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

"Hoisted on their own profits"

[base3]

is nice, but until they're hoisted on a gallows (or facing a firing squad, in a pinch), it's not quite good enough, but a step in the right general direction. Hang 'em high--after all, they can then say their penis pills caused them to he hung (yeah, hanged, I know, I know).

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[alshithead]

"is nice, but until they're hoisted on a gallows (or facing a firing squad, in a pinch), it's not quite good enough, but a step in the right general direction. Hang 'em high--after all, they can then say their penis pills caused them to he hung (yeah, hanged, I know, I know)."

Yay! Grammar knowledge goodness.

But, I can't agree with them being hanged as an appropriate punishment. Let's save life ending punishment for the truly worst criminals. I'm also not really sure that longer sentences will be a deterrent. Let's put them to work deleting spam flagged by the major ISP's for the rest of their lives. Supervise them appropriately while they are serving their sentence and allow them no other computer access. A swift kick to the ass on a daily basis might make some spam recipients feel better too.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[beadfulthings]

Rather than hanging, I'd say put the guilty in a room for fifteen minutes with a group of e-mail administrators, network managers, IT security pukes, and assorted other sufferers. These folks would be drawn from a pool of all available qualified persons. (We'd have to work out the details of the selection process, but that shouldn't be too hard.) The only rule would be that the spammer couldn't be killed. I have occasionally wondered what I would do if introduced to a notorious spammer. Leap out of my chair and attempt to claw his eyes out? Aim a well-placed kick at some sensitive area? Find some weapon to use to bash his skull in? Or just sit there and say, "You idiot! Why?"

(I didn't think your post was offtopic. I thought it was funny.)

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[erroneus]

To me there is no greater crime than the one that involves planning and execution, breaking and skirting security measures, taking advantage of and defrauding thousands if not millions of people, and doing so with a sense of entitlement.

They demonstrate no remorse and no regret. They commit criminal acts on a very wide scale and they somehow think it's business. The crime is executed in a cold, calculating and callous manner against people who often go through great and expensive means to avoid their acts only to have those measures thwarted with ever-increasing intent. INTENT. These guys are intent on doing what they do.

They demonstrate skill that could just as easily be used in honest ways. They choose not to for varieties of reasons, but they clearly have options and ignore the legal ones in favor of illegal ones. Why? Because they stand to make more money criminally? That's the most likely reason.

Now let's compare that to, say, armed robbery. Aside from the true professionals, armed robbers are generally pretty desperate people. Very little planning goes into the act. Get get a weapon and engage in violent and brutal behavior to get money... a relatively small amount of money at that when compared the the criminal described above. The victims are limited in number. The victims aren't usually pulled from a list, but rather someone at random... an unfortunate.

And while an armed robber might present the victim(s) with momentary fright or even injury, it's a much more honest and direct crime. It's also far less planned. The degree is intent is orders of magnitude less than that of the criminal described above. The drive for this crime is generally one of desperation; it's emotional in nature -- passionate. And let's face it. If he had better options, he would be doing that at all.

So really... which one is actually the worst person? Which is the worst crime? Is armed robbery worse because it involves fear?! Someone ran a red light and scared me half to death the other morning! By that measure, a red-light runner is worse than a spammer... and let's not forget that more people die in those types of accidents than from armed robbery, let alone spamming. So REALLY. What makes other crimes worse?

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[Goobermunch]

Hmmm. What is "the one that poses a substantial and unavoidable chance of someone getting killed when it all goes south," Alex.

Come on. Wrap your head around this: Armed robberies often involve people getting shot and killed. Spam, to the best of my knowledge never killed anyone.

And in most (94% or higher) states, the only death qualified felonies (if any) are homicides and rape (especially the rape of children). Spam is simply not in the same ballpark as other crimes.

Now that's not to say that I don't think a good public flogging wouldn't be in order, on the way to the prison . . . . But the death penalty for what is essentially a victimless crime? No.

--AC

In the interest of fairness, I should mention that under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, it is a capital offense to grow pot. To be death qualified, you've got to grow lots and lots and lots of pot (like 200,000 plants). But that shouldn't be the law either.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[Xtravar]

Everyone complains about spammers, but for fuck sake, I get at least two credit card offers a week which I *have* to shred otherwise someone may end up rummaging through my garbage and taking out a credit card in my name. I get shit in my real mailbox that could easily make me miss a bill payment with all the clutter.

