Spammer Sentencing Guidelines Released 258
jfengel writes "The United States Sentencing Commission has issued its guidelines for punishment under the CAN-SPAM act (PDF, beginning on page 155). You can get 5 years for a second offense or if you're spamming for fraud, child porn or other felony, or 1 to 3 years depending on how much spam you send. If Congress doesn't say otherwise, it goes into effect November 1."
Wimpy guidelines.. (Score:5, Funny)
Only one punishment is suitable for spammers: Death by Fisting.
Re:Wimpy guidelines.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even Worse.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even Worse.. (Score:2)
Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:5, Interesting)
For plain advertising - Five Years is actually a decent sentance. It's really too bad that, technically, it's so difficult to catch a spammer. Especially if they route through international hosts. Sadly, this is likely to have the worst effect on those that are not technologically savvy, and know the least about how Email works.
To me, those types of people are the least of the SPAM problem.
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:3)
Compared to distribution of child porn or plain classic fraud, using spam during the comission of those crimes is nothing much.
Of course, we know that advertising spammers already make a point of setting themselves up outside of US jurisdiction, just like the online casino operators do...
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:5, Insightful)
So imagine when someone's Gramma, running a virus infected computer on (for argument's sake) Comcast, get's arrested and convicted for spamming.
She goes to Computer-Repair-Center and fixes her computer. But they don't put all the most recent Microsoft patches. 10 days later, she's arrested for spamming, again.
Is she the victim, or the perpetrator? Clearly the SPAM is being sent from her computer.
Any jury will see that she is not actively involved, but she is enabling the actions of the SPAMmers. Is CAN-SPAM written in a way to clearly differentiate gramma from a SPAM company?
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:2, Insightful)
You know its not that easy to email "the entire internet". When was the last time you got an innocuous spam?
So imagine when someone's Gramma, running a virus infected computer on (for argument's sake) Comcast, get's arrested and convicted for spamming.
I guess you kind of hope that the law enforcement have an ou
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:2)
Okay, Canter & Siegel, the original scumba^W spammers were lawyers, but many of them seem only to make cartoonish legal threats (hence the name "cartoony") which get passed around the newsgroups for people to laugh at.
Yes, I grant you, the spammers have hired lawyers before, but since everyone in the USA has the right to counsel in any criminal prosecution, I cannot seriously imagine that the cops would be deterred from enforcing the laws against them merely because they wer
Unless? (Score:2)
Dudley Hiibel : Am I under arrest? : I just need to see some identification. : Why? : Because I'm investigating an investigation. : Investigating what? : I'm investigating.
Deputy Lee Dove
Hiibel
Dove
Hiibel
Dove
Verdict: Drain Bamage
Arrest a Grandma? You'd have to be REALLY dumb (Score:2)
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:2)
The f*cktards can even modify worms to send out specific spam emails ...
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:2)
Oh, and make it so that, from now, on it's legal to pay them with shares in SCO :-) I understand now that Baystar wants to unload, that RBC is next ...
Or to be really mean - have them work one day for SCO as "management", then tattoo (or brand) them with "I was SCO management".
Or the ultimate: A T-Shirt that says "I work for Microsoft Quality Assurance".
A Bad, Dumb Yuppie Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Real spammers will simply move their base to a country that won't extradite them and has good broadband connections. Like maybe some island in the middle of the Pacific that acts as a supply and maintenence station for the major trans-oceanic internet cables. So this law won't do anything to reduce the amount of spam that gets to your PC.
I call it a 'Yuppie' law because
another example of a Yuppie Law (Score:5, Interesting)
An example would be the law that requires all children to wear bicycle helmets. Fine for yuppie mommies, they're the first to buy anything that might help protect precious little Megan and Justin. But bad for the children of the poor.
Say a cop sees a poor kid on a bicycle without a helmet. He stops the kid and gives him a big (more than $100) ticket that his parents must pay or lose their driver's license. [I know, there's no connection between the two in the real world. But yuppie mommies love to come up with creative and nasty little ways to make the poor people improve themselves i.e. see things from a yuppie mommy prespective]
The parents can't afford a $100 helmet for the kid -and- pay the ticket. So they tell the kid on the threat of a beating not to get caught by the cops for riding around the neighborhood without a helmet.
