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.'"
first post? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:first post? (Score:3, Insightful)
Proprotionality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proprotionality (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Proprotionality (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but this idea make as much sense as the arbitrary method of assigning sentences that we have now.
1st, I'm dissapointed in the
Sentences for crime and many of the "crimes" themselves are arbitrary. I don't want to get philosophical here, but there simply really isn't a right or a wrong, its only popular opinion (thanks 12 Monkeys
I know of someone that was found guilty of stealing abour $40,000 from her employer. It was a cut and dry case, because she was responsible for collecting payments at a doctor's office, and she just told the people to leave the "Payable to" field blank, and she would stamp it, but instead she just put her name on it. A pretty easy paper trail for the crime. Anyway, she got 6 months in jail and has to do pay $50 a month in restitution. To me that is not a punishment at all, and if I were in a similar situation, I would take 6 months in jail and a $50 payment for a $40,000 interest free loan. Maybe, but what I'm getting at is the punishment would not be a deterant for doing this, now my silly sense of morals would probably prevail.
Look at the drug laws and punishments. In 10 states in our country, possession of marijuana in personal quanities is not a crime at all, and only has a fine associated with it like speeding. In the other 40 states, its a misdimeaner from about 30 days to 1 year of jail time.
Look at the differences between different drugs. Especially powder vs rock (crack) cocaine. That makes no sense whatsoever (except its pretty effective in controlling poor uneducated inner city people).
Also, the government is not very good at estimating losses. The estimates of losses from drug use (between 50 and 100 billion a year, depending on which week the question is asked) were based on calling a few people in North Carolina and asking them: 1) do you smoke pot? 2) how much money do you make? Being that a majority of the people that smoke pot are under 30, including many students, one can easily see that these people are going to be at the bottom of most pay scales.
Re:Proprotionality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Proprotionality (Score:2, Informative)
So what's that.. around 11 days/one million spam messages sent... gives 31 million spams == one year in jail. 31*9 ~= 280 million spams.
Re:Proprotionality (Score:2, Insightful)
If they were doing this more than a year, they got off light.
Re:Proprotionality (Score:3, Funny)
death by 280 million paper cuts.
I've got an almost new ream of 120g/sm, and I'm prepared to share it.
FP.
Re:Proprotionality (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Proprotionality (Score:3, Insightful)
Just curious.
Was it actually rape (which involves penetration) or was the indictment listed as "sexual assault"?
Up here everything from touching someones clothed breast to violent sodomy with a police baton is called sexual assault. There is no crime of "rape". Consequently as a result the word "rape" is frequently misapplied to practically any unlawful sexual act no matter what allegidly took place.
The only point I'm making is that I
Re:Proprotionality (Score:3, Interesting)
One Second Per Spam Is Too Generous (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Proprotionality (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to bust everybody's bubble, but this spammer really didn't get sentenced for spam, but rather for fraud. From TFA:
During my opening statement, I explained to the jury that sending spam by itself is not a crime, but when you masquerade your identity, you violate Virginia's law that took effect in July 2003. Spammers run afoul of the law when they use another's IP or domain address without authority or create a fictitious IP or domain address.
Also, what this guy was "selling" was some UPS work-from-home tracking bs where you were supposedly getting paid a good amount of money for sitting at home. This guy made some 8 or 9 million dollars from scamming people with this crap.
Anyway, my point is that he was not really convicted for spamming, but rather for being a greedy deceptive assmunch, and I think his sentence fits the crime.
$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
Zoo mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:2)
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
In 9 years (especially in a US prisson) they will not be rehabilitated, they will be angry, pissed off, without a future. They won't fit into society and be good citicens, much more likely they will have been pushed over the edge mentally and commit far worse crimes.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Funny)
So we're in agreement. Kill them.
(I'm in a gentle mood today, and suggest suffocation by weighing down their rib cages with pallets of a certain trademarked potted meat product. My motivation isn't revenge, it's the pay-per-view reven
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit.
Whilst I agree 9 years for a first offence of spamming (assuming no fraud/attempted fraud) is over the top.