Why the fuck does everyone hate on email spammers when they're easily filtered out (for the most part), but they're okay allowing credit card companies and other companies to spam our mailboxes? I hit delete when I see a stock scam, whoop-de-fuckin'-do! But when I get credit card offers and magazines and shit I never asked for in my physical mailbox, I not only have to throw it away, but I have to make sure that no sensitive information is thrown away with it, AND I have to sort out what can be recycled and what can't be (if I feel environmentally conscious).

Beating up on e-spammers is in vogue, and nerds just eat it up and love it. However, physical spam is legal and done continuously with much greater consequences.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[erroneus]

No. Murder is not morally equal. But people are more likely to be murderers than spammers because murder most often involves a momentary lapse of reason or good sense. Spammers are professionally out to get whatever they can, as often as they can at anyone's expense using lies, deceit and misdirection. I find murder to be a lot easier to forgive. Murderers are less likely to have character flaws. Murderers are people like you or your neighbor. They are your boyfriends and girlfriends... husbands and wives... most of the time someone they know is the victim... and often times, there is something resembling deserving or cause!

But the users of the net? The millions if not billions of dollars being spent and/or lost due to spams and scams, security compromises and all the problems caused by spammers. You may idealistically claim to think that no amount of money is worth a single human life, but the facts are not in your favor. If the lives of strangers are so important to you, what are you doing to stop their tragic ends? Trying to stop the war "on terror" are you? I kinda doubt it.

Life and death happens for a variety of reasons and a variety of causes in a variety of ways. Generally speaking, the most pleasant ways to die are those that involve lethal injections or sleeping. Beyond that, the tragedy of death will happen to everyone. It's what's between birth and death that needs to be cared for the most and when a single individual can be responsible for so much expense, trouble and misery spread out evenly across the world. Death is unavoidable. Spam is completely needless.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[KiahZero]

The parent's point was that the difference between armed robbery and capital murder is generally luck, so saying that spammers have committed a more morally heinous crime than armed robbery is a stretch; spam has a much lower likelihood of ending in death (approximately zero) than armed robbery (some high percentage).

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[SL Baur]

Hmmm. What is "the one that poses a substantial and unavoidable chance of someone getting killed when it all goes south," Alex. Now you're getting into thought crime, which sadly is becoming most fashionable. Justice is getting punished for what you've done wrong, not for what you might have done wrong.

Wrap your head around this: Armed robberies often involve people getting shot and killed. Wrap your head around this: until they are shot and killed, it really doesn't matter. When they are shot and killed, it's murder and we have fairly severe penalties for that.

Armed robbery is taking advantage of the legally disarmed. Put a big sign outside your store (in English and Spanish) - "WARNING: teller is armed" and I'll bet that will be one store that's skipped even by the most desperate wannabe armed robber. Or better still, do like they do in RP and have a uniformed, badged and openly armed security guard at the entrance.

Spam, to the best of my knowledge never killed anyone. I wouldn't be so sure of that. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were victims of overwork (a fairly common problem in Japan, past PM Obuchi died of it) in Japanese ISPs due to stress and overtime involved with fighting spam. I'd be more surprised though if news of that actually reached a newspaper. And yes, under those circumstances, I would consider it fair to charge spammers with murder.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[SL Baur]

Erroneus' original question was (which I think is a thought-provoking question):

So REALLY. What makes other crimes worse? and neither did he write anything about punishment nor did you answer his question.

See my earlier post in this thread for my thoughts on a comparison between armed robbery and spamming.

Your question is:

Do you honestly think spamming and murder are morally equal? I wouldn't, unless as a result of the consequences of the spam, someone died. I think with high probability unfortunate engineers in Japanese ISPs (and elsewhere) have died from overwork combatting spam. They call it Karoshi in Japan http://www.apmforum.com/columns/boye51.htm and the Prime Minister around the turn of the century, OBUCHI Keizo, is a recent extremely high-profile victim.

He wasn't offering moral comparisons though, only the amount of intent involved. I would imagine more effort, planning and callousness go into spamming than nearly any premeditated murder.

Think outside the box for a moment. Murder is ending the life of an individual, in effect stealing time from their life away from them and their loved ones. Spamming is stealing time from the lives of millions of individuals and the overall costs to society as a whole may well be greater.

