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Spammer settles with MS and Texas
RedOregon writes "One of the world's most notorious spammers has settled lawsuits with the state [of Texas] and Microsoft Corp. that cost him at least $1 million, took away most of his assets and forced him to stop sending the e-mails."
Actually using any computer without authorization is illegal. Its why you can go after someone for gaining access to your machine, sending spam is the same thing. The biggest thing is prosecutors dont care about going after easy cases. What they really want is someone who is a good upstanding citizen thats done nothing wrong to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such as your car hitting ice and causing a major accident. Then they'll file two felony counts against you, one completely bogus for a guy with whiplash, and another for your fiance. You could be an eagle scout, straight A student, and associated with the military. They will nail you to the wall, ruin your life, and make sure you can do nothing but flip burgers for the rest of your life. Now if you think the above is bogus, it's not. The county I live in came after me after I hit ice. Damn near ruined my life, got lucky with a plea deal that bumped it to a misdeamnor so it can be expunged after 2 years (thats the only reason I took the deal).
Remember this, there is no corrolation between the law and justice. The law is there to protect those with the power and welth. Not to protect the law abiding.
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
And who will enforce this laws in, say, China?
The Chinese government can deal with Chinese spammers however they want. This guy's in the US, and subject to US law. Let's work on cleaning up the spam problem in our own country, before we worry about foreign spammers, ok?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I don't know. But spammers make A LOT Of money - $1M is a tiny fraction of the amount he made ($55M), and his assets have to be sold to pay that $1M. So I don't feel one iota of guilt that this guy makes $55M by stealing from people, and now loses his house because he spent $55M on god-knows-what.
And yes, spammers steal - everytime they send an email, the recipient pays for it and all intermediaries that carry it. Even if it only costed 1 cent per spam in total costs (bandwidth, electricity, hardware - to handle spam requires more bandwidth, more electricity to power more servers and cooling) from the time the spammer starts his run to when it arrives in my inbox (10 or 11 copies of same), that penny suddenly becomse $10,000 stolen from all of us. And guess who pays? We all do - in increased service fees. And what does the spammer pay? Probably a few cents for the connection time, and 10 or 15 minutes crafting the email. An hour if they want to use graphics. It certainly doesn't cost $10,000 in *his* expenses.
And I'm not even going to talk about zombie'd computers.