http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/04/08/spam.sentence.ap/index.html

I expect it'll be overturned on appeal. Thankfully.

The entire concept of being sent to prison for a decade because you sent unwanted e-mails is ridiculous.

Yes. People have had less for rape, child pron, armed robbery etc etc.... to end up with 9 years of being beaten up and taking it up the rear for what's doesn't amount to much more than a civil issue is a bit ludicrous.

6 months, with early release in 2-3 after good behaviour, would teach him a lesson and set an example without destroying his entire life.

That and while he's in there, he'll probably "learn" all kinds of crap and turn into a hardened criminal if he has to hang around for too long. Suddenly you've turned someone from a disliked person who sent a few annoying unwanted emails into something far more serious like a drug dealer.

9 years seems a bit much, but I'm sure that boils down to a lot less with parole.

I'm all for dealing harshly with spammers. They're costing lots of businesses a lot of money and pissing off consumers.

Insider trading has a maximum sentence of ten years, iirc...

Spamming shouldn't even be a felony offense.

I dunno. He sent out over 10 million emails a day. I am glad they are cracking down on this giant annoy fest. However he didn't just spam, he scammed people out of $750,000 (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=653257&page=2) a month, selling his bogus 'Fedex Refund' software and ****.

If they have to come out with a maximum penalty to let spammers know they are serious, well good for them. I hope that they take away his money too.

The article says he grossed $750,000 a month, not necessarily scammed it. If he's been convicted for serious fraud then a sentence of years might be appropriate. If he's been convicted of some indecency offence through his ****ography then a sentence of some or a great many months might be appropriate. If he's been convicted for sending out e-mails then 9 years is a lot.

If they have to come out with a maximum penalty to let spammers know they are serious, well good for them.

You can say that about every criminal, who commits every crime, for every offence. The justice system needs however to be serious all the time. Instead of randomly handing out randomly large prison terms to every criminal the sentences need to be consistent to the crime on every occassion.

Lets also give a cheer to the news reporting that almost leaves you with more questions than answers.

I dunno. He sent out over 10 million emails a day. I am glad they are cracking down on this giant annoy fest. However he didn't just spam, he scammed people out of $750,000 (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=653257&page=2) a month, selling his bogus 'Fedex Refund' software and ****.

If they have to come out with a maximum penalty to let spammers know they are serious, well good for them. I hope that they take away his money too.

If his spam was selling fraudulent products, then get him on charges of fraud...sending unsolicited e-mail is not a crime worthy of a felony charge, let alone a decade in jail. No matter how irritating it is. Personally, I don't think it should be illegal at all. If I wanted to send out thousands of snail mails daily to people...its legal. Hell you can walk house to house and put unwanted fliers and such on people's doorsteps if you like.

As for his money...most of it was made prior to the law taking effect. You cannot grandfather in previous acts made criminal by new law.

The difference is that you have to pay for the snail mail, email is paid for by the subscribers. It's like fax machines, or calling someone's cell phone. The cost is born by the receiver, not the sender.

Instead of making spam illegal they should just make it illegal for companies to sell your email address. I think spam (unfortunatley) falls under the freedom of speech. But like cursing in some areas will get you fined, so should spamming people. Now if he used a fraud program then I agree, he should be charged with fraud. And instead of 9 years he should get a million dollar fine payable to the various ISP, and people he scammed. The worst way to hurt someone is really with the poket book. 9yrs in Club med and that guys ready for retirement when hes out of prison.

Kalest.

Over here they were on about charging rent to people in prison to pay for them being there. Which seems like an excellent idea - that way they're not living for nothing for 9 years and having a nice wad of cash when they get released. There was a drawback though - the proposal suggested that even if innocent they'd still have to pay for being in prison, which seemed a bit unfair and so I don't think it passed.

Also, isn't there an equivalent to the Data Protection Act in the US? Here in Brit land, it *is* illegal for companies to sell your email address or any other personal details without your permission, and there are pretty strict guidelines on how you get that permission (usually at the bottom of the form there's a disclaimer saying that by hitting submit / handing the piece of paper in you agree to them passing your details on, but if you disagree tick "this" box.)