So the next time that the cops are around and see the kids riding without helmets, the kids take off in the opposite direction. Being kids, they don't look where they're going and dive right out into traffic where they get hit by a car.
The good yuppie mommies point to this incident as a reason for all kids to wear helmets and to increase the penalities on the parents of the working class children to 'encourage them to make the right choices for their children's safety'.
I know, I know, that you're all going to tell me what a shit I am and how this doesn't make any sense and , of course, kids NEED helmets and what a stupid jerk I am and how I have a serious attitude problem and how I could certainly benefit from counseling and how my own kids deserve a better parent than me and everything else...
It doesn't change the fact that we don't need any more yuppie mommie laws. You need to consider the possible side effects of any law will have before you endorse passing it.
Thank you,
Re:another example of a Yuppie Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently some kid darwined himself by running out into traffic and the idiots in Sacramento thought "I'll make sure that never happens again!" Nevermind that in decades of public transportat
Re:another example of a Yuppie Law (Score:3, Informative)
He said that the compulsory seat belt law he had come to support. He said that the state had to pay $80,000 for care for people who became wheelchair bound as a result of refusing to wear a seat belt and then having that accident that they claimed would never happen to them.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my message. Most slashdotters would have jus
Re:Worst effect on the least offender... (Score:2)
I realise the average slashdotter can't do this with traceroute and whois, but it should be no problem for the Feds.
2nd offense? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2nd offense? (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. That's just the top of three tiers. Bottom is one year. Here they are:
Up to five years and/or a fine for:
- Furthering another felony using spam
- Second offense. (Voilating state anti-spam laws also counts as first offense.)
Up to three years and/or a fine for:
- using cracked computers to send the spam
- using email accounts or domain registrations obtained with false i.d. info to send the spam
- Sending LOTS of spam: >2,500/day (24 hour period), 25,000/month (30 day period), or 250,000/year (1 year period).
- causing one or more persons to lose $5,000 or more within a one-year period. (I think this includes conning, system damage, and spam cleanup costs.)
- Obtaining anything of value totalling $5,000 or more within a one year period as a reslut of spamming. (I think this includes getting paid to spam.)
- Bossing three or more underlings to do the spam.
Up to one year and/or a fine for any other violations.
Re:2nd offense? (Score:2)
Re:2nd offense? (Score:3)
The resources devoted to making anti-spam products can go elsewhere, to more worthwhile efforts. So yes, if spam could be stopped tomorrow, I would do it.
Re:2nd offense? (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but their profits don't come out of thin air. Other companies could pay for more employees if their costs for anti-spam, anti-virus, etc. software weren't as high as they are. Add the costs for bandwidth (almost never free for companies), wasted time, annoyance (which results in lower productivity) etc. - then do the math.
I'm sure your result will s
This is soft on spamming (Score:2, Funny)
3rd offense death
Re:This is soft on spamming (Score:2, Interesting)
Totally wrong attitude. What is needed is not vicious punishments, but certainty of getting caught. If you could prove quickly and cheaply that 1) This is spam, and 2) He sent it, you wouldn't need massive punishments. $1000 fine, or maybe a week in gaol, would do fine. Spammers spam for money, not for fun. If you make spamming financially unviable, it will end.
What we need is a good way
Two Words: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two Words: (Score:5, Insightful)
Three words: "Spammers are American".
Re:Two Words: (Score:2)
Re:Two Words: (Score:5, Informative)
Joking aside, have a look at the list of Top 10 spammers [spamhaus.org]
1: Alan Ralsky, U.S.A. (Michigan)
2: Scott Richter, U.S.A. (Colorado)
3: Alexey Panov, Germany
4: Tony Banks, U.S.A. (Missouri)
5: Chris Smith, U.S.A. (Minnesota)
6: Eddy Marin, U.S.A. (Florida)
7: Eric Reinertsen, U.S.A. (Florida)
8: Juan Garavaglia, Argentina
9: lmihosting.com, U.S.A.
