More Spammers Getting More Long Term Sentences; But Does It Help?
from the rot-in-jail dept
While there are still plenty of people out there who think that there can be no punishment that is too cruel for spammers, it still seems like incredibly long sentences are a bit out of proportion with the crime. Two more spammers have now been sentenced to over five years each for sending out pornographic spam emails in violation of CAN SPAM. There is an argument to be made that such high penalties act as a deterrent to other spammers, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that that's true. Considering that the amount of spam being sent has continued to grow over time (despite some other high profile sentences) it's unclear whether these long sentences really do much good.
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What about overseas?
Politicians have a long history of writing bad legislation and then celebrating a great victory for humanity in front of the news media.
Politicians have no idea about technology, or how to enforce what they do write. And they have no idea what to do about operations outside the borders.
Frankly, if it were up to me, I'd tie import taxes to spam counts from overseas.
The Chinese would quickly take care of spam when faced with massive import taxes. In Africa, cut aid to Africa until they solve the spam problem. Or, just cut off internet access from Africa to the US. They will quickly solve the problem.
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Stick with big fines
Besides, aren't American state and federal prisons overcrowded anyway?
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HA!
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Spam Sentences
I don't have the answers except maybe to hit them where it hurts, in their wallets. What about requiring them to work in a government facility using their computer skills until they have paid back the cost of prosecuting them.
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If you take away what they value most, money, and make them actually work rather than simply scamming people, you might have an effective deterrent.
As somebody has already said, if you have places like China and Africa which simply don't care pumping out the spam then you're not going to solve the problem until effective deterrents for those places can be found. Cutting their Internet access sounds good.
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Re: What about overseas?
I think a better deterrent then prison is to hit them in the pockets. They make so much money off spamming that they just take it the cost of doing business. I think following to the money chain to the corporations paying out for making sales from spamming would help cut off funding for it.
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The trouble with laws.....
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Re: What about overseas?
Recently, the UK's SOCA (Serious Organized Crime Agency) arrested 70 criminals in five countries, and these individuals were involved in various types of Internet crime. I noticed a big drop in the amount of spam I receive, from more than 10 a day to about one in two/three days [I traced one of the spam emails to USA].
If the US [and others] would cooperate with other countries and international forces like Interpol, and allow US citizens to be extradited to other countries, we'd get some way towards solving this problem! It needs cooperation by all countries, not just Africa, China or Europe.
Charles, Bristol (UK)
ps: How I traced a spam email to USA: One of the emails I received advertised some product and a website address. I used Internet's WHOIS facility to find out the name of the person who owned that web address and his/her phone number. I phoned the guy at his home in Washington state and woke him up from bed!!!!
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The solution is to punish the consumers. Fines and jail time are out of the question, however, shame might be effective. Every time a spammer is busted, seize his records and publish them. At best, your neighbors would know you are an idiot. At worst, they'd know you are a very "small", impotent idiot with a bit of a drug problem and a fondness for photos of clowns in bondage gear.
And don't think for a moment that the spammers don't keep good records. They rely on repeat business. I know someone that was buying narcotics from an online pharmacy. He ended up changing his phone numbers because he went clean and they would call several times a day trying to get him to refill his prescriptions.
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it would help iff
As it is, the prosecutions are too few, not predictable, statistically insignificant for a spammer to be able to predict his odds. By eyeball, a spammer sees his chances of getting away with it as very, very good.
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