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Aussie Spammer Faces Millions in Fines
An anonymous reader writes "An alleged Australian spammer could face millions in fines if he's found guilty of breaking the country's anti-spam laws, reports ZDNet. The Australian Communications Authority alleges that Wayne Mansfield and his company, Clarity 1, sent at least 56 million commercial e-mails in the 12 months after the Spam Act was enacted in April 2004."
Time to start celebrating, 1 down to go.
He faces millions in fines... the question is whether the fines add up to more than the income he made from spamming. If fines are all he gets, there's still a chance that he's profitable and the spamming is "worth it" to him.
I don't want him to be thrown in jail for 15 years or anything, but getting off with just fines may not be much of a deterrent.
This case will demonstrate to the international community that spam laws work if this case succeeds, otherwise, it will provide a reason to stop legislation on spam and possibly illustrate the futility of enforcing laws on the web. It's sort of a win-win situation.
_____
Thank you.
We want millions and millions
We're coming to get you
We're offensive with lawyers
So don't let it upset you
With apologies to Frank Zappa. He would obviously have come up with some far more scathing criticism of spammers.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Every one of these clowns that gets taken down is a step in the right direction. Large fines and lots of press will start an intimidation factor that will slow new people from replacing the ones taken out. Each time it happens in a different country it means fewer places to hide.
Of course just tieing them all to trees upside down and feeding them Ex-Lax for a week would be a more fitting punishment.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
An anti-spam law that works like it's supposed to, didn't think those babies existed!
My earlier article regarding it was rejected and i have a relative who works for the ACA. Rejected Article ACA raids Alleged Spammer Thursday April 07, @09:43PM Rejected
Anyone know if there's a death penalty in Australia?
Please list suitable tortures for spammers.
A clear indication that better laws should be able to prevent this abuse.
hilarious
Just fine him a dollar per spam...sounds equitable to me.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Wouldn't it be worth to also know which businesses hired/paid money to this man's marketing company to carry out such unsoliciated marketing campaign.....I reckon those businesses which paid for such services must also be prosecuted......much like when you are prosecuted when you pay someone for carrying out an act of crime (eg: murder)
However, if found guilty perhaps a community service order should be requested (me thinks a stint as a practice interogation subject for the SAS). One should not ask too deeply about 'applied interogation techniques'...
Good.
I currently average about 1400 spam or other junk emails a week. I occasionally loose real emails because they get filtered out by my rather aggressive spam filters. Anyone who sends bulk spam emails should be rounded up and shot. Well, maybe publicly humiliated first and then shot.
Slowly.
The fully correct way of doing this would include, to use a well-worn phrase, following the money. Go to the source. Find the guys who use this dude's services.
Mass unsolicited mail isn't always viagra spams and pre-approved mortgage scams. A colleague who does email security for (insert major UK bank here) recently forwarded a mail their head postmaster dude received from an eager (one would presume) intern at some marketing outfit.
Basically, it was a survey spammed to all postmasters of large outfits, making no attempt at subterfuge or hiding content, saying "what email filters do you use if any? How do they work? How can we get an exception for our mails? We mass-mail for large, reputable clients" with example spam from Nike and other big, well-known companies attached. The reply from postmaster was hilarious sardonic--you could tell that he realized that marketing-boy just didn't have a clue what he'd just sent; postmaster was barely restraining his trigger finger and trying to be at least vaguely civil.
Point being? Someone is paying these fuckwads to spam. Just like the Lycos screensaver attempted to do with basically a DDoS, it is technically doable to find spammers' clients and take them out. Spammers are just the messengers, middle-men, crooked little street dealers--nailing their shrivelled little testicles to the wall, while gratifyiing and a right step, won't solve the problem.
That said, I don't think fines are a good thing in this case. Public beatings, well...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I'm glad that I don't live in Austrailia.
I'm glad too.
Remember it's not theft if the server's still available to process other email.
Laws are a dumb idea because they don't actually prevent spam, just deter it, and only if the spammer cares. I don't think we need to rely on possible spammers to have good common sense.
What we need to do is make it more expensive for spammers. Hashcash has been mentioned several times before and it's probably one of the best ideas. It simply makes sending massive amounts of email very expensive while costing the average person little to nothing.
Going after the spammers won't help - they know how to cover their tracks too well. Its a simple supply and demand issue. As long as there are people who will click on the garbage coming in their inbox every day, and companies willing to pay the spammers to send it, trying to rid the world of spam by imposing fines on the spammers themselves is like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. We need a two pronged approach: 1. Education - More net-savvy people will mean less clicks on spam ads. 2. Corporate Accountability - If the companies who retained the spammers services had to pay the fines (say $1.00 per spam, and maybe some sort of painful audit or SEC investigation), we'd see a dramatic drop in the amount of spam.* *Except for AOL and MSN.
Single? Canadian? We can help. Visit http://www.l
If fines are all he gets, there's still a chance that he's profitable and the spamming is "worth it" to him.
Case in point:
My grandfather is a seafood salesman in Quebec (Canada). He sells to many restaurants. One of major restaurants in the Montreal area was one of his customers. He sold all kinds of different food products to them. One thing he sold was frog's legs.
One day, the restaurant stopped buying frog's legs from him. He asked the owner what had happened. The owner said that they had found someone that could undercut my grandfather's price per pound by $1. My grandfather said surely its impossible. Theres no way you can get frog's legs so cheap.
About a year later the restaurant was temporarily shutdown for investigation. The owner had been selling rat's legs instead of frog's legs.