10:Robert Soloway, U.S.A. (Oregon)
Re:Two Words: (Score:2, Funny)
Video here if you haven't seen it
http://www.ianai.net/jokes/DailyShow.ScottRic
Re:Two Words: (Score:2)
Re:Two Words: (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Those that are actually selling something. Even if their mail operation is overseas, they likely have some base of business operation close to their customers (largely US)
2) Spam Pyramid Scheme types -- since they are only selling addresses and spamware, they can be located anywhere.
Besides, this isn't really an argument against making spam illegal. You don't see people saying "No point in going after child molesters, after all, you can buy a 12 year old in Viet
Re:Two Words: (Score:3, Insightful)
If spamming in the US becomes risky, they'll simply hire people overseas to do it.
Re:Two Words: (Score:2)
Apparently they're British and European. There was an investagative TV program a few weeks ago, and the Nigerian spammers were operating out of Amsterdam and London, although with plenty of people moving around New York and other US cities also. They needed to meet with a lot of potential victims, so they had people in the major european cities (and were a great fan of the idea of setting up meetings in a *different* country so their target was in a foreign countr
Well, now go give 'em hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares about the sentencing.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who cares about the sentencing.... (Score:2)
I think it still applies with spam, so yeh, in theory you could report them.
I'd also think you have enough proof that the spam is fraudulent and uninvited.
The big problem is, and always has been, identifying the culprit. First, the culprit has to be american (otherwise, since both parties are outside the US, it is outside the jurisdiction of this law), and second, you have to
Re:Who cares about the sentencing.... (Score:2)
Ifnot, then it's pretty useless. It's like getting mugged in a dark alley, by someone wearing a mask, and they are being mind controlled from another part of the country.
Overkill? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes I wonder if the prison overcrowding problems aren't because they toss out 5 year sentences like candy to spammers (soon), hackers, and people who get caught with a single joint. Meanwhile the cliche of "rapist out in 3 years" continues to remain valid.
Is it all becoming about profits?
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
A sci-fi story once offered a nice solution to prison overcrowding. The convicted criminal had to take a pill drawn randomly from a bottle. A certain percentage of the pills in the bottle were loaded with lethal poison. If criminal survived the pill, they were released. The probability of dying was tied to the crime
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:3, Insightful)
Capital punishment also happens to be barbaric according to the standards of most civilized nations on earth.
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
And you think the US cares about the standards of other nations WHY?
I think the death penalty lets them off too easy. Let 'em stay in the box for 40 years.
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
The 19 worst offenders in the Sept. 11 attacks died, therefore our criminal justice system is totally ineffective against them.
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
The 19 worst offenders in the Sept. 11 attacks died, therefore our criminal justice system is totally ineffective against them.
Timothy McVeigh [crimelibrary.com] wasn't affraid of the death penalt
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
You are one sadistic individual.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
Sadists enjoy making others suffer.
That includes serial killers, and people who want to make serial killers suffer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Overkill? Random Chance of Death Penalty (Score:2)
Where did you learn this?
Re:Overkill? (Score:2)
Assume that it is all about profits. Think about it, if you wanted to explain to somebody how annoying spam is to you, or how annoying getting raped is to you, the only common commodity you could accurately describe the burden with is money.
Getting raped is obviously going to have more detrimental effects than getting a spam e-mail. Let's say you have to go to a psychiatrist, your emotional problems lead to an end in a relationship y
Re:I agree entirely (Score:2)
Yeah, people are stupid, and you're among them.
You know what one of the top methods of spamming is now? Pick a couple thousand servers with open SMTP ports at random. Randomly generate a couple million "likely" addresses. Send your spam to all these addresses.
Cost to you: minimal. Cost to recipient: substantial. Chances of nailing several million active addresses: pretty damn good. Expected sales: around a hundred.
And if the server bounces on invalid addresses - all the better. A simple set difference
Re:Overkill? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sentencing in general (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sentencing in general (Score:2, Interesting)
Jails in US(and in general all over the world) are overcrowded, and too many gets jail time for doing stupid stuff that doesn't endanger anyone.
