First Arrest Made in U.S. For Spimming 242
prostoalex writes "U.S. federal authorities have conducted the first arrest for spimming. Eighteen-year-old Anthony Greco was arrested for sending spam to instant messenger users of MySpace.com." From the article: "Greco had allegedly threatened to share his methods for spamming members of the group if MySpace.com didn't sign an exclusive marketing deal that would have legitimized the messages he was sending via the service."
Re:I'm not normally a spelling Nazi... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm not normally a spelling Nazi... (Score:2, Informative)
He wasn't arrested for Spimming... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm not normally a spelling Nazi... (Score:2, Informative)
Luckily.... (Score:4, Informative)
IMHO until somebody figures out a way to spoof IM headers to make them look as if they're coming from somebody else, spimming is going to be far less of an annoyance than email spam.
Re:Freedom of Speech (Score:2, Informative)
No.
The first amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech. It does not say I am required to listen it or read it.
Re:WTF is Spimming? (Score:2, Informative)
Some 42% of America's 134 million online adults use instant messaging and almost a third of those instant message users have gotten "spim" - or unsolicited commercial instant messages. That translates into nearly 17 million adults who have gotten the instant-message version of spam.
Re:Freedom of Speech (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is really simple. Larry and the spammers/spimmers should both have the right to publish whatever they want to. But Larry has no way to, *force* me to view what he publishes. I have to get out of my chair, go to the store and exchange money to get it. OTOH spammers/spimmers both shove it down my throat. Thanks to fine tools like SapmAssassin and a very aggresive
In short the problem is not that the spimmers are saying the things they are saying. It is that they are forcing you to listen. Which is a bad thing.
Re:He wasn't arrested for Spimming... (Score:2, Informative)
That doesn't mention extortion. Also, according to the LA Times [latimes.com]: Greco agreed to fly to Los Angeles to sign a contract and was arrested when he arrived Wednesday. He was charged with violating a federal anti-spam law, harming MySpace computers and attempting extortion.
CAN-SPAM claim is really dodgy (Score:3, Informative)
Similarly, just because the victim company abused the capabilities of the MySpace service to create lots of free accounts and spim from them, and cleaning up those accounts cost them money, that doesn't mean that the miscreant actually damaged their computers, and the legal doctrine of a "protected computer" is badly thought out and may not apply here. That doesn't mean that the sleazy spimmer didn't violate Myspace's terms of service (I haven't read them, but I'd hope they had the sense to write them in a way that his abuse was a violation), but that's something that ought to be a civil cost recovery issue, not a crime.
On the other hand, if you can believe the press release, the extortion part does sound like a legitimate criminal complaint, as opposed to mere sleaziness that isn't in the scope of the laws the DoJ is accusing him of breaking.
Re:Arrested for spimming or extortion? (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like a slam dunk extortion case, making good on the threat would substantially increase the sentence. The guy is probably being told by his public defender that making good on his threat could likely add ten years to his sentence.
I don't think that an 18 year old is likely to know anything particularly interesting about sending spam that is not going to become common knowledge soon enough. The problem with these punks is that they always think that they are sooooo smart and its all about them, it isn't.