You can say that about every criminal, who commits every crime, for every offence. The justice system needs however to be serious all the time. Instead of randomly handing out randomly large prison terms to every criminal the sentences need to be consistent to the crime on every occassion.

Lets also give a cheer to the news reporting that almost leaves you with more questions than answers.

Well the one thing they do agree on is that he was one of the top 10 biggest spammers. It certainly wasn't grandma sending an email to the wrong address and now she is getting 9 years, or it wasn't the wedding registry sending out an ad about dresses on sale. I think it was consistant, big spammer, big sentance. If someone on the FBI top 10 most wanted was arrested and proven guilty, a harsh term wouldn't suprise me.

sending unsolicited e-mail is not a crime worthy of a felony charge, let alone a decade in jail.

It's a misdemeanor (http://www.spamlaws.com/state/va.shtml) until you take it to a extreme:

"B. A person is guilty of a Class 6 felony if he commits a violation of subsection A and:

1. The volume of UBE transmitted exceeded 10,000 attempted recipients in any 24-hour period, 100,000 attempted recipients in any 30-day time period, or one million attempted recipients in any one-year time period; or

2. The revenue generated from a specific UBE transmission exceeded $1,000 or the total revenue generated from all UBE transmitted to any EMSP exceeded $50,000."

The entire concept of being sent to prison for a decade because you sent unwanted e-mails is ridiculous.You're right, it should have been 20. The article says he was one of the top 10 spammers in the world, not just some newbie who sent out a few e-mails.

Spammers are loathsome con artists; hopefully this well send them a message that their crap isn't going to be tolerated for long.

If you were the worst litterbug in the world, worst flyposter in the world, worst busker in the world, or worst beggar in the world, or worst graffiti artist in the world, you still wouldn't deserve 9 years in jail.

In the UK there was a kid who carved his initials into train windows for years causing massive genuine criminal damage and regular disruption to public transport. His jail term was appropriate to the damage caused. His term wasn't increased to be an example to others or reduced because someone thought graffiti might be harmless fun. The same justice should be applied to spammers.

The same justice should be applied to spammers.


But remember, that internet companies(the ones that sell bandwidth) are just as responsible as he is. Just as responsible as Microsoft is for putting code in their browser for adware and spyware companies to use to hijack your machine.

ISPs sell bandwidth to spammers at premium prices. Spammers are ISPs cash cows.

In the UK there was a kid who carved his initials into train windows for years causing massive genuine criminal damage and regular disruption to public transport. His jail term was appropriate to the damage caused.

Firstly, I think it's important that we recognize that the punishment level, generally speaking, is much higher in the USA than in Europe. Then it's time to take a good look at what this activity actually cost companies and individuals. So - (direct income from the frauds aside and also ignoring the cost related to loss of productivity from employees that waste time deleting spam and network admins wasting time updating the spam filters), what would you estimate the actual damages as being? Let's say it costs $0.01 to download/forward 10 emails. Once we have a number ($0.01/10Xnumber of emails per dayXnumber of days) we can compare that to what others recieve that commit more direct cases of financial crime. Once that's sorted, we need to look at the sentencing for others who pass themselves off as being someone they're not. Then we add the two, and then we can compare it to 9 years and see how it looks.

I'm not all that sure it's totally off the wall, to be honest. I'm sure the sentence will get chopped, but that's because I have no faith that a judge will realize that "It costs a hella lot of money to run computers and networks, and if you steal from that, you steal actual money, even if it's just a tiiiiny bit each time".

I like Illiad's take on the issue.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050410

Some of the estimates of junk email (ie spam) are estimated to be in the billions of dollars. If you think about it, its pretty effortless to send out 10s of 1000s of them per hour. They travel on public and private communication lines, go through privately owned routers (I wonder what percentage of traffic routed is UCE?), go through privately owned firewalls, hit privately paid for end-user accounts. People spend pretty $$'s to filter the stuff out of their mail boxes. Then there's the $$'s that ISP's lose when some spammer becomes a user and the ISP gets punished or blacklisted by the rest of the internet because they didn't control the outgoing spam well enough.