And the more I think about it, the more I want to hear your answer. What makes you think that murder is morally worse than spamming? Just asking.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[SL Baur]

Why the fuck does everyone hate on email spammers when they're easily filtered out (for the most part), Ay, there's the rub. You still have to do a quick scan to make sure your filter didn't misroute a message.

but they're okay allowing credit card companies and other companies to spam our mailboxes? I hit delete when I see a stock scam, whoop-de-fuckin'-do! But when I get credit card offers and magazines and shit I never asked for in my physical mailbox, I not only have to throw it away, I'm not. However, for me, email addresses are far more permanent than meat space addresses. Since I've had my @xemacs.org mailing address (1995), I've had 12 meat space addresses (hey, I'm a contractor and I move around a lot).

My first piece of mail in Japan, once I got a visa and permanent address, was a flyer from an English Conversation school with Celine Dion's picture on it. The horror, the horror ...

The US is far, far the worst place I've ever lived for junk mail. I've lost bills while out of town due to my tiny mailslot filling up with junk. The kicker was one time when I was down to check my mail at the same time the garbage^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmail man was delivering and I told him don't give me that crap (he had two big bags, one of real mail, the other of bulk garbage), I don't want it and he basically told me off ("I'm required by law to give this to you, yadda, yadda, yadda"). Wonderful.

Both junk email (taking time away from me to get rid of it) and bulk postal mail are irritating nuisances that take at least as much time to get rid of as smoking supposedly reduces from one's life expectancy, so why shouldn't they both get the same penalties that the US tobacco companies got?

However, physical spam is legal and done continuously with much greater consequences. It's worse, it's required by US law. You cannot opt out.

The couple of years I spent living in the jungles of Mindanao were great. No mail delivery, no junk mail. No landlines, no telemarketers. Sometimes the 3rd world can be bliss...

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[KDR_11k]

You can call spam many things but victimless is probably the least applicable. How is it victimless to DDoS mailservers and inboxes while attempting to get data for identity theft? If that was done by a govt it would be considered an act of war.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[MicktheMech]

I assume you're talking about those very important "forward this to 10 other people or you will die in seven days" e-mails. Life and death indeed.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[TheRaven64]

Eh? How do you define "thought crime" then? Thoughtcrime, from the Orwellian definition, is the crime of thinking something inappropriate. A thoughtcrime is one in which no physical crime is committed, but the perpetrator is guilty of inappropriate thought. A modern example of thoughtcrime is the apostasy statue in Saudi Arabia where changing your religion away from Islam is punishable by death.

There is a world of difference between this and altering the punishments based on intent. Do you think that someone who buys a gun for the express purpose of murder and then uses it to kill someone is as guilty as someone who is negligently handles a weapon on a firing range and accidentally kills someone? Should they both be subject to the same punishment?

Ignoring the moral aspect, the first person in the above aspect has demonstrated that they are guilty of premeditated killing and is likely to be a future danger to society. The second person has not (although they might be dangerously incompetent).

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[Translation Error]

There's no aspect of "thought crime" whatsoever involved. Putting people at risk is doing something wrong. That's one of the reasons there's a difference between robbery and armed robbery, or why you can be arrested for DUI even though you haven't crashed into anything or anyone.

Re:"Hoisted on their own profits"

[Translation Error]

The crime is putting people at unacceptable risk. By your argument, it should be perfectly legal to run around firing a gun in random directions until you happen to hit someone. Yes, "endangering other people" is a subjective term--that's why we have lawmakers who (in theory) create rules that exlpicitly state what the community considers acceptable.

Which is just the opposite of "regular" justice...

[kclittle]

Steal $15,000, and you get 15 years. Steal $15,000,000,000 (can you say "Enron"?), and you get 2 years plus time spent.
Oh, well, American jurisprudence overcomes all obstacles, I guess.

Suitable punishment

[Scareduck]

Penis enlargement, the hard way, i.e., using a come-along.

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.

In a perfect world...

[Anonymous Coward]

In a perfect world spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with too many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

One Solution

[DynaSoar]

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

Re:One Solution

[Rod Beauvex]

Only in America can someone with the last name 'SWINDLE' get appointed to something called the Federal TRADE Commission.

Re:Sounds like a new incentive to be a tax cheat

[Veinor]

Al Capone, the notorious Chicago gangster, was brought down this way. Not through being a member of the Chicago mafia... but through failing to declare his illegal income.

Real reason they are coming down hard on Spammers

[king-manic]

Spammers represent a large illicit underground economy, I somehow doubt most spammers are on the up and up with their taxes. Thus many of these laws are just the revenue service finding extra things to press this group. There are several groups you ought never fuck with. The Taxman, The mailman, and The FDA.

Income calculation?