However, a sentence serves 4 purposes: First and foremost it's about punishment. Second it's about convincing the victims and society they've been punished: so they don't feel the need to take the law into their own hands, and so that they can move on. Thirdly it's about proecting society: both the individuals and the collective group. And fourth, by a big margin, it's about rehabilitation.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
Here here! I actually talked to somebody who said that all punishment is wrong. I asked "So if somebody murdered your entire family, you wouldn't even want them locked up?" "No, I would want to help them, because they obviously are not well." "But what about the other people he could kill. Putting him in jail would prevent that" "So we should sacrifice his freedom for the supposed safety of some hypothetical person? That's not justice"
As for your first comment, there was fraud involved. Above and beyond the forged headers, they were selling $39.95 "FedEx Refund Processors". "Make $75 an hour working from home" and all that. That is why his lawyer made the comment about how it was the victims fault for being greedy.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we *want* them comitting more crimes when their sentences end?
When I think of the importance of rehab, I don't think "oh, those poor little criminals, won't someone help them," I think "oh crap, what are we going to do with them when they get out?"
Deterence (Score:3, Insightful)
Historically, punishment has been done for two reasons simultaneously. The first is to end the cycle of revenge - if you kill my brother I'll kill you and your cousin will kill me and
Re:Deterence (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the ancient greeks had fines as a punishment. One of Socrates possible punishments that was mentioned in the plays was a fine. Assuming that he plead guilty I think. So there is a third, Fining.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, this is different in the cases of Enron-style financial fraud where the company's
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 gua
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
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 prob [cnnsf.com]
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
The same homophobic people will then turn around and chuckle at the thought of men raping men in prison. It's got to stop. That is not the punishment that judges hand out, but it is definately one that gets handed out in all serious prisons.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3)
And your statement "The same homophobic people will then turn around and chuckle at the thought of men raping men in prison" is an invalid stereotype/generalization. Perhaps the only reason you said this is because you feel this way.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Funny)
OK, Death Penalty for every offense, including speeding tickets! It's not cruel, because they don't suffer. It's not unusual, because it happens millions of times a year.
This is the kind of "compassionate conservatism" that we can all look forward to. I can't wait.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Although I find it an inherently cold and heartless thought, we put a price in dollars on a human life all the time. Compare the losses caused by a spammer to that, and it's quite easy to end up higher than the cost of a life.
No, I'm not talking "but a second to delete a spam message costs nothing!" Even then, time is ultimately money. (E.g., you pay over $1000 for a faster computer, yes, to save time. And how many of those upgrades are ultimately just to be able to run an even slower antivirus, spyware killer, etc? That's money costs inflicted by the spammers upon society.)
I'm also talking lots of other effects, such as the cost incurred to companies and individuals to maintain all those spam filters. The IT costs of preventing and cleaning with viruses that exist only to install spam zombies. Costs incurred to ISP's and companies just to deal with the bandwidth and storage used up by spam _and_ all those viruses trying to install spam zombies. Costs related to false positives. (E.g., a missed business opportunity because an email from a legitimate business partner was filtered out.)
Plus the insidious cost of having a valuable communication resource plundered and turned into a worthless wasteland. Whereas we all used to gladly read and answer emails from strangers (e.g., questions about my walkthrough for a game, some yes, including attached pics of where they got lost), nowadays an email from a stranger is most likely to be junked without reading. Doubly so if it contains an attachment of any kind.
I also used to freely give my email address to everyone. Nowadays if someone did that, you'd call them an idiot clueless (l)user. Nowadays if you must enter an email address, it's some black hole account just supposed to be a garbage bin for spam.
All this is not just business opportunities, but literal pollution of a valuable resource, and it affects hundreds of millions of people. Even if you put a 1$ price on that resource for each user affected, you easily end up with a monumental loss that those spammers caused to society.
Yes, higher than what we currently price one life at. Cynical, but true.
2. My favourite example: I think of it not in dollars, but in seconds. A murderer has shortened someone's life by, say, 20 years. And we can execute him for that.
Now let's look at spam. Let's say 100,000,000 users receive spam. Let's also say each user is only robbed of 1 minute per day dealing with spam, installing and updating spam filters, de-installing spam zombies, etc. (Just spending an hour on that software every 2 months, already uses up that 1 minute per day quota. So not unrealistic.)
That means in just 2 months, those users have been robbed of 100,000,000 hours out of their lives! That's 4166667 days! Or more than 100,000 YEARS!
