Spammers Ordered To Pay $236 Million

from the good-luck-collecting dept

Wed, Oct 8th 2008 6:06am — Mike Masnick

While the chances that they'll ever actually pay are quite remote, some people will surely be happy to hear that some spammers were ordered to pay $236 million in damages for spamming an ISP that flooded it, disrupting customer bandwidth, forcing the ISP to upgrade its servers while also costing it customers. The amount actually works out to $10 per spam message, which seems a bit on the high side. Of course, this is hardly the first huge fine against spammers, and we've yet to see one actually result in payment -- but we have seen spammers on the losing side of these cases come back later to spam some more. While there may be some emotional pleasure in seeing a spammer hit with such a big fine, it's an open question as to whether or not it actually acts as any kind of deterrent.

Filed Under: fines, spammers

16 Comments

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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased), 8 Oct 2008 @ 6:24am

Deterrent?
So what is your solution, Mike? I would rather see a good mix of jail time and some hefty fines. I know another good one. The guilty should have to gather up all their computers, remove all filter programs, open every single email and buy or click through on every single spam message until they are bankrupt and their computer will no longer boot because of the extreme amount of spyware/adware/worms/trojans/viruses on the computer. The question will be what to do with all the V[@gra?
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J.Locke, 8 Oct 2008 @ 6:38am

Some context
Wow 236 million, you could almost pay the annual salary of two wall street executives with that!
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J.Locke, 8 Oct 2008 @ 6:39am

Re: Deterrent?
"The guilty should have to gather up all their computers, remove all filter programs, open every single email and buy or click through on every single spam message until they are bankrupt and their computer will no longer boot because of the extreme amount of spyware/adware/worms/trojans/viruses on the computer. "

Wow very Dante, I like it!
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NullOp, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:08am

Penalty
The penalty for spamming should be jail time AND a hefty fine. In the eighties it was discovered that big corporations considered fines for polluting, spam = electronic pollution, a "cost of doing business." But when corporate officers went to jail, "Whoa!", now that was a different matter! So, the jail time punishes the individual and the fine the corporation. Of course it is difficult, at times, to identify the "guilty party" as everyone points to everyone else during depositions! Hmmm....
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James, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:14am

I'd rather...
...see the spammer hit w/a big BRICK!
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:15am

Re: Some context
Heh. That's part of the problem.

See someday, America is going to wake up and realized they put up a $700B bounty on the heads of the people who caused this mess, which is substantially more than the current value on Bin Laden's Head.

Bailout? Nah.
Rescue? Nah.
Bounty? Sounds good to me.
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mike, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:23am

Re: Deterrent?
Chuck Norris is very great at what he does. spammers need to be shot. bottom line.

NRA member
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Mike, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:26am

Re: Re: Some context
Sounds better to shoot first and ask questions after there buried.

NRA Proud Member
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:32am

At $10 a message...
So, they only sent out about 23.6 million emails. I mean, come on, who hasn't done that?
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Mr. T, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:38am

Oh no!! Where will I be able to purchace my viagra from now?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2008 @ 7:41am

Re: Re: Re: Some context
Hey, hold the fire back now.

But Worldcom and Tyco didn't get special treatment, neither should they.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Oct 2008 @ 8:03am

Re: Deterrent?
I personaly prefer 'fine or jail. If you can't pay the fine, you gotta serve the time' That way it's a deterrent either way. $10 per message sounds reasonable, because it means that there's no way in hell they could have made enough of a profit to pay that off, unless they started fairly rich...
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Buster, 8 Oct 2008 @ 8:27am

Tanks of gas
So umm about how many tanks of gas are they giving up to pay this back?
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winterfreez, 8 Oct 2008 @ 11:00am

Re: Tanks of gas
By the time they get around to actually paying it back? About 2 or 3 tanks of gas... :)
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Johnny Canada, 8 Oct 2008 @ 11:59am

I think the fine and jail time for the head of the company.

We will just send in Dog the Bounty Hunter to bring him in and we can all watch it on TV.
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Taf, 13 Oct 2008 @ 2:11am

Re: Some context
...or a golden handshake for one failed executive...
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