Your argument sounds reasonable, but it glosses over one thing. The costs of spam aren't just the direct costs of handling and deleting the spam e-mails. The costs also include the costs of legitimate messages lost in the pile of garbage (eg. the multi-million-dollar contract lost because in trying ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Hi,

Just a quick factual correction - Bhopal was two decades ago.

Thanks
Tom Parry-Jones
Gamerseurope.com...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I agree that each individual spam is not as serious as a robbery, but you have to look at the huge scope of people affected. A single robbery only affects one person, a deceptive email can defraud tens of thousands.
Also, I did find the article sort of pointless. How can you make the claim that t...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Mark: I think 9 years of sentence is well deserved. If anything, in all other cases the sencences should have been harsher. I would like to see spammers/hackers sentenced along the same lines as conmen and bank robbers....

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I sort of agree. There is that feeling of "something has to be done" floating around out there in userland. Everytime that happens watch out! I remember there was the case of this guy that had a pretty disgusting thing where guys paid a lot of money to hunt girls with paintball guns in the woods. F...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Yes, nine years in jail is excessive, but people are ANGRY about this subject and the only way to stop this spam scourge is to put the fear of God into spammers....
Let's all hope it works!...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I believe you're only 1/4 right. Spamming is an economic affront, and punishment should be based on economic sanctions. Thus, I don't believe a spammer should get 9 years in the pokey to develop a close relationship with a bruiser named Bruno.

But I DO believe that any fine--no matter how large...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I think you're right about engaging spammers by making sure that noone actually uses their services/products will, in the end, be the only way to stop spam completely. But fining the people buying the spammer's wares may have undesirable reprecussions. So, in the long run, it may not be the right ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

The punishment DOES fit the crime. We, who have to constantly clean out our email inboxes to rid ourselves of the unwanted garbage forced on us by these commercial leaches, are tired of putting up with spam. I think nine years in jail is just right....

[ more ]  [ reply ]

The users of spam are punished, if they are so stupid to patronize a business so unethical as to use spam marketing, they deserve what they get.

I say hang the spammers! Hang 'em once for every email they sent me, and then hang 'em again.

Then they should be tarred and feathered and castrated!...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I spend anywhere from 2 to 5 hours each week on spam related issues. There are 150 employees in my medium sized company. If each of us only spends 2 hours a week deleting spam that is 15,000 hours a year (minus 2 weeks for vacation.) If our median wage is $10/hour (a VERY low estimate) the cost in l...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I think part of the problem is with the enforcement. The punishments may well be out of proportion to the crime that the conviction was for. The problem is that it's taking a huge amount of time and effort in order to make cases against only a small minority of spammers, and for a small proportion o...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

You're right, it is too harsh. I think I should turn off my company spam filter for a couple of weeks and then we could lock the spammer in a room with some of my weary email users that are receiving several hundred spam messages per day. That would be justice!...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Sorry, I think the sentences are too lenient and do not have enough penalties in the wallet. For all of his time, DeGroot still kept his money. $10 per message isn't near enough. I think that $100/message should be the fine and for every single email sent. 50% of that money should go to local taxes ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I agree, if this will teach other spammers a lesson.

I bet the judge had sufferd from spam too ;)

But i this attitude, will force spammers to use compromised machines to spam, and to stay undetectable....

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I peacefully disagree with you. A punishment should fit the crime, yes, but it should also have the effect of deterring others from committing the crime, and also it should be severe enough to actually cause the offender to flinch. When you're talking about a massive company (like Micro$oft)that h...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Here's a formulation I've seen used before in relation to cost savings from spam prevention. Each spam takes an average 5 seconds to deal with. Multiply # of spam * 5 seconds * avg pay/second in your company.

By that very crude formulation the 7,000-10,000 spam per day our organization blocks wo...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

People need to be educated on how to keep themselves from getting on spam lists.
One way is to not fill out online forms with personal or business email account contact info. Set up a hotmail account and use this address for any online forms that are filled out.

Should the same laws apply to ju...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

An e-mail address is a piece of personal information just like any other piece of information about you. If you publish something on the internet, you better be ready for the possibility of some dimwit abusing it. If your address is so precious to you that you would rather see other people rot in ja...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Ridiculous that these people's lives are being ruined for committing a minor annoyance that people will continue to commit as long as it is effective. If more were done to block spam rather than punish the culprits, it would stop on its own without the need of "technophobic" court time.

Nice one ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

So - increase the punishment for murder, rape, armed robbery, and toxic incidents.

