Defending Harsh Sentences for Spammers 633
BMcWilliams writes "Russell McGuire, one of the government lawyers who prosecuted spammer Jeremy Jaynes, has published an article justifying the tough sentence recommended by a Virginia jury. He writes, 'the defense attorney argued that greed cuts both ways and the victims got what they deserved because they were trying to get rich quick. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the jury.' Still, the eye-popping 9-year sentence has even some ardent anti-spammers wondering whether 'proportionality is becoming a completely forgotten concept.'"
Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:4, Interesting)
Fix other sentences, not these (Score:2, Interesting)
9 years in Folsom, or minimum security? (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Certainly the criminals can get out earlier with good behaviour.
3. Porportionality, and the excess thereof, is the entire basis behind "prison" as a concept: we try to make that destination deplorable enough to try and discourage certain behaviours that society deems as "crimes".
4. These bozos made the mistake of committing a crime where the jurors themselves were also victims (indirectly). Stupid. Very, very stupid.
Poor defence (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate spammers because they are lying, thieving scamming criminal bastards.
They hijack computers to send out millions of junk messages to millions of people. They do this to be anonymous and therefore unaccountable, and they use other people's bandwidth to send out their junk.
Some spammers send out pornographic email knowing damn well thousands of kids will end up with it in their inboxes, and they include spurious text in the messages to try to evade spam filters.
I would wager than 99% of all products they advertise via spam are fake or illegal. Anyone stupid or ignorant enough to buy anything from one of these criminals is simply encouraging them to annoy more and more people.
It's not about getting-rich-quick that I have the problem with, it's the way they go about it.
Has anybody else noticed... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasting other people's resources (Score:3, Interesting)
They waste network bandwidth, most of which is paid by others. Server capacity is wasted with spam-filtering. Admins, developers & home users have to waste time on writing/deploying anti-spam software.
They make e-mail, a very useful internet resource, a lot less useful, and I view that as a form of vandalism.
Much of their work is done by breaking into other people's computers (zombie networks), which in itself is illegal in many places. Not to speak of other uses (DDoS attacks etc.) spammers may have for zombie networks they control.
Users don't want spam, there are laws against this, and even in the face of all this, spammers continue with their business on a massive scale. So sorry, but they deserve every punishment they get.
Re:Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course I haven't come up with a fitting alternative. Fines can not be administered fairly to criminals in different financial tiers and public flogging is generally not approved of.
Side note: after thinking about it, I don't like the idea of taking away a felon's voting rights. Suppose that eating were made a felony. The fix for something that stupid would be to vote the jokers that passed it out of office. But no one could vote them out of office since they would all be felons.
And I say yes! 9+ years is appropriate (Score:3, Interesting)
Murder and rape are rarely, if ever, premeditated. When they are, the sentence is WAY beyond 9 years. Crimes of passion are handled in a much lighter way in most cases... as they should be.
Spamming and fraud are not crimes of passion -- they are more than simply premediated, they are planned to very small details. While committing the offense, they continue to show contempt by attempting to evade the people trying to stop them. This is a HUGE lack of respect for other people and for their property. A hefty fine and/or a short time in jail isn't going to teach the man some respect... but someone named Bubba that he might share his cell with might be able to do that over time.
Will he be in for 9? I doubt it... it's a state conviction... he'll be out in 3 or less. But he'll also belong to the state on parole for the remaining time... waiting, watching for him to do it again... and if he does, *SLAM!* -- deep shit.
Punishment sufficient to deter (Score:3, Interesting)
Added extra brownie points: Those nine years in prison are without a computer.
I can imagine the finger spasms now.
This is an issue of KNOWINGLY being unethical (Score:5, Interesting)
But then the legal system responds to citizen unrest and develops laws which try to restrict what spammers can do.
NOW, the spammer is flagrantly violating both ethics and the law. They're filling your inbox with thousands of unwanted emails, stealing half the available handwidth in the fastest networks, and costing people inordinate amounts of money, just so the spammer can scam 0.01% of his email recipients. AND THEY KNOW IT.
I think people should be hanged for such flagrant disregard for everyone else on the planet. 9 years in prison? He got off light.
Re:Punishment fitting the crime? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with large fines is that people have a habit of simply not paying them. Declare bankruptcy, start working under the table, go on with life.
I think jail time is key, though 9 years is excessive. Fines would be good, but make them not so stiff to the point that a person can't pay them, but stiff enough to make it hurt.
