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"."

Comments

Bankrupcy?

[srock2588]

Are you allowed to declare bankrupcy if you owe money via criminal court order?

This dude just got F'd in the A.

Re:The problem is Visa/MC/PayPal

[scovetta]

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.