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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."
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.
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Thank you.
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.
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)
Yes, but 50 million spams a year is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions sent out every day. This guy is small potatoes. Spam kings in developed countries like Australia and the U.S. tend to get shut down pretty fast. They need to go after China and eastern Europe where the real culprits are.
And someone needs to shut down those blasted zombie Windows computers that are relaying all this rubbish.
Just a thought: If only there were a way to make spam explode when opened, to discourage people from actually reading and responding to it. OK, the spammers are taking their money already but clearly that's not enough of a disincentive to those few morons out there who are keeping spam going.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
What???
Where exactly did you pull that from? Of course it's still theft of service...you seem to be confusing theft of service with denial of service.
They're two completely seperate things.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It sounds like a sarcastic comparison of spamming and copyright infringement. It's not stealingif the original is still there. I don't think they are the same, but there is some parallel.
If an average commercial spam is about 5KB ... What a waste!!!
Except that the 5kb of the message itself is only the tip of the iceberg. The DNS lookups, the SMTP handshakes, the blacklist queries, the POP3 downloads and filter checks, and then the huge bandwidth of displaying the no doubt numerous tag-embedded images... all adds up to way, way more than 5kb per typical message. I'd be really amazed, if you added up all the overhead, if it wasn't more like 256k. And that doesn't count processer use, storage, human hours throwing it out, and sheer mind-numbing info-noise in all of our brains.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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.
Well that might be worth it if your customers can't tell frog legs from rat legs. I can't tell the difference, therefore I will not pay for either one.
Are you kidding, now don't get me wrong I think SPAM is crap, but putting someone in JAIL for SPAM is rediclous. We (at least in the U.S) have far too many people in prison and jail what we need to better technology and "theraputic" remedy's for criminals (not that I think there is some theraputic cure for being a SPAMer).
It always amazes me how the EASY answer is JAIL, jail is not a deterant, never has been and never will be, people always think "they won't catch me", or "I can get away with it this time", etc...etc...etc..
-=Linsys=-
http://www.intrusionsec.com
Hey they held some poor kid over here in custody for 12 days for attempting to steal an ice cream, so spamming should deserve years!
Why is white-collar crime somehow not deserving of punishment like gaol? Some kid who steals a $30K car, screams down a street and writes it off against a tree is expected to end up gaoled, but someone causing a nuisance to far more people and costing millions of dollars is not because he didn't get his hands dirty doing it?
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\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Probably your ISP or email providers have very effective anti-spam controls.
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.