Microsoft to Fight Crime With Spammer's Millions

daria42 writes "It looks as if the $7 million Microsoft won from spam king Scott Richter won't go into a Swiss bank account and never be seen again after all. The company plans to dedicate a cool $5 mil to helping law enforcement agencies address computer-related crimes. Another $1 million will go to New York State to "expand computer-related skills training for youths and adults", with the rest being flagged to pay Microsoft's legal costs."

Not enough

[Perl-Pusher]

When you have billions you can be really generous with millions. The price of good advertising is probably higher. Giving the paltry five million away buys a lot of good will from New York state.

Excuse me for being cynical !!

[Gopal.V]

a cool $5 mil to helping law enforcement agencies address computer-related crimes.

Crimes like piracy of Windows ?. Patent policing ?. More SCO like allegations on newer projects that imitate or duplicate Microsoft products ?.

Another $1 million will go to New York State to "expand computer-related skills training for youths and adults"

Train them to use Outlook, Word and Excel or do they mean .NET,C# and Monad ?. Sort of catch them young approach ?.

I've seen a lot of Microsoft charity - it's often just building a new market for themselves, locking in an expanding market or blatant tax evasionary steps . They sent 250 XP Cds to a school and mark the cost as donations. I went on TV to help FSF guys call foul on that in Kerala - apparently it seems to have made some impact there (they teach about using OpenOffice and FireFox now).

Essentially the money is in Microsoft's pockets and they are trying for Maximum ROI, rather than paying it out as dividends to their shareholders right now.

Typical Slashdot Cynicism

[Anonymous Coward]

No surprise the the article and comments have taken the sarcastic and cynical route. You guys here seem to never be satisfied with anything Microsoft does.

The fact is Microsoft has no obligation to use this money to do anything. But they make a nice gesture, and nobody here can say one positive word? There's not one good outcome out of this?

The bitterness with Microsoft got old and stale 10 years ago. It's past time you people gave up this hatred and obsession with the 'Borg'.

Re:Not enough

[goldspider]

It's called charity for a reason; they're giving of their own free will. Who are you, or anyone, to tell somebody else how generous they should be?

Charity, when compelled through coersion or threat, is just a nice word for slavery.

Re:computer related crimes.

[tymbow]

To be honest about this... good.

We have probably all done it at some stage (piracy that is), and flame wars aside about ethics and monopolies, it's really time for people to pull their heads out of their collective butts and accept that it is stealing (and no I don't want an argument about definitions. I know nothing physical was taken, but under current law it's still stealing. Don't like it? Get the laws changed).

This doesn't mean I'm against pushing for change in the software industry, and moving to OpenSource (where it makes sense) but people have got to accept that it's not right, no matter what your politics, views or anything else are.

Re:Not enough

[jkrise]

I think the GP points out rightly that it isn't 'charity' when the intention is not noble... read PR. Also, 5mn is a miniscule microscopic portion of the amount MS spends in R&D anyways, so it's doubtful this money is gonna help fight crime or spam. Or improve the IT skills of the average New Yorker.
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Re:Not enough

[Mr_Silver]

I think the GP points out rightly that it isn't 'charity' when the intention is not noble... read PR. Also, 5mn is a miniscule microscopic portion of the amount MS spends in R&D anyways, so it's doubtful this money is gonna help fight crime or spam. Or improve the IT skills of the average New Yorker.

Who cares if it's such a small percentage? The recipients of the $6 million that Microsoft didn't actually have to donate to them definately don't care.

$6 million is a hell of a lot of money irrespective of who gives it and their own monetary situation. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Unless of course you would have rathered that Microsoft kept the entire lot for "legal fees"?

Re:Not enough

[DigitumDei]

1. Bash Microsoft no matter what they do.
2. Get mod points
3. ???
4. Profit!

As always this is slashdot. If MS closed up shop, put their source code in the public domain, and gave all their money to starving street kids, close to half the posts would be insulting them or questioning their motives.

Re:Not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

who is he to judge someone elses intentions with charity. It really pisses me off when people slag off companies when they give to charity, if enough people slag them off then eventually they will stop doing it. Just be happy they gave to a good cause rather than to a PR company. Charity whether it is done for your own PR or purely from the bottom of your heart is irrelevant.

Re:Excuse me for being cynical !!

[jaiyen]

Sounds like Microsoft really can't win whatever they do.

Crimes like piracy of Windows ?. Patent policing ?. More SCO like allegations on newer projects that imitate or duplicate Microsoft products ?.

That's pretty baseless speculation, it could just as easily be stopping financial fraud or breaking online paedophile rings. I doubt the law enforcement agencies are going to be complaining about getting this extra money from Microsoft, I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt on this one for the time being.

