonymous Coward]

(Anonymous Math Man to the rescue!)

He sent about 10 million a DAY.
10 * 11 days = 110 days. So, every day of operation would grant him 110 days in the slammer, more or less.

Say he operated for 3 months (on average 90 days).

(110 * 90) / 365 = 27.1232877 or, aproximately (i.e. very rounded down) 27 years.

Iunno man, you don't get that much for murder in some European countries :P.
Downshift an order of magnitude and we're cool ;)

Re:He's going to.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, minimum security prison is no picnic. The trick is kick someone's ass the first day, or become somebody's bitch. Then everything will be alright.

I tend to agree with you.

[gimpboy]

I hate spam as much as the next fellow, but I prefer technical solutions to legislative ones. I'd prefer it if the web mail people (gmail, hotmail, etc.) and major isp's started offering options like the tagged message delivery agent ( TMDA) to their users. The end result I see with this spam law stuff is a bunch of us citizens going to jail while spamming is outsourced to countries beyond our jurisdiction.

Re:I tend to agree with you.

[Mr Bill]

If everyone on the internet started using TMDA, then the email would stop functioning completely. It is an interesting solution, but all it ends up doing is placing the burden of SPAM on someone else.

TMDA will send a request back to the sender and we all know that spammers don't use their own reply to address. So if everyone used TMDA, then all you are doing is 'Joe Jobbing' some poor shmuck that the spammers happen to be using as a from address.

Also, you are doubling the negative effect of SPAM on the internet by responding to SPAM messages so at least two messages are sent for every SPAM.

This effect can be reduced by using an alternate SPAM filtering solution that drops obvious SPAM, but then you are back to using a filtering solution and you can't claim the 100% no false positives that TMDA is supposed to achieve.

SPAM is a tough problem, and I don't think anyone has come up with the right solution yet. Although I think hurting the perps is a good step...

Re:I tend to agree with you.

[gimpboy]

If everyone on the internet started using TMDA, then the email would stop functioning completely. It is an interesting solution, but all it ends up doing is placing the burden of SPAM on someone else.

TMDA will send a request back to the sender and we all know that spammers don't use their own reply to address. So if everyone used TMDA, then all you are doing is 'Joe Jobbing' some poor shmuck that the spammers happen to be using as a from address.

Actually if everyone was using TMDA, the poor schmuck that recieved the reply by my TMDA system wouldn't actually recieve it. His TMDA system would see the loop and drop the message.

Also, you are doubling the negative effect of SPAM on the internet by responding to SPAM messages so at least two messages are sent for every SPAM.

This might be true initiallly. However, when more people begin using systems such as this, the effectiveness of spam will drop. There will then be less and less spam.

You're focusing on the transient effects. Things that will happen during and shortly after implementation. I'm focusing on the final outcome/long term benefits.

Re:aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of "status" would a spammer would get in jail? (For example, child abusers are the lowest form of life on the prison evolutionary scale)

You know, the myth of the rough justice karmic system in jail is highly disturbing: This seeming belief that federal prisoners are all bad people, but not bad bad, and they mete out justice to the truly bad people.

Child diddlers get killed in prison when it gets someone some fame, and maybe they dream that it'll get them some retribution in the good book. However the people doing the killing are rapists, murderers, extortionists - this is a merry band of robin hoods.

On the flip side the weak, and I'm talking to you 99% of Slashdot, are the ones that are having someone's cock jammed in their mouth/ass every night. The tacit approval of this system is scary, especially given that any of you could be wrongly convicted and tossed in jail. Haha, now you're getting ass fuck gang raped, and you have AIDS!

Love that prison karma!

9 years is a little much...

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

I knew a 40-something-year-old man that went to jail for having sex with a minor. He was only in jail for around 5 years. Why in the world would you give a spammer 9? Seems pretty unbalanced to me.

Re:9 years is a little much...

[Fear the Clam]

That guy only fucked one person.

Re:9 years is a little much...

[sharkb8]

Because he only did it once. If he'd had sex with 1.2 billion minors, should he still only get 5 years. Let's not forget that, most likely, each spam is a crime, not one crime for spamming. And drug crimes, for instance take into account the amount and intent of the offending material. 1/2 an ounce of marijuana? a ticket or a month or two in jail. 200 pounds of weed? Buh Bye.

It doesn't always make sense, because if someone were to rob a bank for $10mil, it would not nearly be as serious as robbing 10mil banks for $1 each.

But that's the way the legislature drafted the law. It'll be interesting to see if the Appeals court will uphold this. But don't forget, we always have the option of voting with out feet. Helllllloooooo Canada.

Re:9 years is a little much...

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

That's a good point, I hadn't thought of it in terms of the frequency. Still though, it just seems strange.

9 Years For Sending E-Mail?

[stanleypane]

Don't get me wrong, I think this guy should be punished, but 9 years is jail seems a bit too stringent to me. I don't see it as being effective, either.

Think about it a minute. A person can be thrown in jail for sending spam. What happens when a company is resposible for sending out millions of spam emails each day? The company cannot be thrown in jail, only fined. How long before individuals start registering as companies and finding a way around criminal jail sentences for sending spam?

Or maybe I've misunderstood the rights a company holds vs. an individual? Someone please enlighten me.

Re:You got a real purty mouth...

[Anonymous Coward]

I did time for hacking. The drug dealers treated me like a hero. "You broke into somebody's computer? Wow, did you make money come out of an ATM or save the world from a virus like in that movie?"

Seriously, most inmates don't have a clue about computers. Jaynes just needs to tell them that he was selling Viagra on the internet and they will treat him like one of their own.

what exactly was the offense?

[Anonymous Coward]

what were the law(s) that were broken and how were they associated to his practices??

Re:what exactly was the offense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Virginia, where AOL is based, prosecuted the case under a law that took effect in 2003 barring people from sending bulk e-mail that is unsolicited and masks its origin.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/04/08/spam.s entence.ap/

9 years???...I doubt that...

[affinity]

This guy will propbably get 6 - 12 months, and probation for a few years.

I would think the 9year sentence was overly harsh and the judge knew this, however it does send a message and sets a high jail term for precedence. Since the "message" has been sent the appeal will be quick with minimum jail time and a fine.

Now to really stop spam, you will need to stop all the idiots that read and buy that crap that's being advertised and put the owners/ceo/presidents of the companies that are advertising via spam in jail.

To stop spam you have to remove the money that fuels it's existence.

Mixed Feelings

[Kurt Wall]

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm glad to see the guy get punished and I have no doubts that he's guilty. And jail time seems appropriate insofar as he'd likely not be able to pay the fines. But is nine years warranted? Why not do to him what was done to Mitnick: no involvement with computers of any sort for some fixed (but long) amount of time.

Re:Mixed Feelings

[stanleypane]

I don't quite follow you when you say, "he'd likely not be able to pay the fines." To whom? Nobody really needs to see that money, because there is no single person that was harmed (or should I say annoyed?) in this instance. The idea would be to fine him into bankruptcy, regardless if anyone actually sees any money.

I think bankruptcy would be a better solution than jail for such a crime. After all, what is this guy going to learn in jail, other than how to become a more effective criminal? Oh yeah, he'll learn how to make wine in a plastic bag under his bed with just a piece of bread and some fruit. Just what we need.

I say fine him and give him obscene amounts of community service.

9 years is a felony?

[OverkillTASF]

I was under the impression that a felony was a crime which carries with it a minimum of 10 years in prison?

Re:9 years is a felony?

[Anonymous Coward]

involuntary manslaughter is a felony too, but it is basically a slap on the wrist.
So is embezzlement and cheating on stocks, but you only get a few months for that...

It's basically Federal law vs. state law.

Anything with ATF, FBI, CIA or Homeland Security involved is instant felony.

Re:9 years is a felony?

[Detritus]

It's usually defined as a crime with a maximum sentence of a year or more in prison.

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[Kirby-meister]

"There's no justice like angry mob justice!"

What do you...

[rbochan]

... call a spammer in jail for 9 years?

A good start.

Now let's work on the politicians.

Re:What do you...

[ebacon]

The only real problem I can see with this is that he's probably going to be put in front of a telephone and a call list ...

Consider the wrong for the punishment

[gearmonger]

Murdering someone hurts a tiny number of people (sometimes just one) incredibly much, while a spammer hurts an incredible number of people just a tiny bit. Are these equal offenses?

I'm not sure how I feel personally about this, but maybe what we have here is a good ol' fashioned public display of punishment -- spammer in stocks for everyone to mock -- just to make sure that the seriousness of the justice system is known by those who might consider spamming. Dunno for sure, just guessing.

On the other hand, maybe the court got a particularly large batch of v1agr4 and c!al!s ads that day.

One thing he won't be doing.

[AtariAmarok]

I don't think he is going to be selling penis lengthening formula to the other guys on his cell-block. He'll be feeling enough pain as it is.

