First Federal Spam Conviction Sign Of Things To Come Or Weak Enforcement?
from the trends-to-watch dept
Spammers are getting caught and prosecuted more and more these days, mostly as a result of the efforts of individual states. Now the feds, amazingly, have just chalked up their very first conviction. The lout in question is Peter Moshou, aka the Timeshare Spammer, a guy from (where else?) Florida who sent millions of spam emails through Earthlink. While putting this guy away is nothing short of a public service, it also could be interpreted in one of two ways: it’s either the beginning of a trend toward more prosecutions or highlights the slow and spotty pursuit we can expect to see in the future. We’d pessimistically lean toward the latter for several reasons, including the law’s many flaws and general failure, the limited resources available to enforce the law, and the fact that this recent success involved a fairly egregious and easily nabbed offender. He also didn’t sound too contrite, joking around with lawyers right before his guilty plea. Any bets on whether it will take the feds another year and a half to catch the next one?