After the investigation was over and the restaurant reopened, my grandfather went to the owner and said, "I knew you couldn't get frog's legs that cheap." The owner said, "Listen, I was selling one thousand pounds of frog's legs per week. At one dollar a pound I saved $1000 every week for a year. The fine was $1500."
He laughed and said that he would do it again because it was worth it.
True story that happened about 20 years ago, but I'm willing to bet that if the fine on this spammer isn't high enough, he will say it was worth it too.
Yes this problem needs to be rooted out
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
A story about a Spammer right after a story about copyright infringement. I love it when 'sentiments collide' like that.
You KNOW that these stories are about greed, as much for the spammer, who rips us off by coercing us to pay attention to shit, as for us, who are used to getting shit for 'free', for our paying lip service to listening to an advertiser.
Human beings have always had problems deciding on value. One man's trash and so on... The oldest document extant is the "Code of Hammurabi." "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is not a writ about vengance, its a document on wage and price control.
Start charging as much for delivering email as the post office does for delivering snail mail (except for 'registered lists' [with who?,] groups who don't have to pay.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
John Howard used his sons IT company to send thoundands of emails to potential voters in his electorate spaming them but do we see him being charged .
0 06795.html?oneclick=true
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/26/1093518
From TFA:
An ACA spokesperson told ZDNet Australia Mansfield had received several warnings before it raided his company premises in April.
Of course they all went into his spam folder.
And they can't cover their tracks. They need to be visible to their customers, and their customers need to be visible to the spam victims.
Using the law to close down the professional spammers will get rid of almost all the non-virus related spam. If the cases are publicised enough, it will also be a deterent for the amateur spammers, i.e. those who spam for their own goods rather than functioning as midlemen.
Well is it realy out of the question?
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
The Extermination Order wasn't really a law, and was probably illegal, but it did get the Mormons out of Missouri. (Though many did return before 1976.)
1 831_1844/extermination_eom.htm
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/history/
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Unfortunately, the profit margin for spammers is still obscene and the loopholes are enormous. According to a Ciphertrust whitepaper the supply vs. demand ratio, cost of entry and lack of real overhead makes spam a low hanging fruit. Addressing these three issues is paramount. Legislation is an after the fact hand in the cookie jar approach.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
I think they need to give him a lethal injection of Viagra/Cialis.
"Surprise your girlfriend."
Forcibly lengthen his penis -- the punishment needs to fit the crime.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
See subject. Best idea ever (maybe not new, but I've never seen it elsewhere...) :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
About time there was a case on this Act!
;-)
I'm doing a thesis about the effectiveness of such an Act. Let's see how my interpretations of the Act go!
he gets fined + beaten with a stick...
or
he gets fined + strapped to a chair where he is subject to look at all his 56 million e-mails...
We've got way too many rats and not nearly enough frogs.
Let's eat (well cooked) rat. With lots of garlic butter sauce.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
just like the way they drag out the answers on who wants to be a millionaire or who gets voted off survivor.
.
.
.
.
.
loop
Firing squad -
ready
aim
(drum rolls)...
we'll be right back after this break....
until spammer screams "shoot me now"
repeat
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
or individuals that submit the spam mail to this guy at Clarity 1? It seems like those companies have it good because all they have to do is pay Clarity 1 to send their spam. By doing this they avoid any penalties and Clarity 1 takes the fall.
So he'd have to make AU$1.1mln per day to break even.
To put that into perspective, I'll translate that into other prominent currencies: 1,100,000 AUD == 844,000 USD == 699,000 EUR == 463,000 GBP == 1,041,000 CAD
This low life spammer has a very bad attitude toward his victims. He is listed on the Spamhaus site. It makes interesting reading.I hope he rots behind bars after all of his assets are taken from him.
I prefer Classic Slashdot.
Please Mod this parent up, this is the funniest thing I've seen all day especially after the posts in other slashdot story where folks who "copyright infringe" try to make themselves feel better about what they've done.
In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.
http://www.bash.org/?203815
As far as spammers go, Wayne Mansfield is one of the worst. Once he's safe in his jail cell I'm considering sending his cell-mates a generous supply of viagra and herbal penis-growth pills.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I have no sympathy for spammers. I don't believe they should get jail time, but fining them according to the possible money they made from spamming is justice; especially if they are willingly breaking the law.
Health Insurance Quotes
thats almost 2 emails per second for a year straight
"nothing strengthens authority so much as silence" -LdV
dont mean to bring slashdot readers down but this marketer is using an opt in list and has been arguing with the govt for the past 12 months. unlike illegal spammers who move from service provider to service provider this guy feels he is playing by the laws of Australia as they are today, it will be an interesting case. Dean
It does seem like harsher punishments should be involved when dealing with spammers and the such. Sure people should be educated in the art of "spam safety" but it's still annoying to delete those few emails every week because some smuck has you on his list and fat chance of getting off. Why should only fines be imposed? It is against the law to do it. I say jail time is a must. These spammers are invading our personal space and punishment should be imposed that will make those who are caught as well as those still free to reconsider before entering into this annoying profession.
How was that flamebait to pretend that I was a spammer and talking about how I'm not caught because I'm not in Aussieland. I didn't even get a mad responce from the Aussie who replied.
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
I went to one of this guy's marketing seminars which, while interesting in some areas, turned me off totally when he touched briefly on Internet marketing. He was advocating spamming (this was back in 2000) and saying it was OK.
He also gave out a CD with a couple of mailing lists on it and tools for bulk-sending. He claimed the lists were opt-in but a quick check revealed a few addresses that I knew weren't. Additionally, another company I knew that went tried to use the list to send updates about their products and almost had their link vigilanty'd into non-existance.
"Death's to good for them!"
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...