And yes, i even feel that the Enron people shouldn't go to jail, What would the use be? A better option would be for the Enron people to give the money to a fund for all the people that got laid off. So they could get money both now(till they get a new job, and for training), and f
Spam legislation is misguided (Score:5, Informative)
(Disclaimer: I'm Mexican. I speak Russian and spend a lot of time there. I'm familiar with their technical capabilities and motivations. So don't start on "why did he singled those nationalities out?" Because in my opinion it's likely to happen. You're welcome to your opinion based on YOUR experiences.)
When the law starts going after the product or service pushers, or their credit card payment processors, I'll cheer it. I doubt the law will be applied correctly until then.
Cheers,
Eugene
Re:Spam legislation is misguided (Score:2)
The problem with fining the companies offering the products/services is that you've then handed their competition a great way to get rid of them. Having trouble beating a rival in the market? Hire a direct marketer in Russia, say, to send out ten million mails, carefully targetted to include government and law enforcement officers in their jurisdiction claiming to be selling their service. Watch them implode under the fines.
Re:Spam legislation is misguided (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said anything about that? Take, for example, everyone's favorite company, Softare Monolith M. Now, M's got this problem with company A - specifically, A's eating into their profits and causing problems by blocking off other markets they want to expand into. M is too used to being a monopoly, and so their corporate structure simply can't handle competition.
Fortunately, there are anti-spam laws in place in the country where M and A reside. These laws, as the original poster suggested, mandate penalties - either per-e-mail or per-batch - for any company who spams. So, M goes and pays a bunch of companies in foreign country R to send off a huge amount of spam mail, claiming to be from A about their product. M makes sure that this spam is targetted so as to be sure to attract the attention of those in charge of enforcing said law.
Now, as far as anyone can tell, company A was responsible for this mail. Neither A nor the spammer would be expected to keep detailed records, as spam is illegal in A's home country. M, of course, wouldn't keep any records. All the e-mail system knows is that this spammer sent all this mail advertising stuff for company A. So, in the eyes of the above law, A is guilty of spamming. Since company M, with pocket change, has bought enough spam for the fines to put A out of business, M disposes of a competitor without getting their hands dirty or even adversely affecting their own finances.
See what that kind of law's dumb now? You either have to assume they're guilty because there's spam advertising their product, or assume they're innocent and wind up with a totally worthless law.
The problem is... (Score:2)
Since they don't know me, they'd have even less chance of actually finding me and stopping my spamming than those actually recieving a spam mail from me. This is more commonly known as a joe job.
It's not sure that it is the company itself or a competitor either. How about a blackma
How to establish the chain of events (Score:3, Insightful)
RickHunter wrote
The problem with fining the companies offering the products/services is that you've then handed their competition a great way to get rid of them. Having trouble beating a rival in the market? Hire a direct marketer in Russia, say, to send out ten million mails, carefully targetted to include government and law enforcement officers in their jurisdiction claiming to be selling their service. Watch them implode under the fines.
Kjella wrote:
Quite simply, it's neither practically or lega
Re:How to establish the chain of events (Score:2)
How do you follow cash?
What happens when I get a call from someone who wants 10,000 units of my product? am I suppose to sell it to them, or spend a sunstantial amount of cash tracking down there operation, and how their advertisers work?
No, you go after the spammers, and you go after the telcom that knowingly allow spammers on th
Hopefully.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hopefully.... (Score:3, Funny)
All fine and dandy, but... (Score:4, Funny)
After all, these [naughty description]s rake in a gizorkabajizalafillion dollars from thier, erm, activities...
Take a step back and look at the legal picture (Score:2, Funny)
Pffftttt. Lite-Weight (Score:4, Funny)
1. Public flogging
2. Draw and quarter [hyperdictionary.com]
3. The Rack
4. Impalement [houseofdesade.org]
5. Pillory [houseofdesade.org]
Re:Pffftttt. Lite-Weight (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pffftttt. Lite-Weight (Score:2)
Re:Pffftttt. Lite-Weight (Score:2)
And I thought the cane was bad (Score:2)
Re:Pffftttt. Lite-Weight (Score:2)
We hate spammers *that* much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We hate spammers *that* much? (Score:2)
Better filters don't do jack. (Score:3, Interesting)
For a long time, I agreed spam is a problem, but I never had more than a couple dozen a day, easy enough to delete. Until this year... now I've had the same email address on my site for years now, and I always disguised it to help against spam bots, but something happened in the last six months. I started getting 10-12 spams EVERY TIME my mail client checked my mail at ten minute intervals. and I was only getting worse.