So we can execute someone for stealing 20 years out of someone's life, but you think 9 years in prison is too much for robbing 100,000+ years from us all? Seems to me like it's equivalent to more than 5000 murders. People have been hanged tried as war criminals and mass-murderers for far less than that.
So au contraire, I think the fucktard got off disproportionately lightly. If there was justice and keeping the punishment proportional, a spammer would need to die a thousand deaths. (Which, unfortunately, is impossible anyway.)
SHUT UP, SPAMMER (Score:3, Insightful)
ONE SINGLE SPAMMER IN PURSUIT OF $200-$300 COSTS UPWARD OF $100,000 IN LOST TIME AND PRODUCTIVITY.
Life is finite, and I do not need to waste even one second to hear your pitches for third-world vigra or lame-ass fake rolex watches.
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Insightful)
We had a medium, email, used by millions of people for meaningful discourse. Over time, a very small percentage of users (spammers) have all but trashed email for all users. We are using the legal system to make this small handful of individuals pay for their pollution. These few dozen persons have ruined a medium used by hundreds of millions th
Re:Zoo mentality (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of you argue that the time taken away from deleting spam adds up to hundreds of thousands of years. Someone even went far enough to say that it's more time taken awa
Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:5, Insightful)
the USA already incarcerates a greater proportion of its population than any other nation in the world because of sentencing practices harsher than any other industrialized country. If prison actually prevented crime we should have a low crime rate, but no, we have more crime than any develpoed nation.
Re:Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:2, Insightful)
Unlike smoking crack, this crime actually had victims. Real, honest to jebus money-losing victims.
(Admittedly, very stupid victims who would probably have given up money for magic beans.)
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
Re:Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:3, Insightful)
The defense lawyer did a REALLY shabby job. He said "they acted like shitheads only because they were trying to get rich fast"
So yes they got a harsh sentence but if I was a jurror you can bet that would have pushed my "for maximum punishment" trigger finger too.
If a rapist had the defense of "I raped her because I knew it would feel so fucking good" you can be assured
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.
Re:Contribute to ridiculous levels of spam (Score:2)
Kill the fucker? for what serial crime exactly? Murder, or smoking pot?
Re:Contribute to ridiclulous levels of spam (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, the drug laws you support are the same ones that give rise to black markets and the violent crime that comes with them. Haven't you ever read about alcohol prohibition? Al Capone? The murder rate skyrocketed when alcohol was banned. When prohibition was finally
considering... (Score:2, Insightful)
Two Wrongs... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two Wrongs... (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, they Never Do Any Wrong (TM) - on US soil at least. When cameras are present. Or the journalist cannot be "kidnapped".
Punishment fitting the crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Punishment fitting the crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fines don't work. When you are a professional scammer and thief, this is just the cost of doing business. Its just like thugs that work certain neighborhoods have to pay a percentage to the local mob boss.
And there are no debtors prisons in the US. If he moves his operations overseas, while still maintaining a residence in the US, the money is more or less untouchable...he'll just declare bankruptcy and move to a state that doesn't allow forclosure of primary home and vehicle for bankruptcy and drive a Hummer to his quarterbillion house and be out of reach of the authorities.
Prison sentences are the only way to go. The guy knew it was wrong and choose to do so anyways. For that, jail time is appropriate. 9 years in jail? Maybe over the line, but then again, he knew the risks...if I was told if I spit on a sidewalk I'd go to prison for life, I'd be sure not to spit on the sidewalk (or be prepared to take the consequences for doing so).
Re:Punishment fitting the crime? (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's say 3-4 times what came in because of the the activity, it's more than a cost of business.
Re:Punishment fitting the crime? (Score:2)
A proportionate punishment would be to ban them (temporarly on a first offence, permanently for subsequent offences) from: access to the internet, being directors or shareholders involved in any way with a companies that do any business using the 'net. Confiscation of all equipment used in their spamming, confiscation of all the proceeds of their criminal acts plus a fine based on the volume and type of spam. Eg sending out spam with intent to defraud is more serious then spamming to advertise an on-line ph
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.
