Slashdot Mirror
Virginia Spammers Go To Jail, And Pay For It
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."
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.
Judge Wolf: (this law is too broad because) "You purchase an e-mail address list, alter the transmission information in the header of your e-mail to avoid retaliation, and on Easter morning send out a three-word e-mail to thousands of people: 'Christ is risen!' You have committed a felony in Virginia,"
Well, yeah. Religious spam is still spam, you hick.
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I for one am in favor of the death penalty for anyone who sends me an e-card with a big-headed cat and a song composed entirely of 'meows'. I'm coming for you, Aunt Jane.
"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.
In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.
We're getting there.