10 years of mandatory audits by the IRS would be cool, too.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a great idea. He can spend his prison time (the portion not reserved for butt-rape) being a manual spam filter for someone. 12 hours a day forced to read through spam after spam and sort them into categories. The data can then be sent to spam filtering companies for... I don't know, fun, I guess. The helping-society part of this is a little flimsy. But the fun part is random ones are picked and checked for accuracy by a guard, and if he miscategorized it, he gets punched in the face. And I'm okay with it if that happens when he did it right, too.
Re:first post? (Score:1, Interesting)
I suspect the coward will not give it.
Lets say the sentence is 1 minute time for each person he pissed off. Say time just 100 million messages. And this rate is conservative. Most people offended would have lasted a minute.
So the sentance should be about 190 years.
So if we are extremely nice say 19 years is about right.
HARSH? He earned 24MILLION $ by spamming! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now other reason is that he will probably sit in a prison HALF the sentence,
and non violent can get out with good behavior at that time.
This is probably a little off topic but... (Score:5, Interesting)
What if, instead of a time based prison system, we could incorporate a level based system? The further within the system you go, the less priveledges you would have. Instead of years within the system, it would be levels within the system that you must earn your way out of in order to be released. This would also have the effect of causing similar types of criminals to be populated together. The very top level could be something like a "half way house" that would replace the concept of parole. To ultimately earn your freedom, you'd have to have demonstrated your ability to function as a law abiding citizen.
White collar criminals, like our spammer, could also have thier assets taken while they are in prison to make restitution for monetary damages.
The idea needs development I realize, but I think it would emphasize rehabilitation more than a time based system would.
Re:Proprotionality (Score:3, Interesting)
And let's not forget that there is a pretty fair chance that the owner of the painting (or whatever) stands a reasonable chance of recovering their property. With spam, any costs incurred are pretty much a write off, so it's not so much "theft of assets" as "destruction of assets", which is an entirely different, and more serious, class of crime.
Punishment seems fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. How much time was spent deleting the emails that this guy sent - say it takes a cent an email, everytime he sends out 10M emails, this costs the economy $100,000. So taking that into acount, we can probably say that $50-$100 M is lost to the economy each year.
2. How much has been spent on Spam filters, installation and upgrades? How many billions of dollars per year are spent by businesses, individuals and governments? Let's be conservative and say $100M per year.
3. How much bandwidth has been stolen, proxies illegally set up? What is the cost to individuals, businesses, government - again being conservative let's say $50M per year.
4. I won't even guess at the amount of money that this guy's clients have taken from (dumb) people that respond to the emails.
So, looking at this from this prospective, this guy is a kingpin in a minimum $200M per year scam. It could probably be argued that this guy's contribution to the problem could cost society $200M per year. What do you think is an appropriate punishment for a crime of this magnitude?
Fines for this type of behavior don't work; the spammer will just declare bankrupcy after moving his money to a protected location.
The comparison to the time given to a rapist or murderer is not reasonable. I would expect that the spammer is going to end up in a minimum-security institution. Where a rapist or murderer will end up in a maximum security prison or better. On leaving prison, a rapist/murderer is normally required to register where they are living and will be regularly interviewed by police when there is a crime that is similar in nature to theirs - they can never leave this behind them.
The spammer, if he does change his ways, can lead a new life after prison with it just being remembered as a mistake that he didn't fully understand the consequences to - but at least he try to destroy somebody's life (as a violent criminal would have to live with).
myke
Raping in prison (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider-You have problems in american prisons with:
1. Rape
2. Murder
3. Beatings/assaults
4. Drugs
One such problem, but google's overwhelmed [cnnsf.com]
Typical "Justice" (Score:3, Interesting)
So a violent rape gets 3, but extortion (not even with a threat of violence) gets 6....
There is no proportionality in sentencing, there is too much leeway...and they are entirely too ready to lock individuals up, where they can go to criminal college, because let me tell you, prison is nothing but an educational system for crime...
I did not know anything about the criminal lifestyle before going in, now I could (not going to) make crack, and meth, and more importantly how to sell them......without committing the same mistakes that the others made.
The "treatment" that is offered, is a joke, I committed my crime in the heat of passion, under a ton of stress and had a blackout (from bipolar disorder was manic)--no therapy, just give me drugs to make me calm....
Others sold their happy pills.....for cigarettes....it was so noisy that i kept em--have to sleep someway...
