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Spammer's Sentence Misguided, Sends Wrong Message
from the hit-'em-where-it-hurts dept
We all agree that convicted spammer Jeremy Jaynes is a nasty slime deserving of punishment for his daily 10 million spam emails fix. But now we're not the only ones wondering if a Virginia court went overboard on his 9-year jail sentence. Brian McWilliams says basically the same thing in his column, adding that not only is it excessive but also misguided and potential dangerous. The gist is of the commentary is two-fold: first, the overly stiff sentence puts him on par with violent criminals and completely ignores other forms of punishment, ie, he may not have to hand over a penny of his filthy lucre; and second, crucifying him this way is a good deterrent but will only martyr him and create a public backlash. Perhaps the lesson for prosecutors here is that you might serve the public better by seeking more balanced penalties. Maybe a tad less jail time, more commensurate with the crime, and a bit more repaying of the ill-gotten gains. Even better, throw in some community service, like forced service in the fight against spam. On a big scale, Mr. Jaynes and his ilk could help catch spammers or figure out ways to thwart them. Sort of the bad-hackers-turned-good approach. On a smaller and far more satisfying scale, we could make them clean up after themselves. Put them on Deletion Detail. If Jaynes had to delete spam messages all day, maybe we'd be more inclined to believe his pledge to reform himself.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
I say screw him!
Screw him! He blasted the crap out of networks with his slime, eating up resources from everyone on the net. He did it for profit, and likely used hijacked machines to do it.
Imagine if he sent out 10 million phone messages a day, or 10 million faxes?
LET HIM ROT! THESE SMACKTARDS NEED TO BE SHOWN THAT WE OWN THE INTERNET, NOT THEM!!!
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Re: I say screw him!
He sent what BILLIONS of emails? I hear 10 million a day and doing it for years so how much of other peoples time has he wasted? If it only takes a few seconds to delete each email thats still BILLIONS of seconds. There are about 32,000,000 seconds in a year so a billion seconds is about 31 years of time. I think a 31 year sentence would be more appropriate.
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Re: I say screw him!
No, as Mike said, we don't have to throw him into a cell to do nothing. Have the incarceration end only after they hit the delete key once for every spam they sent out.
Okay, I'll be nice-- time off allowed only if they can improve on existing spam filering systems.
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Re: I say screw him!
User Friendly had the right approach:
http://tinyurl.com/3vzfs
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No Subject Given
Why not sue for damages calculated the same rather ludicrous way as the noise & rubbish industries do for oh-so-precious "copyright violation"s?
billion emails at (consultancy rate per hour or part thereof to press `delete' each) = $commeasurate with a small nation's GDP, probably... ;)
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more time, take his ill gotten gains
with a nine year sentenence he will be out in four & a half years if he stays out of trouble while doing his time, i think he should be given 20 years and have all his ill gotten gains taken away to show other spammers that the world will not tolerate it and there is no profit in spamming people's email with fraudlent advertising...
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No Subject Given
throwing individual spammers in jail will do no good for the spam situation... spam will always be around (as it always has in some form or another) the best we can do is put adequate systems in place to keep it to a minimum... where are the studies that show how most of the spam we receive is sent? then put measures (isp's blocking zombie machines etc.) in place to curb it.
why is he any worse than TV for cutting into every good show with 15 minutes of ads? they are both driven by making good money from it. (not the best analogy...)
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Re: No Subject Given
No, its a really really BAD analogy.
You need to understand something that you seemingly do NOT understand.
Ads on TV: Ads on TV are, in theory, supposed to subsidize quality programming (I know, i know). In theory, YOU as the user, do NOT PAY for these ads. You see these in return for lower fees for television viewing.
Spam: Spam advertising (indeed ALL spyware) is much MUCH more evil. Spam does not use the SENDER'S resources. It costs the same to the spammer to send 10 emails as sending 10 million. Who pays? ISPs...in other words YOU DO. Before you say "well I pay XX a month no matter HOW much email I get" you better think twice. You pay so much a month but you have either a per time payment (rare these days) or you have a upload/download limit (very common). Spam uses up that limit, hence uses YOUR limitted resources (whether its 1% or 10% is irrelevant...if I said you paid 10cents for every 100 spam would you be pissed? I would).
A better analogy would be is he any worse than the guy who sends 50 unsolicitated business faxes to thousands of companies in YOUR area? (see how that is?)
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No Subject Given
"Martyr" him? To whom? Is there some secret spam-sending group out there that's going to declare jihad on the email world because this guy's been sent to prison for what a few bleeding hearts think is too long? And how exactly would that differ from what we suffer through now?
As for the public backlash to the oh-so-tough sentence, I think the responses here are a good indication of the kind of "backlash" to be expected. If there's any backlash at all, it will be against the court system for being too easy on the scum.
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Re: No Subject Given
GROW UP PEOPLE ... ITS FREAKING SPAM, NOT MURDER !
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Re: No Subject Given
Well lookee here Buford...a dirty rotten spammer...
wanna skin 'im?
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Re: No Subject Given
If there's any backlash at all, it will be against the court system for being too easy on the scum.
I wonder. I mean while I applaud the stiff sentence, I DO think monetary damages and reparations should have been imposed, also where's the backlash on the much lighter sentences for violent crimes, which ARE more heinous than this one (by this I am NOT saying the spammer should get off lighter...but that violent offenders should get heavier penalties)
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