Fix other sentences, not these (Score:2, Interesting)
When you can serve longer for spamming (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When you can serve longer for spamming (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, it wasn't just a cut-and-dried spamming cause. The guy was committing fraud. Think of it as a fraud case, not a spam case.
And second of all, there exists such a thing as "mitigating circumstances." There is not some absolute, gradient scale of crime/punishment proportionality whereby each successively worse crime automatically warr
Re:When you can serve longer for spamming (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When you can serve longer for spamming (Score:3, Insightful)
No there doesn't. There needs to be just, fitting punishment.
Re:When you can serve longer for spamming (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you heard the expression: "you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb"?
Translating this into modern terms: You've just crash into another car whilst drink driving. The other driver has just got of his car and is standing in front of your car yelling at you. A conviction for drink driving will see you in jail for 10 years. The punishment for causing death by dangerous driving (the worst you'd get as long as they can't prove it was deliberate) is 10 years in jail: but there's a chance, with no witnesses left alive, that you'd get away with it. Did I mention he's standing in front of your car and your engine is still running?
It isn't some silly liberal sentimentality that says the punishment should fit the crime, and this isn't the only argument for it: it's just the one most appropriate to refute your absurd assertions.
Spam equivalent to rape? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with our society is that we can't figure out a better way to punish people than to put them in jail for a decade or so and let them think about what they did. We're not quakers, for the love of God. Why can't we just:
1.) Take all the money paid to him for spamming,
2.) Fine the companies that paid him to spam, give as much of that money back to the gullible suckers as we can, and
3.) Give him 50 lashes and tell him he's not allowed to use email for 5 years.
punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
deliver 50 lashes.
Fines are unfair. They are nothing to the wealthy,
and the poor simply won't -- can't -- pay.
Jail is unfair. For the poor, it is free food and
housing. Oddly, the rich (see Martha Stewart) seem
to get off pretty easy too. The rich don't have
employment to worry about either.
It's always the middle class that suffers the most
from our current forms of punishment.
At least with lashes, you have to be one of a few
perverts to enjoy the punishment.
BTW
Re:punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
You could scale the fines to be proportional to income. The idea is that the same offense should result in the same approximate level of pain. Norway does this; occasionally it results in a wealthy individual receiving a ten thousand dollar speeding ticket.
Community service might be an appropriate substitute. An hour is an hour to everyone.
Re:Spam equivalent to rape? (Score:3, Insightful)
9 years would be an extremely high sentence for spamming one person. Conversely, 5-20 years would be an extremely low sentence for raping hundreds of thousands of people.
Re:Spam equivalent to rape? (Score:5, Informative)
The sentence wasn't just for spamming. Think of it as a fraud case, not a spam case. The guy was sending his own fraudulent emails, taking peoples' money, and not delivering.
Why can't we just:
1.) Take all the money paid to him for spamming,
Because much of it may be already spent on things you can't get back (traveling, gambling, fancy hotel rooms, meals, liquor), or hidden away in offshore accounts. You can never conclusively determine exactly how much money he scammed off of people.
2.) Fine the companies that paid him to spam,
Because as I said, he wasn't spamming for anyone but himself. He was spamming his own porno websites, and his own fraudulent "get rich quick" scams.
3.) Give him 50 lashes and tell him he's not allowed to use email for 5 years.
Think of him in the same league as the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/Bre-X execs that defrauded shareholders out of millions of dollars. He's not some little two-bit spammer, he's a fraudster, seeking to routinely rip-off unsuspecting consumers. 9 years is what he deserves, and I hope he serves every last day of it in some federal, PMITA-prison, with no parole.
Re:Spam equivalent to rape? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're comparing apples and PCs. 5-20 years is for _ONE_ count of rape, not (say) 25 million.
What would be a typical sentence for 25 million counts of rape? Compare that to 9 years.
Also consider (Score:5, Funny)
Last week my neighbour's brat rang my door bell then ran away.
I demand at least 5 years in prison as it's not the first time he did that and I'm not the only victim.
Should have been more (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
No new laws (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL: Why do people think the different methods of committing a crime require different laws? Is murder by using a knife versus a crowbar defined and treated differently in the law books?
Re:No new laws (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, there is a school of thought that the act of sending the spam--in and of itself, regardless of whether it is fraudulent or not--is also destructive to society. It makes email a less valuable tool for everyone.
