Slashdot Mirror
Botnet Spammer Gets Just 18 Months For Being Odd
itwbennett writes "Thirty-three-year old Scottsman Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan campaign in 2006. The reason for his relatively light sentence? He apparently wasn't seeking to maximize profit like any normal, red-blooded hacker. Also, his timing was good. His arrest in June 2006 predated by a matter of months the Police and Justice Act, which would likely have resulted in a harsher sentence. By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison."
Sounds like a way too harsh sentence to me. Anyway, I personally like spam (and get lots of it). My email program filters out all of it, but sometimes I read it for entertainment. I don't know what's wrong with those annoying anti-spam fascists, perhaps they need to get laid more often.
what the developers of the system he exploited need is better culpability. put them all in jail.
Yes, but one was in the US where more of the planet are imprisoned than anywhere else.
You can't compare authoritarian regimes like the US with countries that still have some compassion for their people.
Having said that, I actually thought that the penalty was a bit stiff.
About 6 months would have been more appropriate - a message but not a draconian one.