Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Wed, Sep 06, 2006 at 11:29:00AM -0400, matusiak wrote:
> http://techdirt.com/articles/20060905/191230.shtml
> 
> ** Fantastic news (if you hate spammers). **
 
Fantastic news, regardless.

> Appeals Court Judges Sick Of Spam Too; Uphold Spammer Conviction
> 
> Last year, we were surprised that Jeremy Jaynes, admittedly one of  
> the world's biggest spammers, received a nine-year prison sentence.  
> While some form of punishment seemed reasonable (perhaps more for  
> false advertising, than spam), nine years seemed excessive and silly.  
> We'd much prefer forcing Jaynes to sit around deleting spam for a few  
> years instead.

It's not just about spam, which too many seem to think of as harmless;
it's about theft of services, fraud, criminal gangs stealing bandwidth
and processing time from naive users, constant abuse of network
resources, etc. I'd rather enjoy the spectacle of watching Jaynes
breaking rocks in a maximum security prison, myself.

> Today, however, an appeals court upheld his conviction meaning he may
> finally begin the long, long sentence. The court specifically ruled
> that putting spammers in jail is "clearly not excessive." Perhaps it
> would be in the best interest of spammers to figure out how not to
> spam judges in the future.

Why do some people seem to think that just because people are using
electrons to commit crime and fraud and theft, that it doesn't really
matter? If he was sending electrons around that happened to contain
kiddy porn, he'd have been crucified. But just because he ruined
literally tens of thousands of domains and dozens of networks (we had a
client who inherited one of his old AT&T netblocks, at that time still
listed in SPEWS, and lord knows how much time that wasted...) somehow
they need to come up with a comical punishment like "deleting spam" for
him?

I don't get it. Accountability is accountability, electrons or no.

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