People bought his products

[CohibaVancouver]

According to cbc.ca, he received 10,000 credit card orders in one month, each for $39.95 US

You can see why getting into this business is so tempting... Nearly four hundred thousand dollars in one month. As long as people keep buying, spammers will keep spamming...

Free right's at question

[Anonymous Coward]

Or are you too concerned that he is a OMG1!1!1!1 spammer?

What he did was not illegal at the time he did it.

And he got arreasted in a country(well state) which he was visiting and probaility didn't commit any crimes in.

Sound familer anyone?

Most annoying quote ...

[gstoddart]

Though Oblon has never disputed that his client was a bulk e-mail distributor, he argued during the trial that the law was poorly crafted and that prosecutors never proved the e-mail was unsolicited.

This one quote is why I think pretty much sums up spammers.

Somewhere, someone gave someone else permission for one thing, and these turds act like one obviously opted in.

I get a large volume of spam every week, and I have never opted in to such things. If I allowed someone I had a business relationship to send me e-mail, that doesn't extend to everyone else in the world.

I just despise this whole claim that they can just say "you opted in somewhere, therefore not spam". I think the onus should be on them to prove that I accepted to receive e-mail.

Well, maybe after a few of them go to jail it will improve.

harsh?

[a_greer2005]

I see a running theme of "it was too harsh" in these posts, but there are two things that are being ignored:

1: He was stealing the bandwidth and cpu time of the networks to whom the spam was sent. How much jail time is a stolen CPU cycle worth? Well that brings me to my second point:

2: Most slashdotters (myself included) and the IT industry in general have hated spammers since...well...at least the mid 90s, but particularly and justifiably so in the last few years. With such comments as "these spammers need to be tossed in jail like the theives that they are!" as our war cry - now we have got our wish, do we like it? I do but if you don't, then be carefull what you wish for because you might just get it.

American Idol

[aardwolf64]

If being annoying is a crime, then someone should lock up Mikalah...

Re:American Idol

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little whacky!

Best interview transcript misspelling ever.

Sounds good, NOT

[Lead Butthead]

Please lets just go around and gather all those spammers up and put them in gas chamber so we can read our email again without parsing out the 90% spam.

Re:aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes

[tuxette]

Though, from my minimal understanding, that doesn't exactly put him in a good position either.

No, it doesn't. It all depends on how talented (or not) he is at social engineering, I suppose. I wonder if being able to offer discount Viagra to his fellow cellmates would push him up a few points... :-P

Isn't This Too Much?

[Caraig]

Granted, we all hate spammers. We hate what they do, we hate the way they zombify unsecured gateways, we hate they way they thumb their nose at everyone, we hate what they try to sell, we hate that they try to scam millions a day. We all would love to see every spammer get harsh penalties.

But, really... nine years?

Isn't that a bit much? He won't be serving all that time, of course, but it's a lot of time for spamming.

Wouldn't a better punishment be somethign vaguely like what they did to Mitnick? Forbid the guy from holding any sort of computer-related occupation for ten years. No computer for more than recreational purposes -- oh, heck, he doesn't need to play HL2, no computer at all. No opportunity to spam, and he'll have to make it or break it in a real job (for values of 'real job' which do not include 'IT jobs.') If he's smart, he can do office clerk work, maybe work his way up to office manager (he just can't work anywhere where the office manager also has to manage the computer system.) If he can't hack that, he goes into fastfood or retail. And if he absolutely can't make a living doing something other than spamming... ladies and gentlemen, we have here a dysfunctional human being.

Compared to Mitnick, he'll still be getting off easy. But it makes a lot more sense than nine years in jail. And the taxpayers aren't paying for his stay in the slam.

And if you want to get really creative, have him subscribed to every junk mail list in existence... with no opt-out.

I don't know, it just seems like nine years is ridiculous when we don't even put away physically violent felons for that long.

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[FreshFunk510]

Honestly, he'll probably get out in half the time with good behavior. Plus, they're just probably using him as an example.

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[aafiske]

You have a point, but I think the idea is that since it's kind of a pain to track down and prosecute spammers, there better be a serious penalty for when they do.

Think of it like odds. If you have low odds of getting caught, then the punishment better be fairly stiff to make the number balance out so that people think 'erm, maybe I'd better not...'. If everyone who spammed could get easily punished, then your suggestions would be more appropriate.

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[WillAffleckUW]

Granted, we all hate spammers. We hate what they do, we hate the way they zombify unsecured gateways, we hate they way they thumb their nose at everyone, we hate what they try to sell, we hate that they try to scam millions a day. We all would love to see every spammer get harsh penalties.

But, really... nine years?

You're right, we should insist on 20 years. Or three tours of duty in Iraq.

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[Ziviyr]

But, really... nine years?

Isn't that a bit much? He won't be serving all that time, of course, but it's a lot of time for spamming.

Math time!!!

Lets assume each spam he sent out was worth a second of someone else's time on average, ... wether it meant setting up a spamwall that it slammed into or someone actually took a few minutes to read, comprehend, and send a thoughtful reply with a credit card number attached.

10 million emails a day now becomes 10 million seconds of life sucked out of the general population... 115 days a day.

9 years is about 3287 days, or over 28 days of spamming.

If he was spamming for a year, then he is getting a light sentence, even accounting for effortless spamblocking and seasoned spam deleting email users. And mind you he won't be totally consumed without sleep, blocking filtering and deleting spam while he is doing his time. Assuming he doesn't win an appeal or something...

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[mushroom blue]

that'd be a great idea... ...if that was how the legal system worked.

see, in the real world, people are usually tried and convicted for breaking a law. the difficulty of getting caught has no bearing on the length of punishment. the damages have a much higher bearing.

but all of this shouldn't matter for spam, because nobody was ever killed because of spam. nobody's property was ever seized because of spam. nobody's constitutional rights were ever violated because of spam.

can we say "not valid for criminal court"?

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[mushroom blue]

More math time!!!

let's assume that the average Everquest junkie spends 6 hours a day indulging in his habit. over the course of twelve months, this comes to about 2,184 hours, or 91 days of everquest.

that's 91 days of life sucked from just one person every year. multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of people who play MMORPG's, there's a mind-boggling lack of productivity and wasted time. and we're all sure these people would have been doing something much more productive with their time if they weren't playing these games.

being we're now stringing a spammer up for wasting our collective seconds, I think it's proper we start taking out some of these other lowlifes in the world. I say we start trying the producers of MMORPG's in criminal courts, and impose similar jail sentences. not only do these criminals waste people's time, but they actually have the audacity to charge these people for the inconvenience.

and then we can start with television executives. imagine the convictions we could get there!

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[Ziviyr]

I somewhat agree, though it'd be harder to whip the masses into a frenzy over it.

I guess TV would be first, gotta smear it by saying TV radio waves cause cancer, then present a few people who are adversely effected and then the case begins...

"Everybody loves Raymond right? This guy doesn't, Raymond gave him cancer!!"

Re:Isn't This Too Much?

[aztracker1]

The difference is people *choose* to play Everquest, or watch tv... they don't force feed the crap to you at your work (as an example).

Fortune?

[Robotron23]

Unfortunately the sentence has been postponed while the case is being appealed.

Fortune is a totally separate field in the courts, most of the time western courts are too soft on people like this guy.

He'll wind up with a small fine and something like a year, halved by good behaviour, and he wouldn't need lady luck on his side to acheive that. He'll be back out, spamming the world before the decade is even out.

Time to take a look at ourselves again?

[t_allardyce]

Are sentences like this really necessary in a civilised, non-barbaric society? i mean locking someone up for 9 years for this sort of offence? Its very easy to say "oh hes a bastard throw away the key" or "don't do the crime if you cant do the time" but in reality this mans life is about to be ruined. Maybe im a weak person, but i certainly couldnt take 9 years in jail, i'd want to hang myself, even forgetting the behind bars aspect, hes probably going to be in the same place as some real bastards and some raping and beating is probably on the books too, isn't that essentially the same as corporal punishment? are we really that sick as a society?

Re:Time to take a look at ourselves again?

[SuiteSisterMary]

And your alternative suggestions are?

Re:Time to take a look at ourselves again?

[stratjakt]

Barred from owning or using a computer without supervision?

Fines?

America has a "lock everyone up" attitude that's just sickening.

Jail doesn't deter crime, and the "department of corrections" is the biggest misnomer on the planet, they've never corrected anything or anyone.

So take a spammer, annoying but pretty much non-threatening, lock him up for 10 years, and hooray - we have a brand new hardened criminal who can now enter the lucrative field of carjacking, burglary, rape..

Prison is like a university where you learn to be a better, more ruthless criminal.

Slashbots are real quick to defend Mitnick, and frankly I see them both in about the same light: assholes who shouldn't be allowed to use a computer, but don't necessarily deserve "hard time" either.

