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Virginia Spammers Go To Jail, And Pay For It

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the giving-the-ham-both-barrels dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Virginia appeals court has upheld the first felony conviction under a state anti-spam law. In the process, the court also suggested that spam recipients might be able to sue spammers for money damages. According to the court, taxing a person's servers with unwanted e-mails is a form of trespass, little different than intruding on their land or making unwanted use of their private property. Perhaps because of this decision, spammers will soon find themselves on the receiving end of a million dollar class action suit."

4 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. So if we have VOIP by joshetc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does that mean we can sue telemarketers? The last couple of years I've found them to be far more annoying than spammers. Spam is more easily blocked and can be taken care of on my time. Telemarketers though, I have to choose between getting up during dinner / sleeping to answer the phone or dealing with the damn thing ringing every 5 minutes.

    I'm still glad to see some spammers in jail though. I hope they all rot in prison then in hell.

    1. Re:So if we have VOIP by bigdavesmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The problem with the do not call registry is that they are still allowed to call if it is a charitable or political call, I believe. At least, those are the ones I still get.

      I don't mind the political ones, because they make the elections way easier. I keep a list of every politician I get a call from, and don't vote for them.

      The charity ones are very annoying though. I get at least a call a week from some charity wanting to know if they can count on my donation. Donations start at just $25. Surely I can afford that. Can they put me down for a $25 donation?

  2. Re:Oh, come on! by argle2bargle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "This spam is in no way infringing the rights or security of its recipients. It is a minor inconvenience, as is any form of junk mail"

    I couldn't disagree more. When you say it is little different from 'lots' of junkmail. Imagine if 6 18wheelers pulled up to your house and dumped TONS of junkmail on your doorstep, literally so much junkmail that you cannot open your front door. In fact, you have to hire an expensive service to remove the junkmail, as well as buying a larger house to accomodate the junkmail as it arrives. Oh and by the way, some of that junk mail contains anthrax, which if it gets missed by the service which you had to hire, will infect your family.

    It is definately trespass.

    My small companies email server has to block/process 247,000 spam emails in just the past two months, totalling 67 percent of all the email on the server. On some days the percent of spam reaches 90 percent. Even though it is blocked, this costs my bandwidth and my servers memory/cpu. It costs my company money.

  3. Spammers go to Jail? Fine with me... by ClemensW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, but no sympathy from me. For all of you who think that's too harsh: Have you ever calculated the damage done by spam?

    Spammers steal your time: Sure, it's just 10 seconds to read a mail, make a decision and press the delete key. But it's not just *your* time, any other recipient also wastes 10 seconds.
    So, if a spammer sends 10.000.000 mails per day and every recipients wastes 10 seconds, you get
    10.000.000 mails * 10 sec/mail ~ 3 years, 2 months of wasted time.
    In other words, every month this spammer wastes more than a full human lifetime. In my eyes, that's the same as if they would kill someone every month with their own hands.

    Spammers steal computers to send their spam: Most spam is sent by trojaned machines. A small botnet able to send the 10.000.000 mails/day would likely consist of ~10.000 machines. Assume 3 hours to clean a machine and prevent it from being re-infected. Assume 10$ per hour. Total cost:
    10.000 machines * 3h/machine * 10$/h = 300.000$

    Spammers steal bandwidth: Though many people believe that bandwidth is free (flat-rate), it really isn't. ISPs or anybody with more than a DSL line do have to pay per GB. Even flat rates are just hybrid costing, basically an amount $x for the DSL line plus $y/GB multiplied by an average usage of z GB/month.
    Now, for the spammer:
    10.000.000 mails * 20 KByte/mail * 0.50 $/GB = 100$/day ~ 3.000$/month

    Spammers steal ressources from the recipients: 75% of all email is spam. Without spam, all mailservers could be sized significantly smaller. Assume 500$ savings for smaller hardware. Assume 3 years (36 months) lifetime. Assume 1.000.000 mail servers.
    1.000.000 server * 500$ savings/server / 36 months ~ 460.000 $/month

    And that's just the beginning. There are the costs of spam-filtering software, costs of maintenance for hard- and software, costs of lost business due to false-positive filtering (be it manually or automatically), costs, costs, costs....
    And let't not forget the costs of psychiatric treatment for admins suffering from burn-out syndrome due to constant nagging of their PHBs that they either a) receive too much spam or b) didn't receive an important email :-P