I'm an old-school internet user who remembers the good old days when commercial traffic was forbidden on the internet. Of course, people's eyes glazed over when I talked about Usenet and email back then. No one knew what the fook I was talking about. But I must say, commercializing the Internet was good. Its had ramifications I never dreamed of. Its probably made things like India and China's growth today possible.

But remember, that internet companies(the ones that sell bandwidth) are just as responsible as he is.

I'd agree with this. His ISP must have noticed that he was sending millions of e-mails and tolerated his behavior. There are a great number of recent examples of service providers willing to make profit out of customers misfortune, and not tightening their service until they were severely pressured by consumer groups or governments. Perhaps this is another case where some pressure is necessary.

It's not the ISP's job to police their users. If we have ISPs reading email to make sure it isn't spam and viewing content they download to make sure it isn't **** well so much for privacy. I mean if I went out and bought a car and then used it as a get-away car, is Nissan responsible? It's a legit product with a legit use. If someone comes and subpoenas and the ISP investigates that's fine, but having them watch everything I do in fear of not getting sued, that's just creepy.

That being said, it doesn't say anywhere the ISP didn't report 10,000,000 emails a day from this account and asked the feds to investigate.

But remember, that internet companies(the ones that sell bandwidth) are just as responsible as he is.If a drunk driver hits you, is the government responsible for having built the road?

One thing noone is recognizing is that the man was charged and sentenced for 9 years based on roughly two weeks of spamming after the law came into effect. How much he spammed prior to the law should have had zero effect on the criminal offense.

No, as far as I understand it, the spamming -started- only 2 weeks after the law came into effect, and the defense used the "omg the law was so new, how was he supposed to know!"-argument. That's how I read it anyway.

If a drunk driver hits you, is the government responsible for having built the road?

Of course not.

The ISPs know they are selling bandwidth to spammers.

They have a different, read higher, rate scale for them. They are premium customers.

I know the RBOCs and ISPs did this back when I was in the business. There was pressure for them to self police and crack down on it, don't know if they did or not. But I doubt it.

It would be more like,,,
Them selling him the booze when he bought the car. And then pouring the drinks before handing him the keys. And smiling when they rack his credit card 25 bucks per shot.

http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=158

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2199

http://mailnull.com/protect/msnbc_spam.html

It is a naughtly little secret.

I was just countering the notion that spammers are 'stealing' bandwidth. They are more than likely subsidizing your lower bandwidth cost. This guy is a goat, a sacrificial goat. That is all. If your network administrator can not stop corporate spam, fire him or her now.

And shame on you if you have not warned your grandma not to refinance her condo, buy Omaha Steaks, or transfer her money to an account to help out a Nigerian prince.(more than likely she deleted the spam to make her boobs bigger, or grandpa's penis last longer).

Someone buys this crap. Otherwise spammers would not do it. Don't just blame the carnie, blame the sucker too. They are a 3rd responsible that you get this junk in your box.

Jaynes' sister, Jessica DeGroot, was convicted of identical charges but given no jail time. A third defendant was acquitted.

Told ya, he was a goat.

Virginia is investigating similar cases, and McGuire said a lengthy sentence would serve as a deterrent not only in Virginia, where prosecutors brought the case given that AOL's headquarters is there.

It's not the ISP's job to police their users.

The ISP should revoke the service they provide to specific people who are abusing the service to the detriment of other customers. It's not a matter of policing the service, it's a matter of managing the service correctly.

Our spam software costs approximately $7500 for the license alone, an additional $2500 if we decide to upgrade to the enterprise software route. The servers that the software runs on costs approximately $5.5-7.5k each, times three, not including the partial cost of EMC storage, and not including the backup mechanisms in place, and not including the Disaster recovery image servers. (And yes, these are Windows solutions, and yes we could go with SpamAssassin, but other than the license cost, you wouldn't be saving much.)