Spammers don't just inconvenience or harrass, they aid and abett criminal activity in a large way and threaten the internet and internet commerce as a whole.

Let em' hang and let God sort them out.
...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

We are sending people to prison because of an inconvenience (a big one but still, an inconvenience). Anyone who agrees with such stiff penelties because they were inconvenienced is begging for more stupid government legislation. Don't get me wrong I hate spam to, but the sudden response from a bunch...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Mark,

you are comparing apples with oranges.

The spammers convicted didn't get convicted for a single spam, or a single crime. They did get convicted for millions, if not billions of crimes! If the spammer is sentenced to 9 years in total, he serves not even 1 second per crime.

Compare that...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Was this a low security prison? Not all prisons are maximum security lockdown types. Aside from the loss of freedom, it might not be so bad. Not wanting to lose my freedom would still keep me on the straight and narrow.

I believe restitution is a good idea if you are looking for proportional puni...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

It's the classic case of jungle vs. zoo; do you wish to be taken care of, or do you wish to take care of yourself? Those who wish all evil on spammers are demonstrating a need to be cared for, while those (such as myself) who don't much care about spam have a great desire to not have a big brother- ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I agree, these punishments are getting out of hand, it's an email. You cannot tell me that if you do not follow some procedure on how to send a proper spam message - you'll get 5-10 yrs and its justified. Who are these retards standing behind this policy....

[ more ]  [ reply ]

When you look at the full numbers, the punishment doesn't fit the crime, it is too low.
According to an Associated Press article on the Spamhaus site (http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso_id=ROK43
35 )Jaynes had 16 high speed lines sending out 10 million messages per day and collected...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I think the punishment is way to light!

First of all, I run a web hosting company, and I cannot begin to tell you the amount of spam that bombards my servers. Then there is the fact that I do computer repair on the side, I cannot tell you the amount of spyware and viruses (some delivered in spam...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

First off I think you and others that feel that spam is just an annoyance miss the crux of the issue itself --consent or lack of it.

The very nature of electronic mail is to write the message when it is received and append it to the end of the mail file, a contiguous file. This quite simply mean...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Unlike many large and powerful companies (Enron) who do MUCH more damage socially, financially, etc., spammers have no champion.

If the spammers (or their advertisers) showed paying taxes and/or lobbied (bribed) the lawmakers, they would all be singing a different tune.

I don't like spam as mu...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

The "crime" was two-part:
1. spam a few billion people,
2. defraud those people who read the E-mail, and sent money to the spammers, by not delivering anything in exchange for their money.

Eight-and-3/4 years for fraud, three months for being a public nuisance.

The punishment fits the sum of...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Are the punishments disproportionate? Yes. Is that because the spammer sentences are too harsh? No. It's because the others are too lenient.

Anyone that considers spam to be nothing more than a mere inconvenience needs to study their subject matter more thoroughly. They are woefully ignorant of t...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

I feel that the other charges should have harsher penalties and the spam penalties are fare....

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Exactly. My uncle was murdered in cold blood (with plenty of evidence to convict his killer), but the killer only spent 5 years in prison. If spammers get more time than murderers, it only shows how horribly corrupted our legal system is.
Besides, I'd think that banning them from using a computer...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

To hell with all of them. They should all be HUNG, GASED OR SHOT. ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Someone kills a guy thats a terrible outcome for one person. another person causes pain for millions. Personally I think justice should require death for both... BTW by standing up for spammers you should be strung up too. Death to all SPAMMERS and all spammer lovers ...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Ah horsecrap! Spamming is a criminal act that costs businesses REAL MONEY. Perhaps the penalties for "more serious" crimes are too low.

As long as bleeding hearts continue to beat the poor criminal drum, and the sheep gather around curious, we will continue to be a victim celebrating society.
...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

In general, white collar crime is punished much less severely than physical crime, assuming that the authorities actually want to investigate and punish white collar crime in the first place.

As for genocide in Rwanda, the entire episode is a first-class, international clusterfuck. Some crimes a...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Just to say the punishment should be even more severe....

[ more ]  [ reply ]

For some reason SPAM and the legal system always reminds me of two things, frontier law and prostitution.

The internet is a new frontier and law enforcement can have great difficulty catching spammers. Therefore those that are caught need to be dealt with in a manner that will send a message to o...

[ more ]  [ reply ]

Microsoft would like to see them all in jail. I fully agree. They should lock them up and throw away the key.

Just sick and tired of it. Justice can't happen fast enough for me and everybody else I know...

[ more ]  [ reply ]