I switched hosts and had access to install SpamAssassin. Now it catches about 600 spams
It's sick and it makes a lot of money .... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't have much of a problem with it if it were not for the malicious nature that is ingrained within those who use it. (And in fact I analyzed what I would need to do to start it, until realizing that the services would be abused to take advantage of those who can't help themselves.) If it were more reliable and better structured, I'd feel okay with it. After all, there are hands down, enough ways to efficiently deal with it and cut down on it. A legal protocol for a spam-newsgroup system where people can filter them to various folders would be of interest to me
I hate spam, not for the fact that it hounds many of my emails with 3-10 messages per day, but because of the people who are literally preyed upon by it for their money. That is reason enough for spammers to spend jail-time, and lots of it. The government didn't go far enough.
Mitnick-esque addon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever... (Score:2)
What we need is the means to take more spammers to court. As it is now, they're so few it'd hardly matter if you gave them capital punishment.
Kjella
Target sellers, not spammers (Score:3, Interesting)
What - no torture? (Score:4, Funny)
I want spammers tortured. I propose they be tied to a low voltage electric chair which is connected to a button on a website. The populace will be invited to come by and issue a non-terminal zap to the offender whenever the mood stikes them.
Won't work, and it's getting boring saying this! (Score:5, Insightful)
One: spammers have huge networks of zombied computers at their disposal and can send spam almost entirely undetectably.
Two: this legislation does not affect the companies actually selling their products via spam. Thus it simply acts as a darwinian filter, eliminating the spammers stupid enough to remain in US jurisdiction and allow their identities to be tracked (see point one).
Three: there are already more effective ways to get the consumers' attention, and by legislating against spam, these will simply become more used. Mainly, I'm thinking of spyware/trojans like CoolWebSearch.
A realistic attack on spam and the rest must be focussed on the people paying for such services, i.e. advertisers. They must be liable for the cost and moral damage their marketing causes, as in any other domain. Further we need some changes to the policy of "receiver pays" which is the basic reason why spam exists at all.
But as so often, this attack on spammers is too little, too late, and ignores what is a much more serious problem: spyware, trojans, and worms that spread via security holes in MSIE and Windows.
Re:Won't work, and it's getting boring saying this (Score:2)
Victory! (Score:2)
Arsenic -- in parts per trillion (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps administor 1 ppt of arsenic for every 1 spam?
2,500,000 spams would yield near-immediate results
while half a million parts per trillion would be a slower,
but more painful death for the spammer later that week.
If Congress doesn't say otherwise? (Score:2)
Hard Labor (Score:5, Insightful)
In all seriousness, 5 years ago I would have said that multi-year prison sentences for spamming would be extreme, at least in cases without other crimes involved. On its face, it's still extreme, but these guys now hold an entire communication system hostage. If sending several of them to prison for their transgressions (which ARE transgressions) can be a deterrent, then I'm for it. I think it really will be a deterrent if we can get some convictions. It's not like people spam in a brief burst of anger. These people generally have some business or technical skills that could find them legitimate employment (perhaps somewhat less lucrative, but above the poverty line) even in the lousy tech economy. I hear the porn industry does well when the economy is lousy. I'm sure my mom would much rather I manage a (legitimate) porn server farm than a spam server farm anyway.
can't ... resist ... (Score:5, Funny)
( ) technical (*) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
(*) Microsoft will not put up with it
(*) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(*) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(*) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(*) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
War on... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a war on overreaction of an impotent legislature.
We have here a crime (since 2004-01-01) that causes, at most, annoyance.
It's very politically correct these days to hate spam. But, frankly, it's the kind of hatred that's reserved for rude drivers, cell-phone wielding restaraunt patrons and the like.