I've seen a lot of Microsoft charity - it's often just building a new market for themselves, locking in an expanding market or blatant tax evasionary steps . They sent 250 XP Cds to a school and mark the cost as donations.

Dubious tax policies aside, I agree that giving away the CD's is more marketing than charity but is it really that bad a thing? It's not being forced upon them and is just an extra choice, surely that's a good thing?

Would you apply the same criticism if it was guys from Mozilla Corp coming around giving away Firefox and teaching XUL?

I've seen a lot of Microsoft charity... they are trying for Maximum ROI

So I suppose Bill Gates putting billions of his own $$$ into AIDS research in the developing world is just looking for ROI too?

My Thoughts

[CrashRoX]

There's a whole lot of back and forth going on here. The only thing everyone can agree on is that the spammer deserved the fine. Now everyone wants to know why Microsoft is entitled to that fine? I personally believe they are entitled to it. First and most obvious they are the ones that created the law suit and did the actual suing. Microsoft isn't a government agency, what they win shouldn't be stripped from them. In all honesty if Microsoft didn't sue this guy, he would probably still be spamming. In which case no one is better off. Secondly anyone and everyone can sue. I know I'm going to get shit about how the American legal system sucks and blah blah blah. But that's a perk/pitfall of living in this country. As far as Microsoft donating the money, it's a brilliant move from a business standpoint. As mentioned earlier the cost of an advertising campaign would far exceed that of the $5m donation. The donation created goodwill and great PR. It's almost impossible to put a price on goodwill. People need to stop looking at Microsoft (and other corporations) as a public service. These companies exist to make money. Period. Microsoft did a good thing, they are the heroes here. They are the only ones who stood up against this guy and dished out the cash to do it. Yes the Million bucks in legal fees is pocket change to them. But I don't see anyone else willing to anti up. Plus if you really wanted an argument to show they are directly affected. They own an email service. I'm sure millions of this guys email has gone through there servers at some point, costing them money and inconveniencing clients. Congratulations Microsoft on your victory!

Everyone who thinks that Gates is going to dress up in a batman costume is very wrong. The costume would be more like Howard Sterns fart man!

Re:Not enough

[AviLazar]

No, his company didn't make anything. Bad hackers exploited the program(s). The fault resides SOLELY with those hackers. Windows is spending millions of dollars trying to prevent these holes, fix these holes, and stop those who are exploiting them. Sometimes its not even holes. It is not MS's fault when someone downloads a virus from a website. That is 100% user fault.

People need to stop pointing the finger at MS and start pointing the finger at the malicious hackers, and then themselves.

Bill Gates owes the planet nothing. Any charities they perform they are not obligated to. Their only obligations are to their share holders, employees, government taxes, and to those who are under warranty.

"Fashionable" opinions?

[dustmite]

The bitterness with Microsoft got old and stale 10 years ago.

Oh ... and there I was under the impression that the anti-MS sentiment was about the fact that the company actually continues to behave unethically to this day, not about whether or not it was "fashionable" or "not fashionable" to be anti-MS ... silly me. I didn't realise bashing Microsoft "was, like, so yesterday!"

Your post reminds me of how Nike successfully turned around rising negative sentiment against the company over their sweatshop labour practices by creating a clever youth-targeted ad campaign that manipulated young people into simply thinking it was no longer "cool" to whine about the sweatshop labour because the topic was, well, 'so yesterday'. Of course they never stopped the sweatshop labour practices.

Are we so divorced from reality that our opinions about serious, real-life problems are now mostly based on how "hot", "current" or "fashionable" a topic is, rather than on, you know, facts?

Re:Not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad hackers exploited the program(s). The fault resides SOLELY with those hackers. Windows is spending millions of dollars trying to prevent these holes, fix these holes, and stop those who are exploiting them.

No, if Microsoft writes garbage (which they do), then THEY are responsible. Whatever Microsoft is spending on "security", it isn't enough. Computers are pretty simple from a network point of view. They accept a finite series of bytes, and return a finite series of bytes. If Microsoft can't write a program that has predictable behavior, then maybe they should start removing features or spending more money on better programmers.

People like you need to stop making excuses for Microsoft and other software vendors INCLUDING open source.

There's no excuse for the half-finished code Microsoft ships. I really wouldn't care, I don't use Microsoft products, but I still have to waste hours dealing with OTHER people's crap flowing on my network. What a waste.

Yeah, users make stupid mistakes, I'll give you that. But that still doesn't excuse Microsoft. Why is it even possible to execute code from the network in the first place?