So for my company, which only does a medium level of email (150-250k outbound msgs/day), we've got approximately $50k invested in antispam solutions. According to our spam software, out of 100k msgs, 20% is caught as spam by content filtering, and another 20% caught by blacklists, virus checks, profanity filters, etc. So out of 100k msgs, 40k is being stopped as spam - now here's the kicker, right now we're only piloting this program so only 10% of our users are getting actively scanned. The rest of the users are getting no filtering (except for virus checking). When we fully roll out this program to all of our users, we expect to have a 85-95% spam-vs-legit content rating.

If you all believe that spam has absolutely no impact to you other than just having to hit the "delete" key, you're in for a very rude awakening. There are companies out there who base their entire profit off of stopping spam.

Do I believe that this guy should get 9yrs in a Federal prison? Heck no, that's just costing me <b>more money</b>. I think this guy should be taken to a back alley and beaten to an inch of his life by all the people like me who have to deal with spam on a daily basis and other people who've had to rebuild their relatives or friends computers because jerks like him feel like hiding backdoor trojans in their spam. I also believe that this guy should get slapped with the same penalty that they handed that one hacker (which I forget the name of atm) and force him not to go near any computer more technical than a cash register for the next ten years.

But the back alley beating... yeah, that's manditory.

Hmmmm... as much as I hate spam e-mail, nine years seems a bit harsh. I too suspect it will be reduced on appeal. Nevertheless, there is a tough message there for would-be spammers (yay).

At home I have had the same ISP for about 6 years now. After about two years the spam got so bad I couldn't find the REAL messages that I wanted to see. I finally set up an outside account for e-mail and have moved from one Yahoo or Hotmail address to another when the spam gets so out of control that I can't find MY e-mail anymore.

I'm not the type to sign up for "free" this or that, and while I admit that I shop online, it took me about 4 years on the internet before I placed my first order. I have since learned that I keep one account specifically for this purpose to keep spam in my real e-mail down. The ISP I use now has a spam filter and no one gets through unless they are in my address book. It saddens me that I miss some mails I would probably like to get but I don't because I never added them to my mailbox. Things like software package upgrades that I *might* want to buy for apps I have now, messages on patches that should be downloaded because someone left a gaping hole in the software in order to get it to market quickly, messages from friends and relatives I never had an address to add to my book. But the alternative is worse I suppose. I was getting between 60 to 100 spam e-mails a day before I went the Yahoo/Hotmail route, and I have no idea how many spam mails they block but I still get a lot (5-10 a day) through them. And I am just ONE individual... nothing special... no special "techie" jobs I need to do online... Most of what I do online is looking up drugs and their interactions, looking up "eldercare" sites and those dealing with Alzheimer's or looking for an item that I need but can't find locally out where I live. I don't think that should draw the numbers of spam mails I get.

I KNOW that spam must be costing companies millions if not billions of dollars a day. Beyond the dollars Stormhaven talks about. How much productive time is lost by every individual who has to cull through their work mails to get at their work? Whether they actually READ them (some do) or discard them, it's working time lost.

Tongue in cheek... I agree! Toss him in jail and throw away the key or ban him from EVER using a computer/PDA/cell phone or whatever again. I think jail would be cheaper for those of us taxpayers who would be footing the bill to make either scenario happen. If we were in the middle east and were of an "eye for an eye" society, I would HIGHLY recommend turning him loose in a stadium or LARGE convention hall filled with the recipients of his malicious doings.

But in reality, 9 years is LIGHT. I think that IRS tactics should be employed for protecting us from spam. Make an example of a few highly visible cases and scare the rest of the country into compliance. Hm... I wonder if the IRS has checked him out lately.... :D

The ISPs know they are selling bandwidth to spammers.In the cases where they intentionally help the spammer, then they're co-conspirators and should be punished. But I can't imagine that's the case every time. Also, ISPs can't possibly be expected to control spamming through zombies.Someone buys this crap. Otherwise spammers would not do it. Don't just blame the carnie, blame the sucker too. They are a 3rd responsible that you get this junk in your box.So we punish people for being stupid victims?

Also, it's unfair to attack Microsoft on this issue. I remember some years ago they had a beta version of Outlook Express with a built-in spam filter that worked quite nicely (when I tested it). But because it accidentally filtered out one greeting card company's e-mail, Microsoft was sued and they were forced to remove the feature.