Re:Time to take a look at ourselves again?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Jail isn't a deterrent; it's a method of keeping criminals out of the general populace.

Unfortunately, nobody can come up with anything better.

Re:Time to take a look at ourselves again?

[t_allardyce]

Well seeing as he's not exactly a violent gang member with an itchy trigger finger, would it not be so bad to tag him and put him on probation (which maybe will happen)? If he does 'spam again' its hardly going to land someone in hospital. While spam is bloody annoying, and at times a real denial of service, it can be tackled in other ways and its DoS capabilities usually come from many many different spammers hitting the same box at once, not a co-ordinated attack.

Re:Time to take a look at ourselves again?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. But I thought this was happening in the US.

Fraud was not illegal?

[AtariAmarok]

"What he did was not illegal at the time he did it."

You mean fraud such as his Fedex scam was legal?

Hopefully

[DiscoNick]

he gets to take it up the ass with a letter opener to remind him of his crimes.

Pound-Me-The-Ass or Conjugal Visit Prison

[MeauxToo]

So .. does he does his dime in pound-me-in-the-ass or conjugal visit prison? Oh I hope it's pound-in-the-ass prison ....

Re:Pound-Me-The-Ass or Conjugal Visit Prison

[EllF]

Yeah. Or we could just execute him, for if people can freely send emails, the terrorists have won.

Re:Should have done something better with his time

[jdbeast00]

more than 750K/month?

$750K a month?

[NotQuiteReal]

$750K a month? I'd like to see the IRS records - or is part of the 9 years tax evasion too?

If he paid his taxes on $750K a month, he is doing more societal good than harm. I figure that'd be about 2.4M/year in federal taxes - more than 1000 average Joe's pay.

Re:$750K a month?

[ebyrob]

Good idea. I'll start some pyramid schemes and be sure to pay taxes on my earnings. That way I'm *helping* society.

Re:$750K a month?

[wayne]

If he paid his taxes on $750K a month, he is doing more societal good than harm. I figure that'd be about 2.4M/year in federal taxes - more than 1000 average Joe's pay.

There is no way he is doing "society more good than harm". Just because he received $750k per month, doesn't mean he delivered $750k worth of products to people. That is a big part of the problem with spammers.

The cost to send email is *FAR* cheaper than the cost to receive it, even when you don't take into account the spam filters, the lost time spent deleting the spam, the lost email due to mistakes made by the spam filters, etc.

Actual, detailed analysis of the costs of spam are around $0.10-$1.00/spam. Yes, that is much higher than you might initially guess, but that is because so much of the cost his hidden and spread over so many different people involved with each spam. This person was costing society tens of millions of dollars per month, and "earning" only $750k.

Re:aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes

[tuxette]

Well, I never said that I approve of the prison social system. I just acknowledge it exists. I'm just curious as to how a spammer will be treated by other prisoners now and in the future.

Free Speech?

[ImaFraud]

This sentence sounds more than fair although, I do believe a rather sizable fine should accompany it as well. If you think about the shear magnitude of seding millions upon millions of e-mails every week and the rather sizeable load that places upon unsupecting peoples bandwidth (especially with dial-up lines) and not to mention the load it places upon major mail servers, this sentence is absolutely just. Bandwidth costs money.. somebody else's right to free speech is fine and dandy as long as it doesn't cost ME anything. Just my 2 cents.

Not a First Amendment Issue

[Dony]

A number of people have remarked on the harshness of the sentence and the "first amendment ramifications." I agree that nine years is rather steep for what is essentially harassment. I would like to comment, however, on the spech issue. Spam is not protected speech. It is not protected because you are abusing someone else's resources to make it. In the US, you have the right to say whatever you want on your own time with your own money (i.e. snail-mail junk mail.) You do not, however, have the right to use up the recipients' bandwidth and the bandwidth of their ISPs. In other words, the recipient is forced to bear the costs of your speech. You don't have the right to make someone else pay for your speech.

Rapists and pedophiles don't get that kind of time

[stratjakt]

But then again, they don't cost the almighty corporations any money, so it's a much lesser offense.

The private prison industry must love this

[iminplaya]

Putting people in prison for trivial offenses(that is what this is. Quit your whining) is definitely good for this business. Who says crime doesn't pay?

Re:The private prison industry must love this

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm...modded by an investor, apparently...Yep, can't let this dirty little secret out.

Free speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure his spaming before the law was enacted cannot be called criminal activity but it does show the judge that he graduated from antisocial activities into unlawful activities.

As far as the free speech argument goes since this a commercial venture to promote the products of other commercial ventures "his" rights are not being abused. If he had made websites and offered his products there nobody would have been offended, but no he had to knowingly abuse the systems of others to promote his products.

If I were to shout into your ear all day and all night there would be a point where you whould have me put in jail. Now how long would I spend in jail if I repeated this 10 Million plus times?

Does quantity mean nothing?

[raygundan]

You get a harsher punishment for sending TEN MILLION spam messages per day than you get for committing one murder. I suspect the penalty for committing ten million murders per day is still, in fact, higher.

If you set his penalty at a whopping one second of jail time per violation, which seems fairly reasonable, you'd have 4.4 years of jail time. That 4.8 years includes only the two weeks of emails he sent after the laws were past.

14 days of violations
* 10,000,000 emails per day = 140,000,000 emails

= 140,000,000 seconds in jail = 4.4 years.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[raygundan]

That second 4.8 is a typo. It should be 4.4... sorry for the mixup.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the penalty for committing ten million murders per day is still, in fact, higher.

I believe the precedent for anyone who manages ten million murders is to call them Emperor and do whatever they say. For 10 million a day I think you'd get your own fanatical priests and a bunch of temples.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[ArsonSmith]

So we should just set the sentance for spamming at a very tiny 2 seconds per spam mail in jail. That seems fair to me. Send out 150 spams get 5 minutes in jail. Maybe my parents would quit sending me those crappy jokes if they had to go server a couple of minutes in a jail cell.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[dynamo]

Unfortunately, I think your parents have a legitimate claim on having a prior relationship with you.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[spektr]

Unfortunately, I think your parents have a legitimate claim on having a prior relationship with you.

Yet another annoying opt-out scheme...

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

1 year in seconds = 31 556 926 seconds. Let's round a bit and call this 32 million. So to get a year in jail, you'd have to send out 16 million spams.

The guy was sending out 1 million spams/day. If he kept that up for more than 144 days, then by your metric, he got a light sentence.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[Anonymous Coward]

So we should just set the sentance for spamming at a very tiny 2 seconds per spam mail in jail. That seems fair to me. Send out 150 spams get 5 minutes in jail. Maybe my parents would quit sending me those crappy jokes if they had to go server a couple of minutes in a jail cell.

Evidently the law agrees with you. He mailed 10 mil a day for 2 weeks after the law went into effect:
2sec x 10mil/day x 14 days = 280mil seconds or 8.88 years

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[quarkscat]

Considering the vast volume of spam that this
joker dumped out on the internet, the theft of
available bandwidth was apparently left out of
the sentencing equation -- IMHO, that should have
been 9 years of hard labor.

Re:Does quantity mean nothing?

[rjshields]

if they had to go server a couple of minutes in a jail cell

Freudian slip.

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

By imprisoning spammers, you...

• Decrease the supply of spam providers
• Increase the costs of spamming
• Attract people who don't fear the rule of law towards this field...

Organized crime's new enterprise: spam!

Spamhaus? Some of their organizers mysteriously disappear.

Sys admins at ISPs? Bribed to allow spam traffic, or disappeared for blocking spam traffic.

ISPs? Hit up for "protection"

The next frontier!

Re:Uh...

[Intron]

Tru - look at the drug trade. The more people go to jail, the higher the profits for those that are left. Still, the best payoff to risk is smuggling freon.

CBC's view

[cassady_]

You might also want to check out this article on Canada's CBC. This guy was making a half million a month doing this, and had assets of $24 million. This is the kind of money that is normally associated with narcotic trafficing. Perhaps the lengthy sentence is necessary as a deterrent.

a suspended sentence is a great idea...

[ecalkin]

as long as it starts like this: you will be suspended by the neck until dead!

eric

hmmm..

[crakbone]

He made 750,000 dollars a month sending junk product and porn ads. Not only that he forged his name in the ads.

I would say that more data about the trial is needed.

But the idea of someone sending porn ads and viagra listings to my underage niece just because she wants to get emails from grandma makes me sick.

The jury seemed to think the 9 years was valid.

I'd say in this case the law might be working as intended.

You are so right. Your comment made me do a 180...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're absolutely right. Spending $450,000 is too much money. I say hang 'em. Hang 'em high. At noon. High noon. How much is a piece of rope these days anyway? I'll be sure to personally give the mysterious guy dressed in black a nice tip too.

Only 9 years ?

[itsnotthenetwork]

He's nothin' but a low-down, double-dealin', back-stabbin', larcenous, perverted worm!!
Hangin's too good for him!!
Burnin's too good for him!!
He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and buried alive!!!

