Comments on: Justice continues

By: Stephen Newton

Stephen Newton — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 08:19:00 +0000

Bizarre. That’s what you get for winding up people with nothing better to do than fret.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 10:29:00 +0000

Hmm. Nine years in jail does seem a little disproportionate for their offence. Equally, a $7,500 fine is rather small compared to the amount of money they turned over. Since this is basically a commercial crime, a short sharp shock in an open prison plus a crippling financial penalty seems more appropriate….

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 09:01:00 +0000

I suspect this was deliberately chosen as a test case to act as a deterrent to other spammers - it has all the necessary ingredients, right down to their use of spoofed addresses.

But I suspect they'll get off on appeal, as their lawyer seems to think they have pretty strong grounds for one (chiefly that they were convicted in Virginia but live in North Carolina).

I have to disagree with the "mildly annoying" dismissal, though - it might be to the individual end user (though that doesn't quite capture the frustration of getting literally hundreds per day, as my old address used to), but major spam floods can have a serious impact on company productivity if they're at all reliant on e-mail and IT. For all sorts of practical and political reasons, a test case like this was long overdue.

By: Biscit

Biscit — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 08:11:00 +0000

It does seem a bit steep for simply sending the spam, as this is what they've been found guilty of.

However the spam was simply the hook for a $4.6million a year fraud, for which it seems they've been punished without being found guilty.