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

Community service

[BWJones]

Tell a 16 year old to stay in the bedroom? Well hey, don't throw me in the briar patch!

No, what this kid should be doing is community service. Work in a soup kitchen, pick up garbage by the side of the road, help out his common man by distributing clothes in an inner city, something like that. In addition, I'd like to see him have all private computer access restricted (can only use a computer in the presence of an adult until he demonstrates he can act like an adult) and to undergo some sort of therapy to deal with his anti-social mores as sending out emails saying "you will die in seven days" is pretty sick. This is not punishment per se, however. I see it more as societal rehabilitation.

Re:Community service

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

No, what this kid should be doing is community service. Work in a soup kitchen, pick up garbage by the side of the road, help out his common man by distributing clothes in an inner city, something like that.

Indeed, something like that - I'd go for the poetic justice punishment however. Something like cleaning badware off the local library's windows 98 internet PCs. Every day, all day for two months (its the sort of job where when you finish one PC, the last one's allready been reinfected.)

Maybe this was just me..

[zyl0x]

..but video games were still around when I was a kid. Being grounded to my room included the removal of anything that I could enjoy doing. I don't understand why they don't just take his computer away..

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

Alternative Punishment:

[Mongoose Disciple]

How about:

He's allowed to have only one e-mail address for the rest of his life, which has no spam filtering. This e-mail address is provided to everyone he spammed, who are encouraged to sign him up for whatever mailing lists they choose.

Not spam

[skraps]

Sending "you will die in seven days" millions of times to your ex-employer does not qualify as spamming in my book. He wasn't sending advertisements. He wasn't collecting personal information to resell. He wasn't doing anything that typically qualifies as spamming.

This is just plain old harassment, and the punishment sounds fine.

Had he downloaded one song or duplicated one disk

[monopole]

He'd be facing federal charges, and a civil suit that would ruin him financially. But since he's a spammer who does real and quantifible damage to productivity, as well as making e-mail increasingly less viable he gets a slap on the wrist.