Should Spam Sentences Be Light?
from the well,-relatively... dept
Back in January, the US Sentencing Commission asked for feedback on what sort of punishment convicted spammers should receive. We figured that people would write in with suggestions that included life in prison (while deleting an ever-full spammed in-box, of course), but it appears the opposite has happened. Legal groups wrote in to suggest that spam really isn't that bad - and while there should be some punishment, it shouldn't be as strict as the penalties for outright fraud. While some anti-spammers may get upset by lenient spam sentences - they should also remember just how poorly written CAN-SPAM is, and realize that it may end up putting non-spammers at risk as well. Update: Of course, in the meantime, CAN-SPAM (as expected) has done nothing to stop the flow of spam, and people are getting increasingly fed up with the difficulty of using email, thanks to all the spam they get.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Computers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
depends on what you mean by light.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
But that's not much of a legal theory. The punishment should be proportional to the damage done by the crime, not to the magnitude of our distaste.
The punishment should be very light, but each message sent should be a separate charge. So, if you're convicted of 100,000 counts of spamming, and each count carries a sentence of 15 minutes in jail, that's 2.8 years in jail.
Thus using the economics of spam against them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I suggest a slap on the wrist.
One slap per spam sent, that is.
But seriously, spamming isn't all that bad when compared to, say, murder or even fraud. It's sort of like littering--if only one or two people do it, there's no real harm done but it's a different story when lots of people do it. What's important is that the law make spamming more trouble than it's worth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]