[esocid]

I'm curious as to how they got that "reported $250,000" figure. I read the part about his spamming activities were meticulously documented, but I'm still not sure where the money came from. Do companies actually pay per referral or per email or what? Who is paying this guy? And shouldn't his backers be getting fined or dragged into this at all?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Why charge people for real crimes when we can charge them for exercising free speech in an unpopular way?

Won't someone please think of the children^W spam!

[MacDork]

I keep wondering, why do we need to charge the spammers with anti-spam laws.

Because otherwise, you couldn't get slashbots to support the destruction of the first amendment. It sounds a little like, "Won't someone please think of the children^W spam!!!" Yes, we need to stop the email scammers/phishers/trojans, we need to stop people peddling deadly/addictive drugs via email, we need to stop the email pump and dump scam artists.... We don't need to make it illegal to send an email message to 20 million people just because you don't know them.

Re:Makes some sense, but not much

[techno-vampire]

Earnings in any mass-mailing campaign (and that's basically what spam is, of course) are provided by the small percentage of people who respond. The more you send out, the more people (assuming a fixed percentage, of course) respond. Therefore, earnings are proportional to the number of messages sent out. In general, it's easier to find out how much a spammer earned than how many spam were sent, so using earnings as a yardstick is quite reasonable.

Re:Prison, really?

[jfengel]

That's the ironic thing about punishment. It doesn't do you any good to punish somebody. It's supposed to be a deterrent, but if the person hasn't been deterred, it costs you more to punish him than to let him go.

But you have to do it anyway, as a message to the next guy that you're serious. The severity of the punishment has zero to do with what this guy did, and everything to do with how strong a message you want to send to the next guy.

In the case of spam, though, deterrence is fruitless. There will always be somebody undeterred, and the economics of spam make that one guy aggravating all out of proportion.

It's why Slashdotters semi-seriously call for much, much harsher punishments. They feel very, very strongly about the message, precisely because they know that it's unlikely to be heard.

Re:Prison, really?

[sqrt(2)]

Punishment does not deter crime. Extreme punishment does not deter extreme crimes. This is one of the most common fallacies I routinely see dragged out when people try and defend the death penalty. The idea that we can somehow make people think twice about the worst crimes, rape and murder, by killing those that we find guilty has been around nearly since the idea of law. It's just as false now as it always has been. We still have crime, we still have the worst crimes. We have more of the worst crimes than countries that do not have the death penalty and have much lighter sentences by comparison. Even our none-death penalty sentences are over the top. Much of the world would consider 25 year and life sentences to be incredibly excessive for the crimes they're applied to here.

When someone is a danger to society, locking them up protects society. Spammers, no matter how annoying are not dangerous to society. Meanwhile, locking them up costs society money. So the best and most effective action that society can take is to fine them. This works especially well for these types of crimes when people are fraudulently making money. Take away all that illegally made money and then some more for our troubles.

I hate spammers as much as the next guy,

[CCFreak2K]

but is putting them behind bars really a fitting punishment? Yes, they're highly annoying and may even have done some damage depending on their use of botnets and the like, but isn't the whole reason to have a prison to keep DANGEROUS people away from society? I'd sure as hell want a serial killer in there rather than just a spammer. And then there's the argument that prison isn't an effective punishment, but that's beside the point...

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.

So if I steal a quarter...

[SamP2]

And then buy a lottery ticket with it, and win a million, I'd get a much longer sentence than someone else who stole a quarter and didn't make anything out of it?

Sorry, I'm all for canning spammers, but punishing people based on profit they make from ill-gotten gains, rather than the damage they actually caused, seems to be as violating fundemantal principles of justice.

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

[KDR_11k]

Because freedom of speech is not the freedom to force others to listen.

Viagra requires intent to function.

[Dr_Barnowl]

You actually need to get excited to get a woody with Viagra ; it's one of the things that made the drug so ideal for it's market. All the other medical solutions for erectile dysfunction require mechanical components, or needles, and produce "unnatural" erections which are "up" before they are desired and sometimes persist long past their useful life. Viagra is by far the most elegant solution, in both it's pharmaceutical action and it's function ; the erection is as close to natural in behaviour as you are going to get.

Putting him on it in a solitary cell just guarantees that he'll be able to get a good boner to whack off with whenever he likes.

I suggest putting him in a cell with "Bubba", and injecting him with enough prostaglandin (in the penis) to give him an erection that lasts for many hours... and is, alas, the last he'll ever have in his life. Then he goes through the exquisite mental torture of deciding whether to use it for the last time on Bubba, or never have sex again. I guess you can call me cruel and unusual.