How Do You Punish a 16-year-old Spammer?

An anonymous reader writes "A 16 year old 'Boy Spammer', David Lennon, has been told by a judge that as punishment for his crimes he can't leave his bedroom for two months during curfew. CNET thinks this is no punishment at all: "With the streets awash with axe murderers, terrorists and paedophiles, staying in and playing games seems like a reasonable response. Given that our kids are growing up as stay-in gamers, the Boy Spammer's curfew is no more punishment for the blighter than sentencing a boy caught speeding to two months on a race track." Apparently Lennon used a piece of email bombing software called Avalanche to wreak revenge on his ex-employer, Domestic and General Group. His five million emails contained the message "You will die in seven days.""

Comments

Why spam works

[suso]

See, this spam worked because about 200 of the people received it did die in 7 days. Its always that small percentage of people responding to the spam that keeps the spammers going. Damn those people.

[moderators: this is supposed to be funny]

Re:Why spam works

[WilliamSChips]

So the solution to spam is to get people to not die in seven days?

Re:Why spam works

[diersing]

With 80% of today's traffic being spam, a better punishment might have been a requirement to have only one email account not use any spam filtering for the term of 10 years. I'm thinking an AOL account with Outlook Express might be in order just to rub it in.

Heres what I would do....

[ConsumerOfMany]

Make him write out each email he sent on a blackboard, all 5 million of them.

Re:Heres what I would do....

[ackthpt]

Make him write out each email he sent on a blackboard, all 5 million of them.

Like this?

Dear Sir/Madam, I am very sorry for sending you an unwelcomed message stating that you will die in seven days. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send $1 to: Sorry Guy, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield

Re:*snort*

[portmapper]

> He will, in short, learn what it is like to be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oh my God! The next Governor of California will be a 16 year old spammer?

ideal punishement

[way2trivial]

spam filter.. human...

Re:*snort*

[__aaclcg7560]

We seen this before. Ahnold goes back into the past to kill the mother to eliminate the competition. It's a vicious cycle that never ends.

Re:No Community service - Yes excruciating Pain

[TheGreek]

Send him to Singapore and have him canned

Does being canned hurt more than being caned? It sounds as though it might.

How do you punish a 16-year old spammer?

[nightsweat]

Tape his hands together and hide all the lotion and kleenex.

Re:Reference to The Ring?

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Really? Wow! You have discovered something incredible no one else has ever noticed before! What other great abilities do you have!?

Re:What?

[Wyzardking]

Sounds like we had similar rooms; I had a 13" b/w tv, a stereo (complete with 8 track recorder), two computers (TI994A and CoCo) and the obligatory Atari, and of course all my books, so I tended to stay in my room most of the time. My dad once told me to go to my room then he said,

"Wait! That's no punishment. Go to MY room!"

Man, that was two boring hours.... :)