Spammer Lance Atkinson Fined $16 Million

Nashville Guy writes "According to Australia's The Age, 'A New Zealand man living in Queensland and believed to be behind the world's largest spam operation, has been ordered to pay more than $16 million for running the illegal enterprise. Lance Atkinson, 26, originally from Christchurch, was living in Pelican Waters on the Sunshine Coast when the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had his assets frozen last year. ... The FTC found Atkinson and American Jody Smith were at the centre of the world's largest internet spam operation, dubbed 'AffKing,' having recruited spammers from around the world.'"

Re:And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny

[DoofusOfDeath]

It appears that New Zealand does [wikipedia.org] extradite to the U.S.

I guess the question is whether or not the U.S. will request it.

Damn moronic 'anti-spam' laws.

[DavidTC]

According to the original documentation [spamhaus.org], 'In early 2008, a security company identified one botnet -- which it dubbed "Mega-D" -- that sent sparn promoting Affking's VPXL and King Replica products as the worst botnet in the world, accounting for 32% of all spam.'

The Mega-D [wikipedia.org] botnet consisted at least 264,784 [softpedia.com] computers.

That's 264,784 UNAUTHORIZED COMPUTER ACCESS FELONIES.

Why the FUCK are we 'fining' someone who committed at least 264,784 felonies? We invade goddamn countries and charge people with war crimes for that level of criminality!

Anti-spam laws are nonsense. Forget the damn anti-spam laws. Lock them up for the felonies they're committing. Extradition would be a lot easier, too. (Of course, we could just find a few hundred IPs this guy hijacked in Australia, turn them over, and have him locked up there his entire life, instead.)

Re:just data

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisement wants to be free.

I know you are being funny. I am bored and want to write this anyway.

Of course advertisement wants to be free. Advertisers would be delieriously happy if people freely distributed their electronic ads via filesharing networks. In fact, some advertizers try hard to make their ads entertaining just so that things like this will happen.

Spam isn't about free distribution of data though. It is about pushing data on to users whether they want it or not (and in huge amounts so as to burden the users). The freedom to share data with someone who wants it is distinctly different than the freedom to force data on to someone who doesn't want it.

New Zealand Finally Gets With The Program?

[damn_registrars]

For a while, the likes of Leo Kuvayev and his cronies were taking advantage of the lax laws in New Zealand and purchasing their spamming (and spamvertised) domains there. It took quite some time to get the New Zealanders to distance themselves from the profit of those crimes, now it is encouraging to see they are taking a more active anti-spam stance.

Its too bad that in the end this all won't be worth squat.

Completely the WRONG tactic

[damn_registrars]

So you suggest:

Lock them up for the felonies they're committing. Extradition would be a lot easier, too. (Of course, we could just find a few hundred IPs this guy hijacked in Australia, turn them over, and have him locked up there his entire life, instead.)

Although as you have rightly noted extradition is extremely difficult, especially when you consider some of the countries where spammers are currently hiding.

However, that is all moot because no amount of law enforcement, threats, or even executions will stop the spammers. And why is that, you might ask? Because no law enforcement tactic addresses the underlying problem that drives spam. For every spammer kidnapped, thrown in jail, murdered, etc... there are many, many, more waiting to take his place. Even more so, there are many people who want his money.

In short, spam is an economic problem. If you really give a damn about the problem, and want to do something more than just make yourself feel better, you would pay attention to the economics that drive spam. Spammers didn't choose their profession to piss you off - they did it to make money. If you want to stop spam, do something about the profits and the problem will go away on its own.

Re:Completely the WRONG tactic

[JoshuaZ]

Spam is at its heart an economic problem, but that doesn't mean that it can't be solved using other tactics as well as economic ones. For any far reaching problem in society, the use of many different strategies together has potential to do a better job than any single one. Most responses to proposed anti-spam solutions fail to see that the solutions should occur not in an isolated form but together with other solutions. Thus for example, the standard copy and pasted anti-spam response checklist on Slashdot is always used as if the proposed technique is being touted as a magic bullet. In that regard, spam is a bit like cancer. It is quite silly to claim that we will ever have a single cure for cancer, because cancer is a complicated set of diseases with multiple causes. But a series of different responses (such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiation) used appropriate together can do a pretty decent job in most cases. Thus, cancer is no longer a death sentence. The spam problem should be targetd the same way.

RecycleDirect

[Animats]

The USPS should offer RecycleDirect service. With RecycleDirect, you specify which classes of mail are automatically forwarded to the regional mixed paper recycling center nearest the sender. RecycleDirect mail will be diverted at the first sorting post office directly to the recycling center.

Re:And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny

[Interoperable]

Can extraditions be requested for an offense that only carries a fine?