And when you get out it is almost impossible to obtain employment. But child support is still going at the rate that you had ordered and earned before you went in so i owe over 10 grand to them--they can garnish up to 65% of net....so what do you do if you cant earn a living with good pay to begin with, and they take out 65% of what you would bring home--my checks right now are less than 150 a week....
The life of crime is looking better and better, I simply cannot make it trying to stay straight.........
Have you ever been to jail? (Score:2, Interesting)
My take now is to give people an appropriate number of lashes in the city square and let em go.
Re:first post? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Proprotionality (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a serious problem with sentancing. Criminals with serious offences are getting off light while more minor offences receive serious jail time. I have a problem with this.
In this particular case though, I feel the spammer received an appropriate sentence - maybe a little lighter that I would prefer, but better that the usual nothing.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
One Second Per Spam Is Too Generous (Score:3, Interesting)
Exemplary, but no quant justification (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have a problem with the prosecution. It was fraud, on several levels. Nor do I have a problem with the punishment. AFAIK exemplary sentences _are_ allowed, even under US law. One major purpose of the entire justice system is deterrence. Punishment is too late, and must not be a licence.
Re:9 years in Folsom, or minimum security? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. This is VA, where we have a truth in sentencing law. For any crime committed after Jan. 1st, 1995 there is no parole, no time off for good behavior.
"proportionality" is, of course, relative (Score:2, Interesting)
Sacrificial Lamb (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, this is different in the cases of Enron-style financial fraud where the company's victim _is_ its investors - but in the cases of violating human rights/safety/environmental regulations a "corporate house arrest" policy would seem very appropriate.
And as for the first point - I think that people need to stay very focussed on the purpose of the justice system. That is not currently happening - short terms for violent criminals, and punishment for crimes of theft/fraud/financial crimes are not proportional to the magnitude of the crime (white-collar financial crime exceeds the total monetary cost of street crime). If someone steals my car from the driveway they can go away for years, but if someone steals my pension they'll likely get off with a slap on the wrist, never mind the orders of magnitude in difference in the crime.
The other problem is the prison system - there are three types of prison life:
1: hell. You're the bottom of a totem pole in a violent state prison. Abuse, rape, and AIDS are a way of life.
2: residence. You're in low-security townhouse system that doesn't really do anything to punish you - you just have to get up early and do a few odd jobs.
3: thug. The guards would rather not deal with you, and you pretty much get free reign to do what you want.
Now, the problem is that we seem to apply the wrong lifestyles to the wrong criminals. The worst, most violent career criminals live high on the hog - a highschool bully but with shankings and anal pillagings.
The milder drug-offenders and non-violent sex offenders are still sent to Hell. Those people should be in psychiatric wards to be reconditioned.
Meanwhile, many of the top-end white-collar criminals, even if they've stolen more than every thug in New York, get off in a country club... or even house arrest.
I wonder where they send spammers? Club Fed probably - but at least its a long sentence in Club Fed.
My solution: make use of the country's massive supply of idle psychology majors working joe-jobs 'cause they can't find work in the field. Retrain them as guards and get their hands dirty in the prison system.
$400,000 to $700,000 in scams per month. (Score:3, Interesting)
That comes to about 11 person-years.
Then you figure in how much money he made from his spamming scams... According to the courts, he was taking in $400K-$700K/month. Much of that was essentially money for SCAMS. Even if you presume $10% net profit, that's still about $50K/month. or 1/2Million/year. If you want to amortize that down to $50K/year, a 9 year sentence for a year's worth of spamming isn't too bad.
Then you should consider the people that he scammed. He scammed probably in the range of a million people -- many of them people who were desparate foe some sort of income to begin with. For many of the most desperate it was money that they could ill afford -- so that he could live the high life.
He cost a lot of people time and money -- time that we'll never get back. He didn't just victimize AOL. he essentially victimized the entire country. There is no way to charge him proportional to what he cost us worldwide. If anything 9 years is actually a little thin on that. However, I think it may be enough to make other spammers think twice about what they're doing, so I'd be happy to let it stand.
Spamming is a very serious crime (Score:2, Interesting)
In their pursuit of beer money, the copper thieves damaged a lot of valuable infrastructure. An armed response to the theft of a few dollars of copper seems disproportionate but as a society we had become desperate. A few hundred telephone subscribers out of service for 6 hours is not all that bad a deal. The problem was that if the informal copper recycling biz had continued to increase in popularity there would soon be no phone service anywhere. Spammers are a lot like the copper thieves. If we do not deter spammers somehow, email and most any other sort of computer mediated communications is dead. It's as simple as that...