Plenty of examples have already been posted about the little old lady with the virus-infected computer or the kid with the lemonade stand. I'll not pile on here.
Who among us has asked "we the people" to throw somebody in prison for being a pain in the ass?
Dontcha think that's a little harsh?
Death penalty for parking violations and all that.
It's the responsiblity of "we, the people" to create justifiable penalties for offences, and then enforce them.
The excuse "it's too hard to catch these guys" does not justify cutting the balls off of the poor bastard we do nab.
Society at large (we call "the law") has to follow some rules, too. No unreasonable search and seizure. No cruel or unusual punishment. No taking of life, liberty, or property without due process.
"War on" [drugs, terror, drunk driving], and now spam seems, however, to absolve "we, the people" from restrictions against abuse of the individual.
Keep on spamming (Score:3, Interesting)
It's ironic that our elected officials can't take on tough issues like health care but seem to have plenty of time to pen 161 pages of rendantly abominable extraneous verbosity.
We've had the DMCA, now it's CAN-SPAM. What troubles me about these laws is that they're ineffectual. People will copy DVDs and distribute them, others will send unsolicited advertisements to any email address they can get. Relax people. This is no biggy. For the domains I manage I get about 1500 emails/day (webmaster, postmaster, admin, etc.) but I use a spam filter and a procmail script to deal with it.
What we're asking here is for the government to control what comes into our inboxes. I'm sure CAN-SPAM will be tied up in the courts for years over it's implications on the First Amendment. The whole thing is a waste of society's resources.
more spam since CAN-Spam (Score:3, Informative)
Have a look at the following graph showing the statistic of spam per day [cesmail.net] during the last year (thanks to Spamcop).
Clearly the CAN-Spam act did in no way reduce the amount of spam.
Sentencing guidelines are like Dungeons & Drag (Score:4, Informative)
The 5 year and 3 year sentences are maximums set by Congress. A while back, Congress created the U.S. Sentencing Commission and laws that bound what a judge may do in a given case, based on the Commission's Guidelines. So, although a crime may be a 5 year felony, a judge can only sentence someone to 5 years if he meets the criteria set in the guidelines.
Congress was actually interested in pushing sentences up, because it wanted to appear tough on crime. Therefore, at the same time, it abolished parole for federal crimes. There is no parole for federal offenses, only a small amount of time off for good behavior, calculated through a formula.
The Guidelines end up working like Dungeon & Dragons. The crime has a base offense level, say 6. Then there are "enhancements" for various kinds of conduct. So, if you're caught (somehow) and used an innocent person's computer, you could get +4. If you use the word viagra, +1; if you misspell viagra, +2, etc. [Like, I'm wearing my leather armor, but my armor class is improved by 2 for my dexterity and 4 for my magic ring] See The Fraud Guidlines [ussc.gov]
A defendant also has a criminal history score, based on how many times he's been convicted before.
There's a table in the guidelines that cross-references offense level and criminal history to give a sentencing range in months. With a criminal history of I (they use roman numerals for the criminal history), you need an offense level of at least 11 to be certain of any actual jail time (because zone B sentences allow a convict to do "home detention"). See The Sentencing Table. [ussc.gov]
The thing is, I can't find what exactly the Commission has sent to Congress, i.e., the proposed offense levels and enhancements, so its hard to tell what the Commission has actually come up with. From what I can tell, they have decided to incorporate this offense into the the fraud guidelines. (according to this ZDnet story). [zdnet.com.au] The fraud guidelines are based on the amount lost and are notoriously squishy--because it is difficult to estimate exactly how much a given scheme cost.
Italy VS Maryland (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand Italy has a law (since September 2003), which seeks up to 3 years in jail and fines up to 90.000 Euros!
Guess, which law I find better? Jail-time would be payed by us, the innocent citizen, while fines weight on the offenders pocket!
Virus? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no way to find the bastards or stop them from sending their trash without getting rid of their zombie networks. If you eliminate those, you might as well break their electronic kneecaps.
Re:Extensions (Score:2)
Re:Extensions (Score:2)