Re:Only 9 years ?

[bckrispi]

Stuuuuuuuuurrrrrmmmmmmmm!!!!

But on a per spam basis...

[sl70]

If he sent out 10 million spams a day for a year, assuming he worked 200 days a year, that would only be about 0.14 seconds of time in the can for each spam. That's nothing!

Re:wrong sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like you are volunteering?

Sure, I'll rape them in the shower on Tuesdays.

AOL cds

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEO of AOL should also go to jail for spamming millions of people with their cds. http://nomoreaolcds.com/>

Re:aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes

[stratjakt]

There's a suit in the courts seeking to overhaul the entire justice system, based on the premise of cruel and unusual punishment. I'm not sure how it's going, frankly I hope they win.

Everyone in the Dept. of Corrections knows about the constant rape and torture of inmates, by inmates, and yet have done little to fix the problem in a century.

Sentencing someone to rape is cruel and unusual by any stretch of the term.

At any rate, prison makes bad people worse. There are dangers to society that need to be locked away, but the attitude of "throw everyone in for everything" is really warped. In my state, it's a manditory 10 years for being busted for anything drug related within 5 miles of a school. Get out a map of your city or town - unless you're way out on the farm, EVERYONE lives within 5 miles of a school. Erego, every college kid busted with a half a doobie gets his life ruined.

And then theres the practice of civil forfeiture, a great way to get around the constitutional protection to be able to refuse to testify against your spouse. "Mrs Malda, either you testify that Rob was selling crack to 6 year olds, or we take your home, car, all your money, and then put your kids into protective custody so you'll never see them again"

Cheer all you want about this, slashbots, this just sets a precedent for when you're in front of a Judge for downloading those Metallica mp3s. After all, a computer crime is computer crime to a clueless jury. Hell, the DMCA calls for even stiffer penalties than this, should you dare modify that PS2 to play copied titles.

The Value of a Person

[TimeTraveler1884]

Child molesters don't tend to last long in prison...I'm thinking spammers won't last too long, either.

Currently taking bets on how long Jeremy will last...

That's pretty cold man. I hate spam as much as the next person, but damn, it's just email. Just because someone sends you an email for viagra does not mean you have to buy it. Show some self control.

This view of the worth of people in our society I think incites a cycle of degradation of our society. Some people commit crimes because they feel that no one gives a shit about them. And they're right, because most people will look at a total stranger without any empathy whatsoever.

"Oh, that man sent spam. I hate spam! Therefore I hate him!" Where is the logic in this reasoning? Because, people make this leap of judgement everyday.

Does anyone who becomes spammers, drug attics, prostitutes, etc. dream as kid that one day they will be those things? Probably not. No kid I have ever met wants those things. Most kids want to do great and noble things. Some of us lose that as we grow up, our experience in the world makes us feel that we somehow have a deficiency. That everyone is strangers and don't care - which comes back to the fact that is indeed true.

In conclusion to this, one of the most important things to note is there are no silver bullets. Hip-hop music and video games is not the root of all evil. But it is a sad day when most of the people in this world look at another human and assign value to his life based on the fact that they emailed spam.

/Soapbox

The right sentence

[Roadkills-R-Us]

He should have to compensate folks. There's no easy way at this point to do fair repayment to everyone he harmed, but he could at least have his wages heavily garnished for a nice, long time, and use it for tax reduction. Or use it to pay for going after other spammers. Or buying spam firewalls for ISPs. Whatever. He should *pay*, and it he should pay *society* somehow. Not just be out of circulation.

As for rapists and murderers getting off easily, that needs to be dealt with as well. I'm not willing to just throw up my hands and watch every criminal walk. Send 'em all (with the spammers) to Austin. We apparently don't have enough money for new roads (all the tax abatements for new business, I guess). Put 'em to work building roads. Not enough money for guards? I bet I could come up with a set of volunteers to help with that...

Re:The right sentence

[BasilBrush]

And how do you think a spammer is going to earn the money to pay a fine? By spamming some more of course. Depending on the size of the fine, it just becomes another cost of doing business (see Microsoft). It's far more sensible to jail spammers so they can't spam.

Re:The right sentence

[soft_guy]

Not enough money for guards? I bet I could come up with a set of volunteers to help with that...

I'm real sure there will be a lot of people wanting to volunteer to work for free as jail guards.

What color is the sky in your world?

Re:The right sentence

[wmspringer]

I'm real sure there will be a lot of people wanting to volunteer to work for free as jail guards.

In exchange for putting spammers to work doing something useful? I'm in..

Re:The right sentence

[AstroDrabb]

This spammer is going to jail because he worked as an idividual. The only thing spammers need to do is set up a corporation and do all their spamming behind the corporate sheild. MS doesn't go to jail for the crap they pull.

This "law" will not stop spamming. All it will do is move the spammers out of the USA or cause them to set up "corporations". This way the spammers behind it all can get away with the same things corps can get away with and the only punishment will be fines.

MS, Oracle and BEA send me tons of crap spam. Though I will admit that there is a difference because the big corp spammers are smart enough to not spoof an email address and honour opting out. Seriously though, if I was a spammer, I would just set up a corp and use a valid email to send out "targeted marketing" with valid opt-out. Problem solved for spammers. They no longer have to worry about this "law". Oh, and the smart spammers will just make their opt-out a "per-account" opt-out scheme. Meaning that for each different "targeted ad" they require you to opt out. So if you opt out of their "Penis enlarger" account, you still will not be opted out of the "breast enlarger" account or the "XXX" account and so on.

Re:The right sentence

[mOdQuArK!]

The only thing spammers need to do is set up a corporation and do all their spamming behind the corporate sheild.

Disclaimer: IANAL. The "corporate shield" does not protect individuals from criminal liability - only civil liability.

Re:The right sentence

[borud]

He should have to compensate folks. There's no easy way at this point to do fair repayment to everyone he harmed, but he could at least have his wages heavily garnished for a nice, long time, and use it for tax reduction.

Monetary compensation makes sense when people have the financial means. If you take away his future all you do is push the guy to become even more of a criminal. Punishment is pointless if there is no point after which your debt to society is settled.

Community service. Instead of sticking him in a prison for a fraction of what he was sentenced to, they should put one of those tracking devices on his ankle, put him in an orange jumpsuit that says "CONVICTED SPAMMER" on the back and have him pick up litter along public roads. Preferably somewhere with a low speed limit so people can take a good look at him.

Just throwing him in jail costs too much money. It's not like his is a violent crime, so there is no point in locking him up to protect society. This way it is more affordable. Picking up other people's trash 12 hours per day, 6 days per week for 4-5 years sounds like a fitting punishment for infrastructural sabotage.

Freedom?

[FedToTheDogs]

Apparently now is the time where simple money loss can cause imprisonment. Why not be fair and just make him pay oodles of money?! NO! We must protect our children from spam. Spam kills so many that we must now imprison people for 8 years. Help fight spam or it will rape your daughter, give you lung cancer, And blow timothy causing multiple or---nm.

How many emails made it to actual eyeballs?

[potus98]

10M spams sent != 10M people annoyed. I'd be curious to know how many messages were...

actually sent to valid addresses to begin with?
dumped by relay-based filters (ORDB, etc)?
screened by off-the-shelf anti-spam/virus s/w?
screened by custom filters?
deleted without opening?

Sure, maybe 10M were sent, but I suspect a VERY small percentage actually made it to eyeballs. And of further interest: for the ones that actually did make it to eyeballs, what percentage of those viewers actually responded to the offer? Obviously, someone is out there responding to this crap if they keep sending it.

Criminals are not usually charged with crimes based on the number of bullets they fired at a victim; rather, they are charged with the results of the bullet[s] striking the victim. New crimes may include; attempted spam, involuntary spam-slaughter, accidental spam, self-defense through use of deadly spam, statatory spam.

Hmmm... statatory spam? Now that's interesting. What if your ad for pr0n makes it to a kid's in-box?

Re:How many emails made it to actual eyeballs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The crimes are not nessecarily against the people who saw his spam, but also people who have to commit time and computer resources to fighting spam. Filtering spam requires additional computational power, and so does the time it takes to develop filtering rules.

Re:How many emails made it to actual eyeballs?

[Anonymous Coward]

10M spam mails ?== 10M lines of defending code?

dumped by relay-based filters (ORDB, etc)?
screened by off-the-shelf anti-spam/virus s/w?
screened by custom filters?
deleted without opening

If you were one of the many, many voluntary ppl. fighting spam by

• actually sent to valid addresses to begin with?
• creating honeypots
• maintaining blacklists
• improving spam filters
• adjusting (personal) filter rules

you would know that more than 9 years of manpower went into the infrastructure that you described. Mind that hardly any of these ppl. are in a (constitutional) position which grants them some revenue from their work, opposites law enforcement or what else you might have in mind in your inappropriate comparison.