Telemarketers have restrictions on who they can
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.
Why not fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious why fraud charges weren't stacked on top of all this.
I'm not complaining. 9 years for spamming. I just hope this guy isn't the last. I really want to see them go after as many of these guys as they can. Going after 1 isn't much of a deterrant. Going after dozens could be. It's not like there are as many big-time spammers as there are file sharers. You don't have to get that many convictions to start scaring them.
In a nutshell: (Score:2)
They suck time and bandwidth from system administrators, sell products they know don't work as advertised, make it difficult or impossible for customers to seek restitution, and wreak havoc on the digital lives of those they impersonate.
They're liars, thieves, swindlers, frauds, cheats, conmen. And like anyone in those professions, they justi
Yes, "proportionality" is long dead (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them." - Ayn Rand
Not that spammers don't deserve jail time, but realize that we're quickly approaching a stage where everyone is guilty of something.
So, what were they actually guilty of? (Score:3, Informative)
9 *hard* years... (Score:2, Funny)
"Come here bitch, i've got something for you"
The relevance of greed going both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
trying to get rich quick. (Score:2)
I hate spammers as much as the next guy, but I can not agree that the punishment should be equal to crimes of violence such as rape, murder, and assault. I would submit t
Has anybody else noticed... (Score:2, Interesting)
I still have a question.. (Score:2, Funny)
Real solution (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Like you need to ask (Score:2)
The US has more people in jail as a percentage of the population than Russia.
I hate spammers as much as anyone but is this really who we want filling up our federal prisons?
Re:Like you need to ask (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I want people who premeditate and execute attacks on millions of people's private property to fill up our prisons. (I'd prefer Abu Ghirab, but prison will do.) Make room by letting out the people convicted of victimless "crimes" (e.g. drug posession).
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.
Re:And I say yes! 9+ years is appropriate (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. The Commonwealth of Virginny doesn't do parole.
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.
Not has harsh as any punishment I could dream up! (Score:2)
This IS balanced (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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
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.........
Investment, deterence, sentancing, proportionality (Score:3, Insightful)
This requires long term investment in the police forces.
Crime is not detered by heavy sentancing since if the criminal believes the chances are he will not be caught, the sentance is irrelevent.
Heavy sentancing however can be enacted instantly, by act of law, unlike long term investment in police forces (which is also, of course, expensive and has little immediate effect).
Over the decades, there has been a general failure to invest in police forces because of the cost and lack of immediacy and, due to the consequencial lack of decrease in crime, a general turning towards increasingly heavy sentancing.
This does not work. It also gradually leads to penalities become entirely disproportional to offence, leading to institutionalized injustice.
Such is the current state of affairs.
--
Toby
What everyone seems to miss... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he was just sending unsolicited email advertising a real product that actually worked, then 9 years would indeed be too harsh. Creating an annoyance, even to many people, should not be punished more harshly than some murders and rapes.
But, he deliberately worked to deceive people in order to steal their money by selling a product that didn't work and that he knew didn't work. This is theft, and when done on such a grand scale ($400K - $700K per month), deserves to be so harshly punished. It could be argued that this is too light, considering the several year sentences typical for car theft.
I'd also be inclined to punish him for stupidity. Having raked in several million dollars in a few months, he should have been long gone sunning himself on a beach in Brazil under a new identity, not sitting around waiting to be busted.
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:One word: deterrent (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I hate spam, I would much rather see the man bankrupted, or seriously fined than server ANY jail time. At no point has my quality of life or personal safety ever been threatened by spam. Incarceration should be an option of last resort.
I find it funny that most slashdotters will cry foul at ~any~ type of fine for file trading or uncapping their modems or for warddriving, and then scream for violent dismemberment of someone who sends unsolicited e-mails.
Re:One word: deterrent (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, knowing that this guy won't be spamming for 9 years is not a terrible thing. I agree that the degree of this crime is lower than many others, but the magnitude seems extremely higher. We should be comparing his sentence to that of a mass murderer or serial rapist.
Re:One word: deterrent (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on how you define "deterrent". It's true that longer terms do not tend to reduce the rate at which criminals reoffend after release. But they do keep criminals from committing crimes for longer periods of time, what with being locked up and all
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