High Earning Spammers Face Tougher Sentences

netbuzz writes "More big-time spammers may find themselves doing longer stretches behind bars if a federal judge's first-of-its-kind sentencing decision in a Denver case becomes widely applied. In a sense, these spammers would be hoisted on their own profits, as language in CAN-SPAM allows the use of their profits instead of the difficult-to-measure financial damage they cause in establishing a prison sentence. The Denver spammer earned $250,000 — and a 20% longer prison stint — using this approach."

Comments

Re:Which is just the opposite of "regular" justice

[deniable]

I keep wondering, why do we need to charge the spammers with anti-spam laws. I haven't seen any that aren't drug dealers, stock scams, or outright fraud. Nail the bastards for those with all of the current laws. Funny, the more they made from these, the more counts that can hang them.

If Bob, the neighborhood dealer, was offering as much product as these scumbags, he'd be in jail for life.

Oh well, we have the anti-spam laws now, so we might as well hit them for both.

One Solution

[DynaSoar]

"What we need are a few good old-fashioned hangings." -- FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle, at the 2003 FTC Spam Conference.

Attack the sources of the spam instead.

[miffo.swe]

I really wished the ones using spammers for marketing would be hunted down instead. The spammers are only bricks in the game. If it became a real felony for a company to employ spammers they would find it hard to make any money. Take one spammer away in the US and up pops 10 more in some other country.

That said i really dont think spamming is a felony just as i dont think any other form of marketing should be illegal. Its annoying for sure but the fault lies in our broken emailsystem and with Microsofts crappy security (spammers favourite mailservers are windows boxes). Spam is just symptoms for a bigger issue. Take away the spam and the problem is still there for more nefarious schemes.