No, it's not too much!

[cpghost]

Wouldn't a better punishment be somethign vaguely like what they did to Mitnick?

Hmmm... not every spammer is necessarily and automatically a computer geek. Spammers may pay some geeks to do the dirty programming job for them, but they are (slimy) businessmen before everything else. Preventing them from touching a computer won't stop them at all and would be totally useless. A heavy jail sentence is much better for this kind of antisocial behaviour.

Re:No, it's not too much!

[mushroom blue]

oh totally.
I think we should impose heavy jail sentences for antisocial behaviors, whether it be spammers, homeless people, public drunks, or guys that walk down the street shouting at themselves. they just gotta go.

how dare those spammers want to make money! it's not like the people who buy the products should be given equal blame for making spam profitable!

Re:No, it's not too much!

[cpghost]

There's an important difference here: regular, small-scale and small-intensity anti-social behavior is not always coupled with the desire to make profit using equipment and resources that are not your own. A public drunk harms only himself, but a spam operative consumes HUGE amounts of resources (bandwidth and time) for the purpose of making money. This is very different intent and the damage to the society is much higher. THAT's why big spammers ought to get much higher penalties than a poor, mostly harmless troublemaker.

Forbes link

[idiotnot]

Eh, y'all might want to change that. It's just the brief of the same AP story (which is the long writethru).

Sin of annoyance

[Anonymous Coward]

Essenaiily, the dude's got sent to jail for being annoying anti-social jerk. Yeah, yeah, I know, the estimated economic cost and all that. But in essence.

Who knew it would take this long before such outcome? Well, maybe this isn't the first one.

You're a stupid ass moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about trespassing? How about using equipment that not only doesn't belong to you, but which the owner has expressly forbidden you from using? How about using that equipment so much that it makes legitimate users unable to use it? How about the millions of dollars that people and companies spend to combat spam? How about the fact that open communications via email are IMPOSSIBLE because of these idiots.

Anyone that says this sentence is too harsh needs to realize that there's more to spam than hitting "delete" on a few emails in your personal inbox. It drives companies out of business and disrupts the economy.

9 years is excellent

[TomorrowPlusX]

9 years is excellent, in the terms of monetary damage to corporations for bandwidth cost, and intangibles such as mass frustration.

But, our prison system is full.

Therefore, I say, this is why public stocks, were an excellent "deterrent". You put him in a stock for, say, 12 hours a day in front of city hall. Maybe for a month, or two. I imagine that'd give him some time to think.

Re:informative niGganigga

[Anonymous Coward]

Red crow flies at midnight. Sack lunch at Grandma's house.

Give him a good keyboard

[Anders Andersson]

I can agree with 9 years, but I'd leave out the "jail" part. If the victims really want to get even, he should be confined to a keyboard and required to press delete once for each unsolicited message he has sent. After a few days, he will probably beg to have the sentence commuted to jail time instead.

I don't want that kind of revenge myself, and I think American jail sentences are way too harsh in general (I'm not American). I'd be satisfied with a picture of the guy behind bars, to paste it next to my mailbox as a deterrent...

Re:Give him a good keyboard

[networkBoy]

" he should be confined to a keyboard and required to press delete once for each unsolicited message he has sent"

Awesome. That would likely be an excellent deterrant to other spammers (more so than jail time too). Even if it was once foe every 10 e-mails sent.

I wonder if that would be considered cruel?
-nB

Re:Give him a good keyboard

[Just Jim]

You almost got it.

Let him be at home with his computer and a keyboard hitting delete. But to take a break, or have lunch he has to reply to the e-mails that say 'Break Time' and 'Lunch Time'.

Of course, he'll have a lot of bogus e-mails also saying 'Break Time' and 'Lunch Time', and replying to those e-mails doesn't get him any breaks or lunch.

Now that's fair.

Re:Give him a good keyboard

[Math, The Ancient]

Delete and a return stroke for the confirmation box.

What type of idiot are you?

[www.sorehands.com]

It has already been ruled that restricting fax spamming is not infringment of speech. It has been ruled that postal spam can be required to be stopped - by request.

It is not infringment of speech when one is required to follow certain rules to use your or you ISP's equiptment.

yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

With the shitty state of the US judicial system, I doubt he will see one day of jail time.

Crime is not going to go down until punishment is severe enough to make the criminal think twice about committing a crime.

• If you commit a crime in which at least one person is caused bodily injury, then you are to suffer the exact same bodily injury.
• If you commit a crime in which at least one person dies, then you are put to death.

Also, we need to take the luxuries out of the prison system. Prisoners should only be allowed the following:

• a cot and blanket
• two meals per day
• you do NOT leave your cell until you time is served

The problem is that in prison, the prisoners can look forward to television, a library, getting a college degree, daily excercise, three meals per day, the possibility of earning money while performing work, commissary items (cigarettes, soda pop, sweets, magazines. etc), email/computer use, family/friends visitation, free medical/dental/psychological help, and much more, and they don't have to perform one bit of labor for these things. It's a shame because I don't even have some of these things and I have never even had a parking ticket.

If an unemployed, homeless loner robs a bank, he is set for many years with all the things he didn't have before robbing the bank.

The fact is, punishment does not fit the crime and criminals know it. If they are convicted, they can just appeal the case or "buy" their way out of trouble with money or the influence of famous/important friends or family.

If you are convicted of a crime, you go directly to prison where you get a cot, blanket and two meals per day and you do not ever leave your cell or see another human being until your time is served. If you commit suicide, well, that just means that tax dollars aren't wasted keeping another worthless human being alive.

Fix the system, or STFU.

I'd like to wish him

[smartin]

A hard pounding in the ass every day for nine years.

Re:I'd like to wish him

[Beardo the Bearded]

...with Cial.1.s and p3.n1s enl@rg3.me.nt pills d3l.l1.v3d d1sc.r33tl.y to his cellmate's door.

He made 750,000 a month ? Shit .

[zymano]

No wonder they don't care about laws.

Anyone know why they can't crack down on the other abusers from Spamhaus list ?

You sound like a spammer!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should be getting 9 years.

The sentence is reasonable

[RedLaggedTeut]

While I'm sorry for the guy, the sentence is somewhat reasonable.

10 Million emails a day makes 3.650.000.000 in a year. Suppose one second of your lifetime is spent deleting one spam email, you arrive at more than 115 years being spent deleting his spam. You save time by spam filters, but they cost resources and time to implement too.

Re:aside from the Viagra+don't drop the soap jokes

[Peter Cooper]

I don't know. Perhaps he'd be like the next Mitnick, and eventually get out and start a spam consultancy business and be considered a hero in the industry? :-)

Make room, save money and end corruption

[TiggertheMad]

It's silly to throw someone in jail in a country where we already have an overcrowded jail system.

Perhaps we should stop arresting people for drug useage and posession, and simply legalize it. This will save millions of dollars anually, allow cops to focus on more important things, free up court time and jail space, and cease 'subsidizing' organized crime by pushing drug prices up. Do that and there will be plenty of space for murderers, rapists, and spamkings.

Prohibition failed, the drug war is no different.

He'll wish the prisoners didn't use his stuff

[Mustang Matt]

He'll hope those convicts he'll be sharing a cell with haven't been buying viagra from him.

Re:He'll wish the prisoners didn't use his stuff

[Mustang Matt]

Redundant but UserFriendly liked it.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050410

small sentance compared to drug convictions

[mathmathrevolution]

The damage being done by somebody sending out one hundred and forty million spam messages and somebody commiting a serious crime like rape are not easily comparable. How spams do you have to delete from your inbox before you say to yourself "I'd rather have been raped"? ten million? twenty million?

Nonetheless, I think it makes sense that the punishment for sending out massive amounts of spam exceeds the punishment for, say, possesion of drugs. I'm certainly not going to boo-hoo because some spammer, somebody who is causing direct and broad damage to our livelihood, gets a few extra years in the slammer, while somebody enjoying illicit substances in the privacy of his own home gets sent to jail for at least that long.

White collar vs Blue Collar crime...

[trims]

I see a lot of people decrying the 9-year length of sentence as excessive. I'd like to promote the idea that its actually lenient, given the harm to society.

First, for those who haven't RTFA, this guy's crime wasn't just "spamming", it was the electronic equivalent of mail fraud. Take a look here for mail fraud penalties. Yup - that's right. Up to 5 YEARS per occurance. Not per person actually defrauded, but per mail sent.

Furthermore, we seem to want to punish "blue collar" crime (physical violence and theft) as somehow more heinous than "white collar" crime (usually fraud and theft of money or intangible property). As a poster above noted, blue collar crime tends to have a severe impact on a very limited number of people, though in the aggregate it also attacks a locality's social fabric (consider the number of violent crimes in someplace like South Central LA and the correlation to property values there). White collar crime, however, tends to impact a large number of people to a lesser extent, but also directly attacks the fundamental underpinnings of the society: in particular, the fundamental trust in fairness and shared responsibility that is essential for modern societies to function.

