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Spammer Gets $11 Billion Fine
Spad writes "It's not a typo, The Inquirer (amongst others) is reporting that an Iowa-based ISP has been awarded $11.2 billion in a case against spammer James McCalla, who was found guilty of sending over 280 million illegal spam emails. Under state law, the ISP was entitled to $10 per illegal e-mail sent. According to the Quad-City Times, McCalla has also been banned from using a computer for 3 years. From the article: "CIS acknowledged that it is unlikely to see any of the judgment money but said that it was time that spammers learnt that their actions would result in an economic death penalty"."
Are you allowed to declare bankrupcy if you owe money via criminal court order?
This dude just got F'd in the A.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
...their actions would result in an economic death penalty.
How about a real one?
So you equate a sentence for spamming with a sentence used on serial murderers and the like? What even happened to that whole "let the punishment fit the crime" doctrine? I think the financial penalty along with any possible jail time is plenty.
McCalla has also been banned from using a computer for 3 years.
br? No porn for you!
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
Ok. Let me preface this by saying I'm all for getting rid of spam and spammers.
That said, 11 BILLION dollars? That's more than the GDP some nations.... it's not only improbable that they'll collect, but what is the real point of asessing such a sum? They might have assigned a billion gazillion trillion quillion dollars for all that amount matters. My concern is "how will that help deal with the rest of them", so my cheering for this judgement is a bit tempered by the insanity of the judgement. Indebting an individual or even small group of individuals with 11 billion dollars is just as bad against spammers as the idiotic size of the RIAA lawsuits from a few years ago - last thing we need is sympathy for spammers because the hammer of justice fell too hard....
Someone once calculated that the amount of time it takes you to download a spam message, identify it as spam, delete it, multiplied by the number of spam messages, equals a time equivilent to many of lifetimes.
So, collectively, his spamming robbed humanity of lifetimes worth of time that could have been spent doing something else.
But I do agree with you. Death sentences for spammers is just silly.
"infringing on his persuit of life, liberty, yadda yadda"?
Hmm. So what is prison then? A bologna sandwich?
I thought that was the point: if you commit a crime, you're not entitled to all the liberties of a regular person. convicted felons can't own a firearm or vote. Does that go against the constitution?
Han shot first.
"We have people who will devote months of their lives to sit on juries and render verdict even though everybody knows from the start that what the jury says is irrelevant because everything gets rewritten on appeal anyway."
So what are you saying here? That the jury system should be eliminated? That there should no appeals of verdicts, ever? You say the system is "broke" but you offer no constructive alternative. You have no faith in the justice system yet imply that an authoritarian-style system of summary conviction is somehow better.
I understand your cynicism but please try and avoid promoting injustice in the name of expediency.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Last I heard MacDonalds was initially assessed damages equivalent to a couple of days' coffee sales (or profits?) in a case where they were singularly arrogant (and idiotic) in their own defense. The pop media turned that into a case for tort reform, and it eventually got settled for less money -- but people still whinge about how unjust it was that the old lady with the skin grafts on her crotch got too much cash from the multinational company.
The individual who tries to
I'm no fan of SPAM, but this is out of hand. In general extreme punishments to make an example of people disgust me. Justice has to be proportionate.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Probably not the easiest thing to do:
1. Although most spammers are trying to sell "products", there are plenty (Nigeria, Phishing, etc) that don't.
2. It's extremely easy to accept credit cards (takes about 2 days to use PayPal-- I'm sure it's similar for other companies)-- Placing the burden of spammer-checking on the credit card gateways (or parent companies) would significantly increase the cost to businesses of accepting credit cards.
3. It's be rather easy for me to spam YOUR product in an attempt to (a) blackmail you, or (b) get credit card companies to drop you (in the case of a competitor).
3a. It would be equally easy for you to spam and then claim that it's actually me doing it.
4. What about companies that accept PayPal (or similar)?
Personally, I think we're on the right track. Tougher laws, better technology. I don't think we need more to add more bloat to the process of selling products.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I actually think rulings like this is going to make the problem worse. It's like the war on drugs - when they make something like this illegal and prosecute people, which both knocks competitors out of the market and heightens the risk level for those that continue to do it, it drives up the value for those willing to assume the risk. This, in turn, creates more of an incentive for new people to enter into the market if the possibility for profits is higher. Furthermore, spammers remain extremely hard to prosecute given that most of their spam originates overseas and many use pirated accounts to mask their identity and remove their liability - something I'm sure we'll see a rise in now. However, had we just allowed private companies to perfect spam filters we'd be far better off now - it wouldn't have attracted new spammers into the market, at least. I know it's a bit difficult to think of legislation/prosecution as innefectual in matters such as this, but when you really evaluate the issue using economic reasoning we would've all been far better off had the government just stayed out of the issue altogether.
I heart anarcho-capitalism.
Really
If you commit vehicular manslaughter, and after you get out of jail they say you can't drive a car, what do I care that you can't get a job as a pizza delivery guy? (After all, everything practically requires an auto, and would be infringing on life, liberty, yadda
If you're only capable of using something in an anti-social way, you don't get to play.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The ISP isn't guilty of anything. It's the old handgun thing... The ISP only provides the weapons, if you're the fool who uses those to do harm, then you take the punishment. I would also think that the ISP covered their legal butts with an acceptable use policy.
you yada, yada, yada'd over the most important part of the 5th ammendment. "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...". He had his day in court.
Let's see, paid for ads on TV and in print pay for most of the cost of producing the product. Like it or not if you watch TV or read a magazine the ads are what allow you to do so.
Spam, on the other hand pays for nothing. It uses up bandwidth, admin time, CPU time, in other words it costs lots of money for us all.
Minor inconvenience x 280 million = One Big Freaking Inconvenince to Society.
No argument here, but they say its $10 per infraction, right? Well, being really good at math as all us geeks are, that comes to $2.8 billion. Where do they get $11 billion? So were talking $8.2 billion in punitive damages? ouch. Thats gonna leave a mark.
Sorry, I smoked my last sig