Big Bounties Only Way To Take Down Spammers
from the come-and-get-'em dept
The idea of "bounties" for anyone who can track down a spammer is not a new idea. Larry Lessig has been suggesting it for a while and the FTC has been considering whether or not to add it to CAN SPAM. While they've said in the past that they doubted it would work, today they reported their findings, which claim the only way to make a spam hunting bounty system work is to pay some serious cash to spam hunters: $100,000 to $250,000. Note that this is more than what the FBI pays for tips on its 10 Most Wanted list. While the report claims such a bounty would have to come from taxpayer funds, perhaps they should talk to some companies. Large ISPs already pay plenty trying to weed out all the spam clogging their network. Perhaps they'd be willing to toss a few hundred thousand dollars into a bounty system, hoping that taking down spammers would relieve some of their network congestion.
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I still like my suggestion
Sieze all his/her worldy posessions, inventory and funds.
Destroy all illegal items (i.e., pirated software, penis enlargement pills, etc.).
Sell all the spammer's posessions on ebay.
Distribute a majority (75%) of the proceeds to the person(s) responsible for tracking down the spammer.
Send a percentage (10-15%) of the proceeds to the FTC/FCC or whoever wants to manage the project.
Take whatever is left and equally distribute it amongst people who reported spam from that spammer to the FTC/FCC project.
That way it doesn't cost the taxpayers anything, it pays for itself *and* we all get a chance to buy the spammer's belongings on ebay. The distribution to people who report spam gives us all incentive to not just delete spam e-mails but to actively forward them to the proper authorities.
If we want to get "tough on spam" we could also have the word SPAMMER tattooed on the spammer's forehead and force him to register like they do with sex offenders so that people will always know where to find him - in case they want to track him/her down and return one of his/her items they purchased on ebay - "Hey, remember this baseball bat you used to own?" Whack - Whack - Whack...
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i agree with oliver
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