Fraud in particular is a particularly heinous crime from a societal standpoint, as it attacks the basic trust we put in financial transactions. A CEO giggering quarterly numbers is doing more than just cheating some stockholders out of a few cents in stock price - he's attacking the whole investing system which depends on truth in information dissemination. For if investors can't trust that a company's 10k annual report has real numbers, how can they invest?

White collar crime needs to be far more heavily punished than it currently is. And, it is much more deterred by increased prosecution and higher penalties than blue collar crime. Blue collar crime is generally only deterred by increased police presence (i.e. preventative measures) and not by increased penalties. White collar crime, on the other hand, generally shows a strong correlation to the likelihood of prosecution and severity of penalty. This is due to the fact that most white collar crime is committed by the more wealthy segment of the population, who generally do a risk analysis before committing the crime (i.e. "I'll steal $100,000 from the company, if I'm only 10% likely to get caught and only face 3 months in jail, but won't steal if I've a 50% chance of getting caught or if the sentence will be 5 years").

Also, remember that as "non-violent" criminals, white collar criminals tend to get put in low-security prisons, which cost much less to maintain than those in for violent crimes.

Overall, I'd like to see us start to put the emphasis on white collar crime instead of blue collar crime. In the big picture, I think it's far more damaging to society, and is far more frequent than people think.

There are some issues with this case (more specificly, the technicalities of the anti-spam law), but in the big picture, I think the sentence is exceedingly fair.

-Erik

Re:White collar vs Blue Collar crime...

[Anonymous Coward]

A CEO giggering quarterly numbers is doing more than just cheating some stockholders out of a few cents in stock price - he's attacking the whole investing system which depends on truth in information dissemination.

It's actually the CFO that giggers the numbers. Sure, he's under the direction of the CEO (and the board), but it's his responsibility to make sure the numbers are correct, not the CEO. That is why companies hire a CFO, so the CEO doesn't have to deal with the numbers -- the CEO needs to concentrate on executing operations.

Other than that, I agree with your stance on white collar crime. It affects many more people than blue collar crime. What I do disagree with is the fact that this man was charged for "spam". Sending mass-unsolicited-commercial-email has nothing to do with it. This guy was committing fraud. Put him away for fraud.

Re:White collar vs Blue Collar crime...

[Eric S Raymond]

people never go to jail for junk mail; the non-electronic type.

Wouldn't fines be better? They made money, they should give it up.

Re:White collar vs Blue Collar crime...

[pipingguy]

Very well stated. Also to be considered is the mentality of these white collar criminals, which tend to poison and corrupt (subtly or not) an honest work environment for people just trying to do their jobs.

Violent is not relevant here

[cpghost]

His crime was not a violent one, he shouldn't go to jail for 9 years.

There's something wrong with this kind of reasoning. Even murder would affect only one victim, and their relatives. Say, 10 people or so. Mass-spamming affects hundreds of millions of people every day. It steals a lot of their time from them.

If you steal from one person, you get convicted to a small sentence. But do it to millions of people, and you'll be a repeat offender and would be prosecuted by every law enforcement agency. Spamming is nothing more than repeat offense on a gigantic scale.

Killers affect only a few people, and society gets all berserk about it, going to extremes like capital punishment in some states. Spammers affect a whole lot more of people (though, certainly not as "strikingly" as killers, but nonetheless), and they should not even serve 9 years in jail?

By the same token: white collar crime (Enron, anyone?) is not a violent crime. But willfully bankrupting corporations affects also a lot of people much more than a puny murderer. Should white collar crime not be prosecuted harshly, just because it is non-violent?

Re:Violent is not relevant here

[LiquidCoooled]

Repeat offense or not, this guy ran some software and now goes to prison.

An individual spammer is like a person whispering in a library, individually its a small annoyance, but if everybody does it, it stops you doing what you came to do.

This guy should be removed from the internet, he SHOULDN'T be in prison.

Yes, I know it would be difficult, but there should be some way that we can do it.

Maybe give him an electronic tag with a huge multi tesla magnet in to wipe the drive of any machine he goes near, or something more technological.
If the tv license evasion detector vans can pickup when a household has a tv on, surely something similar could be built for a user in proximity to computer tech.

Anyway, original topic, this guy shouldn't go to jail.

Re:Violent is not relevant here

[cpghost]

This guy should be removed from the internet, he SHOULDN'T be in prison.

Not every spammer is an IT geek. They can use (or have people use) software written by others. A spammer is essentially a businessman who uses (or induces people to use) IT technology. Even if you forbid internet access, that would not change anything, because that guy would still use his money to pay other people (with access) to spread this spam.

justice?

[e40]

Dan White got a 7-yr sentence (of which he only served 4 or 5 years) for killing the Mayor of SF, CA and another supervisor. He used the now famous "twinkie defense". (The only real justice in this case was that White comitted suicide when he got out of jail.)

Can someone tell me why a spammer should get more jail time than Dan White?

You can also compare the sentences for drug related crimes to both of these cases.

There is serious consistency problems in our system of justice.

Re:justice?

[Moderator]

My cousin robbed a bank, shot the owner, got into a high speed chase in excess of 100 mph, and when he was apprehended, was found with several thousand dollars of cocaine on him. He got fifteen months for it. This is, by the way, some thirty minutes away from the guy in the original article.

Re:Thoughts...But he IS cheaper in jail!

[fizzup]

$50k per year to lock him up. Okay.

10M email per day, $0.0001 per email cost to victims. That's only 1/100th of a penny, surely a lower bound.

10,000,000 * $0.0001 = $1000 per day. Let's say he's a little lazier than the average Joe, so he only works 200 days per year. That's still $200K per year to have him on the outside.

We should help him appeal.

[crovira]

Not for clemency but so that we can get our hands on him.

He may discover that he doesn't want to appeal.

Irrationality of response towards spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapists, murders (who get probation or prison sentences), burglars, and even white collar criminals do far more to hurt society than spammers do yet there is no great call for the same sort of vigilante justice as there is for spammers.

One thing I do know, however, is that not a single person who says these things has the balls to go out and commit these acts of violence towards them.

Thanks for the irrefutable proof that...

[D4C5CE]

...9 years actually are too lenient! ;-)

Let's just hope the daily documentary on "A spammer's life in jail" will be televised/webcast soon, for anyone else in his "business" to see.

But seriously, even after more than a decade of being spammed, some people still don't seem to realise one important fact about the First Amendment:

noise!=speech

Re:Thanks for the irrefutable proof that...

[LuYu]

Define noise.

Now define speech.

Now that I know my speech is restricted to your definitions, I will have to take more care when opening my mouth.

if his cell mates ask him what he's in for

[Anonymous Coward]

i hope he comes up with something better than, man i was sending too many e-mails. I'll do it again, punk.

Sentence should fit the crime

[WillAffleckUW]

Don't let him work on license plates for nine years, have him work on tracking down spamsters to have them arrested.

While in jail, of course.

And have him do it on a TRS-80 with a 300 baud modem ...

probably a repeat, but...

[bryan1945]

Ha Haa!

A better sentence would have been ...

[Anonymous Coward]

three tours of duty in the Nam ... um, Iraq.

here's a fitting punishment while he's in jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Every day he should get 5 thousand pages of penis enlargement ads and buried within them is the form he needs to fill out to request a meal. If he doesn't find and fill out the form he goes hungry.

Hahahaha Prison Rape is so teh funnay!

[EmCeeHawking]

Fact: Most rape occurs to men( in prison ).
Fact: You are far more likely to be infected with HIV via rape if you are a man.
Fact: Hundreds of men in the US alone, by means of in-prison HIV transmission, have been handed the death sentence for crimes that originally warranted a few years.
Fact: When a woman is raped, the general reaction is one of disgust, anger, contempt.

Why the FUCK is rape perpetuated against men so funny?

Re:Hahahaha Prison Rape is so teh funnay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison rape is an important crime deterrent. I, for one, don't fear the idea of sitting in a jail cell 23 hours a day for months or years on end.

I fear Bubba.

And the thought of Bubba waiting for me in the big house has kept me from making dumb life choices more than a few times in my life.

Male Rape

[meehawl]

Nothing like the mention of "prison" to help a lot of jokers make light of the deployment of State-institutionalized rape as a coercive technology.

The penalty must be harsh...

[kiddailey]

I realize that prison may not be much of a deterrent of crime of any kind, but I'd wager that if you just fined spammers or gave them a few years that there'd be absolutely no decline in the number of spammers flooding our e-mail with crap.

It [the spam problem] continues because it is so easy and cheap to get away with -- and till now, there's no punishment.

Add publicly announced huge fines and long jail terms to the mix and at maybe a few would-be spammers would at least think twice before taking part.

