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."

Comments

Watershed case

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

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.

Re:Watershed case

[Kaorimoch]

I think it demonstrates that spammers who actually spam in countries that enforce their anti-spam laws are idiots. If I were an antispammer, I'm sure I'd have my spamming servers in Russia and merely link to them through my Australian broadband connection via a encrypted tunnel network (or something like that). I'd also have my money going through Swiss banks and Cayman Island arrangements to obfuscate its source and destination and send it back to Australia in amounts under $10,000 to avoid scrutiny as finance loans. But hey, most spammers are stupid aren't they?

Each step

[BCW2]

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.

partners in crime?

[scarish]

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)

Re:partners in crime?

[ScentCone]

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

That might be harder than it sounds. Many of these guys are set up as affiliate marketers. Meaning, no one pays them to do this, they only pay them when some twit happens to buy some V1@gra. The actual vendor can (with almost a straight face) claim that they established an affiliate program so that legitimate partner sites could honestly pass along real referrals... and that, gee, they can't police the activities of every affiliate, and all they knew was that they were getting traffic, and gosh, etc.

It's up to the affilate engines to sniff this stuff out and simply shut down the offenders (by disabling their accounts). Of course, the affiliate engines make their piece of every transaction, too, so they're not going to be terribly motivated. Especially if they have no redeeming social graces whatsoever, sons of bitches.

That being said, there are some first rate affiliate engines with real, certifiably well-behaved partner networks (see Performics and CJ as decent examples. They're not without their abusive users, but those get slammed pretty hard, and money can get locked up with you play naughty, so that usually works.

I wonder if this Aussie was using one of the more notorious AM engines from Australia (DarkBlue).

Crime Still Pays

[ehaggis]

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.

Re:Fines, hm?

[linsys]

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..

Re:Fines, hm?

[NotZed]

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?