NEWS: Spam senders convicted in first felony case

It seems that precident has been set and that felony convictions going to start taking place against those that fill our email boxes with meaningless and annoying emails, and one could hope, this will carry on over to spyware distributors as well.



This could be very good news for those of us that are tired of the junk email we recieve by the hundreds daily. Though I do agree that 9 years is a bit extensive, but the sentence is up for dispute. We can only hope one day that malicious software makers/distributors will suffer the same fate, for which the 9 years in prison would be well earned...

I don't think 9 years is extensive at all, these people take up company time & resources that when added up is millions of dollars. They deserve every year they get & I hope others will get a clue that you can't use peoples time & resources without paying for it.

I think that the penal code should be augmented to allow, as an exception, to use slow torture as punishment for spamming.

This is a day that shall go down in history. The beggining of the end to spammers. I can't wait till all spammers are caught. Spamming is bad.

From someone that has to clean 15-30 pc's a week from spyware, i truly hope this spam conviction will increase the speed of the ball rolling on the spyware/adware issue...

Regardless of the annoyance, it looks like a big company like AOL is trampling on the rights of people to speak freely, even with "Spam." Unless there was commericial speech with attempts to defraud people, this kind of draconian exercise of over sentencing is a reign of terror far exceeding the actual event itself.

Face it, there is Spam everywhere, and you just have to get a program to filter it out of your email. It looks like a law for idiots, created by computer illiterate congressmen, going along with the same overbearing corporate oligarchy. I reject this kind of case period. It is simply selective punishment of these entrepreneurs who are doing what many many unpunished others are doing.

Comment:

Reading the case however it appears to be a fine balance between outright fraud and the realm of what is misleading in the mind of the beholder. I hope the judge acts wisely.

[edit on 5-11-2004 by SkipShipman]

Also a computer tech, that spends a large percentage of time with spam,spyware, virus. I hate it all and wish that people would pursue more positive aspects of program creation. With that said I don't want to be out of a job. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

doctorduh

We need to keep uncle sam out of the internet, it is the 1st time in history man kind has had true freedome of information. No I don't advocate spammers, I hate them, but let the free market handle the spammers, not the law. Once there is any legal precedent in regards to controlling the internet, the ball will roll in favor of those in power. They are already labeling some sights as 'hate sights' and trying to convict them under hate crime laws. Yes I agree spam is out of control, but let's not let big brother handle the problem for us.