Oh common! GIve him 1 month tops.

[Hackeron]

Whats better, spending a few each seconds each day looking over the list of emails spam assasin filtered into a spam folder, or missing out on hillarious gags like this: http://www.zug.com/pranks/penis/

The choice is obvious :)

... But this is about form, not content.

[garote]

A computer crime may be a computer crime to a "clueless jury", but anyone who does more than glance at the relevant facts of the case will be able to see the difference between a spammer on trial for BROADCASTING millions of messages, and a single websurfer RECEIVING copies of Metallica songs. (Things get a little blurry with partial transfers on peer-to-peer networks, but the legal basis is still different - it's becomes about content instead of form.)

This is not a battle over the content being distributed, this is a battle over the magnitude and method of the distribution process itself. Comparing spam to physical junk mail isn't really appropriate - compare it instead to a crackpot with an illegal high-power broadcast antenna who is disrupting NATIONWIDE radio communication, between consumers, businesses, and even the military and law enforcement. In a case like that, the FCC would ransack the property and jail everyone involved, in less than a week, no matter what they were actually broadcasting.

There are indeed dangers in society that need to be locked away, and sabotage of infrastructure for financial gain is one of them. I agree with you that some prison conditions are unduly harsh, and some manner of reform is necessary -- even though other prisons trade on that harsh reputation as an additional deterrent. Prison should not be a rest home, but it shouldn't be a concentration camp either.

I also agree with you that the self-perpetuating drug war is making a mess of the courts and prisons. I'd like to see kids thrown in jail for a week at most, for pot, shroom, and LSD violations. Just enough to disrupt their lives. On the other hand I'd also like to see folks like this Spam King handed a 15 year sentence, and have all his assets and equipment confiscated and donated to schools.

I can see it now:

[garote]

"Mommy! I know what I wanna do for a job when I grow up! I wanna be an illegal mass-marketer guy, and annoy a zillion people!"

You talk about a cycle of degradation like it's a bad thing. There's a reason we revile murderers, liars, cheats, rapists, and spammers. They all do things that cause harm to our society.

"Show some self control" indeed. We are -- we all are -- by enforcing control over this internet infrastructure we depend on for legitimate business. We punish a spammer for the same reasons we'd punish some twit who digs speed bumps into the interstate so people will state at his billboards longer. This is not a "sad day", this is a damned fine one. Big-time spammers need their big-time asses kicked big-time.

Re:I can see it now:

[TimeTraveler1884]

You talk about a cycle of degradation like it's a bad thing. There's a reason we revile murderers, liars, cheats, rapists, and spammers. They all do things that cause harm to our society.

So, you are saying harming our society is a good thing? I suppose to some, because they want to harm our society. But why is that? What causes someone to want to do that? That is what I am suggesting should have some focus.

This is not a "sad day", this is a damned fine one. Big-time spammers need their big-time asses kicked big-time.

Well, first off, I didn't say it was a sad day because spammers are going to jail. I said it was a sad day when people are given a value just because they are a spammer. I no way am I saying he should get off Scott-free. But perhaps society needs to look a little bit deeper to all who commit crimes, be cause just throwing people in jail is not solving the problems -- it supresses them.

Treat the disease, not the symptoms.

What.. the.... heck...

[Zulu]

First off, don't get me wrong, I hate dealing with SPAM as much as the next guy... but...

9 years for sending email!! Are you out of your mind!! This is retarded.

To Much

[Anonymous Coward]

I really really hate spam but like to put it in perspective. He should server 2-3 years MAX and do community service. He sure as heck knew he was doing wrong and deserves some real jail time. He probably caused some serious denial of service to mail servers and since I used to live in VA made my life a little bit harder but 9 years is not right.

Many minor victims or a few major victims?

[raehl]

10 million spam emails a day is worse than killing someone. How much did all of those emails cost other people? How many lives could have been saved with that money?

This is the same mentality that says CEOs who blow billions of other people's retirement savings shouldn't serve sentences longer than a violent offender. They absolutely should - they may not have killed anybody, but they ruined the lives of thousands.

Damn Good

[LucBorg]

Not only does spam make your inbox a place to worry about, it also adds unecessary and resource wasting load onto the internet as a whole. We have enough problems with the now ageing basic infrastructure of the internet without the extra load from spam and spim.

70% of emails are spam - this is a strong and clear message to all those other social misfits around the world that gaining pleasure and money from tormenting others will not be tolerated! Damn good for Virginia, and the rest of us in the world.

spam vs p2p

[krunk4ever]

i remember an article a week back or so saying that if a someone is distributing copyrighted content on a p2p network and got sentenced to 2 or 3 years of jail time, that'd be horrible.

i'm not saying p2p users deserves a such severe punishment, but putting that into context, it's very similar to spammers. the amount of damage they do is pretty small compared to lets say a murderer or a bank robber. but even so, as someone pointed out, these people are still receiving punishments that may even be more severe than those who commit murder receive.

of course, in many people's eyes, spammers are evil and p2p people aren't as bad. and because of our hatred toward spammers, makes us feel the sentence may even be too light per se. but on the other hand, many of us feel pity for those who get caught distributing copyrighted content over p2p networks, especially when little kids or seniors are involved. if a teenager or senior was caught spamming, would you feel the same pity?

Jayne's portrait (image)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a picture of the prick - direct your pies, rotten eggs & beer cans here:

http://www.mugshots.com/Criminal/Computer/Jeremy+J aynes.htm

http://www.mugshots.com/IMAGES/Mugshot__Jeremy-Jay nes.jpg

http://www.mugshots.com/IMAGES/Mugshot__Jeremy-D-J aynes.jpg

Re:Jayne's portrait (image)

[planetoid]

He looks like Jim Belushi and Chris Penn had an ass baby.

Most Slashdotters Are Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really surprised, I would have thought the majority of top-level posters on slashdot would have some intelligence and understanding of the basic issues at hand.

We have MOST articles say that 9 years is too much.. as if spamming is something to be encouraged in society.

Now, on behalf of millions of people worldwide, let me say that mistakenly deleting important emails from friends or business associates that we suspect may be spam is a FRIGHTENING ATTACK ON COMMUNICATIONS.

You could argue the spammer here is a terrorist. He's made us afraid of our own communications infrastructure.

Ten years ago I had a signature on my usenet posts that charged a reading fee on all unsolicited email. Thus Jeremy owes me, personally, more cash than he could afford! But I'm not going to get that. So instead I'd like to see him die in jail, or at the very least, get tortured by WW2 German Nazis.

I'm not the only one affected. Almost every single person on the internet today is affected. How many people is that?

Do you all feel that the Enron CEO should just be banned from running any businesses, and not serve any jail time?

What about Martha Stewart? I suppose you all feel that she ought to be banned from cooking, and not serve any jail time?

Seriously, those of you that want Jeremy to serve a much more lenient sentence SCARE ME.. ARE YOU HACKERS? ARE YOU SPAMMERS? What on EARTH makes you want to protect him???

Who supplied 16 high speed lines 4 spamming?

[Anonymous Coward]

So who are the rat bastards who supplied the 16 high speed lines to him?

Maybe these guys?

Spam does more damage than viruses; 9 years good.

[pegacat]

There's been lots of folks here saying that the punishment is too tough, given that violent crimes don't get as much.

This is something I could never figure out. If someone steals $10,000 from a local store they get 5 years, if a white collar crim steals $10M from a retirement fund, they get community service.

This guy did, single handed, massive damage to the entire internet. Do the sums - the real cost of spam is probably ~ 1c when you average in lost time and productivity of end recipients, which is even greater than the network costs. Over 10 years, he probably caused ~$30,000,000 damage to a huge number of strangers.

Looked at that way, spammers do more damage than most virus writers, and they are professionals doing it for money; hence harsh punishment is appropriate.

Punishments for financial crimes should be commensurate to the damage caused; and this lad caused heaps.

Now what would be really good is if they started going after the suppliers who pay for the spam... *starts drooling*.

He is out on appeal!

[ebvwfbw]

I have to strongly disagree with the judge by letting him out on appeal. The judge says this is a new law ..bla bla bla... let him out. How come the judge didn't make him stay in jail on appeal! Waste some of his time! He has wasted enough of ours, stealing bandwidth, storage and so on. 9 years is not nearly long enough either. Should be at least double that and big fine. Make sure the crime doesn't pay.

Best thing about this

[Anonymous Coward]

As if a spammer going to the Big House(TM) wasn't good enough, a Fox News anchor dropped this gem... ... the judge said "You've got jail!"

*That* put me on the floor.. :o)

More Insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

> Virginia judge Thomas Horne sentenced Jaynes
> to 9 years in prison based on a jury
> recommendation after he was convicted of
> sending out 10 million e-mails a day.

