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More About Criminal Spam Conviction
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Wednesday, November 10 @ 10:12:42 EST Spam
This article, "Prosecutor Explains Why Spammer Sent to Slammer," was Slashdotted this morning, with comments advocating everything from community service to fines to public executions. I found more of interest in this article.

This poor prosecutor was dealing with some jurors who had never even heard of spam; I guess they were in that mythical percentage of people merely hinted at at spam conferences who don't use e-mail. Ever. As seen in this article's painful analogies (a forged IP is "no different than using someone else's credit card to purchase goods or services"), explaining why spamming is a problem to this group is difficult. The real-world comparisons are good, but not that good. These obviously worked, and I am amazed this prosecutor was able to educate this jury so well. Juries that know nothing about spam will continue to be a problem for Virginia as well as the federal courts starting CAN-SPAM trials.

I was also surprised this prosecutor didn't put anyone on the stand to testify they had not requested the mail, just an expert witness. Don't get me wrong: I am a big fan of John Levine, and I am sure he knocked this one out the park, but it would make me feel better to just put somebody on the stand who didn't want the mail. I don't think this is too much to ask from this set of facts: one the top five spammers in the world sending bestiality spam to the entire AOL subscriber list. I would even be fine with an AOL administrator running the filters ("electronic security guards"); surely these adminstrators have an AOL address. Even an AOL honeypot would be enough. I fear relying solely on the deceptive means of spamming as enough to show customers did not subscribe. Obviously, this is strong evidence, assuming the entire AOL subscriber list did not opt into these messages, but I want more--not much more. If someone is going to jail for these messages, show me at least one recipient who didn't want it.

 
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Re: More About Criminal Spam Conviction (Score: 1)
by ran-o-matic on Thursday, November 11 @ 09:15:21 EST
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The prosecutor didn't need to drag any of the recipients in to court to get a conviction (obviously). The conviction was based on the fraudulant nature of the e-mails.

As far as Virginia is concerned spam is legal. CAN-SPAM preempts any Commonwealth spam law, but provides an exception for fraud.


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Re: More About Criminal Spam Conviction (Score: 1)
by ran-o-matic on Thursday, November 11 @ 09:29:50 EST
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As for the penalty - assuming each of the three counts was for a Class 6 felony, the jail time is as expected. The maximum time would have been 15 years! For Class 6 felonies, the penalty is a term of imprisonment of not less than one year nor more than five years.


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