Is anybody here going to argue seriously
that this is a just sentence? My God, this
is a judicial system out of control. Nine
years for sending unwanted emails? I wouldn't
have given him six months. I don't care *how*
much spam this guy sent, or how many court
orders, or laws this guy violated. It's just
junk email. Oh, and how many years are the
CEOs from Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target going
to get for spaming my U.S. mail box. Oh pardon
me... *that's* "legal" so its "okay". Yeah,
America is *so* just.

What a stupid sentence

[LinuxLuver]

Total lack of perspective shown by that sentence. Nine years is an outrageously long sentence for sending unsolicited e-mail. Assuming he paid for his Net access (and therefore his traffic).....this sentence for his non-violent crime resulting in no direct financial loss to the intended recipient is extreme. I hate spam, too.....but I like justice, too...and this wasn't justice as I understand it.

Re:What a stupid sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to run a mailserver that turned away 80% of it's mail, with ZERO customer complaints of false positives. Bandwidth in Africa costs in the order of 15x what it does elsewhere, and we estimated it cost us approximately $3k a month to fully support our mailserver. 80% of it's traffic being spam, is a direct loss to us of $2400/mo.

That's one, drop-in-the-ocean ISP in Africa. Sit down and think for a moment, about your claims of no direct financial loss to the intended recipient. Who do you think pays for the excess bandwidth the ISPs require to handle their spewings?

This guy cost the intended recipients plenty, my friend...

Re:What a stupid sentence

[LinuxLuver]

But that is how the Internet works...... He paid for his access. He used it. If there is a problem with his use, it should be dealt with by the provider of his connection.....or there can be no problem. He was put in jail, but his Net provider had NO PROBLEM with his net use? Something wrong there....when an appareently satisfactory, legal and mutually beneficial business arrangement can be made a crime - yet the transaction itself was perfectly legal.

Re:What a stupid sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

You would be hard pushed to find any ISP that doesn't have a TOS with clauses covering exactly these types of activity - so indeed his provider did not have "no problem" with him.

Apparently, if he was able to send that many mails they did little or nothing about it, but that's a different story altogether

I just hope the other 7 suffer a similar fate, if this guy was the "8th biggest"

Incidentally, when you pay for your net connection (and an e-mail connection) has it occurred to you that you're paying to receive mail. There is a very real cost involved to the recipient. How about the dial-up user (yes, there are parts of the world where it's still used), having to spend 10 times as long online to get his 100 mails only 10 of which are legitimate?

Conservative estimates rate spam as 70% of all e-mail. If 70% of your phone calls were from sales droids trying to flog you Viagra would you be upset? But my friend, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement between the caller and his phone company, the transaction's perfectly legal so you have no rights. Sorry.

Can I have your phone number please? I'd like to add it to my "10,000,000 phone numbers" marketing CD.

sysadmin who had to deal with this

[themusicgod1]

Should be happy that there is work for him to do. If his employer would be put out of business by spam clogging their mail servers, perhaps they would need him around hrm? Spam is part of the business environment, if the business does not want to pay someone to help them navigate it, does the business deserve to stay in business?
The customers of the business on the other hand... . . .

No need to force everyone else to listen, and pay!

[D4C5CE]

Now that I know my speech is restricted to your definitions...

Actually it is restricted by the Constitution itself. The First Amendment never allowed to send your speech C.O.D. with a description misrepresenting contents and sender, to blast it over a huge cranked-up PA system in a residential neighborhood at 3 AM or by making automated direct marketing phone calls at that time of night, or to attach your message to bricks, cannonballs or cruise missiles and smash it through everyone else's windows or roofs. It's noise when it drowns out other communication and causes harm to the victims forced to impart the message the speaker insists on conveying (and moreover, to pay for the postage or for the defense against having to hear ever more of it).

Admittedly there is always a risk of legitimate protests being labelled a nuisance by some as well, but with reasonable laws there are courts who should be able to tell one from the other: A wealth of documentation shows that it is possible.

Back to middle ages

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that more proper sentence would be to put him in a cage with a sign "spammer" to some public place for a week, no food, only water and let the people spit and swear on him. It would be deterrent enough for other spammers.
But 9 years in jail is insane.

Re: First they came for the spammers ...

[some guy I know]

First they came for the spammers, but I wasn't a spammer, so I did nothing
Then they came for the copyrighted music theives, but commercial music sucks, so I didn't care
Then they came for the pornographers, but my tastes are mainstream, so I still didn't care.
Then they came for F/OSS, but windows was a kinda adequate replacement so I did little
Finally, they went after political blogs; but by then it was too late.

Here is what I hope to be able to say sometime within the next five years or so:

First they came for the spammers, but I wasn't a spammer, so I did nothing.
Then they came for the child pornographers, but I like grown women, so I did nothing.
Then they came for the phishers and fraudsters and DDoS exortionists, but I make my money honestly, so I did nothing.
Then they came for the script kiddies and virus writers, but I have enough trouble controlling my own machines, much less taking over someone else's, so I did nothing.

And now that the spammers, child pornographers, phishers, pharmers, DDos exortionists, script kiddies, and virus writers are all gone, the Internet is a much better place to be, so I am glad that I did nothing.

Hmmm how is this jail time worthy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a stupid law, and is likely to be challenged and struck down quickly. It basically says a guy who isn't really sending you anything, (really I mean bits aren't much, 10 million a day? who cares!) is going to be put in jail, when people receive tons (and I mean that literally,) of snail junk mail everyday. People should be up in arms about that junk mail, and get the post office to revoke the bulk mailing prices. Of course they won't because it's a source of income for the goverment. So why do they care here? Because they don't get crap out of it.

This law will be overturned quickly, and definitively. SPAM can't easily be classified as illegal because it will be hard to classify something as SPAM. (I get stuff from people I know which qualifies in my mind.)

Now if he was using a zombie network to send out those emails, then that is a different story, but he wasn't, (well at least no one has said that he was.)

people need to use their brains here, how hard is it to see this being overturned? While I don't like SPAM any more than you, spend your time getting real problems like bulk mailing to be stopped.

And you are the dumbest of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently.

You are all missing completely the point.

[jotaeleemeese]

From TFA:

Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail itself is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.

Fraud anyone?

Yeah

[g3n0]

Put it to you this way.. human life is expendable. Money is not. Murder 1 - 10-25 years prison. Stupid net marketing flamer spamming business, and clogging servers- 9 years. Technology abuse is now considered "murder". As for the years being sentenced. Well, go figure, our economy just keeps growing and growing. The future for "black hats", and other stupid labels thanks to corporate magazines giving us a label. Well technically anyone considered computer savy claims or labled by a category. It's even more desciptive than just being a Hacker, it's explaining Good/Bad hackers on a terms of data destroying to programming security fixes. Think the future is going to be grim for the "hacker" society? -Dave

Thow AOL Exec's in jail for spamming

[Anonymous Coward]

I get more AOL CRAP mail containing CD's wrapped in wrappers of packaing. STOP sending me this crap mail AOL. I see AOL cd litter all over the streets and neighbourhoods. People normally just break the cd and toss the trash packaing on the ground by the mail box. Not to mention this unsolicited mail has been coming to my mail box since 1994 or so.

So if this guy gets 9 years for sending spam to AOL, AOL execs should get double that.

And 9 years! Give my a break! You could steal million dollar art work and get less time than that. Bank robbers get less time than that. Crooked CEO's, and Inside Traders get less time than that (ehm martha)

Unreal.

Sentence

[JLMooreKCMO]

I personally believe the sentence is far out of line, Rape 3-10, Bank robbery 5-8, even child molestation only gets you 5-20. These are all actual first offense sentences I have researched. Spamming is clearly not a violent crime, annoying yes but not violent,and should not be treated as such. I also feel the State will have problems of freedom of speech issues when appealed.

still not harsh enough!

[tmspecial]

Why should the general public pay for 9 years of prison? For the economic damage he caused and the number of people he annoyed he deserves the death penalty.

Re:good move - 38 million people buy spammed stuff

[iamcf13]

9 years too long? i don't think so. on what grounds would they win? did the people who bought penis enlargement pills give good feedback? when the law takes effect has no merit, he was sending 10 mil emails a day. just multiply that by 2 weeks.

38 million people worldwide have (or will) buy stuff from email spam -- about 5 million of that figure in the USA alone (http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/ntrs/NTRS_2004.pdf).

The 38 million figure is extrapolated from the 4% value in the above report and applying it to the world online population is estimated to be 945 million (http://www.clickz.com/stats/big_picture/geographi cs/article.php/5911_151151).

For the sticklers, the actual value is about 37.8 million people.

This is why spam WON'T go away because there is a small 4% market of people online who have (or will) buy stuff from spam.

Since the spammers won't stop and the hodgepodge of anti-spam laws in place aren't effective, I just simply block all the spam I get

While people continue to wring their hands over the spam problem here, I will be enjoying a spam-free email box. How about you?

Re:Moderation

[RedLaggedTeut]

Nice to know spammers read slashdot, too.