Spammers Fined A$5.5 million 129
Mick Bailey writes "A Perth company and it's director have been issued a A$5.5 million (approx. US$4 million) fine for breaching anti-spam laws. Australian IT watchers may be familiar with the director, Robert Mansfield — he's been personally fined A$1 million for the offenses. The Company, Clarity1, sent 280 million unsolicited emails of which 74 million hit mailboxes between 4/2004 and 4/2006."
Is it enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer to see jail time for these guys.
Re:Is it enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait.
Damnit, they haven't.
Maybe someone needs to starts DOSing the sites that are advertised for in spam, then people would be afraid to go to spammers for advertising.
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Of course, the law needs to be passed in more countries.
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If you DOS the clients website you may not hurt the pammer directly, but that isn't the idea. The idea is to make going to spammers the wrong choice for people trying to advertise, this would hurt spammers of a type.
Aside from that, you're right when you say:
"(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work."
But a I can dream, c
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It's been done http://mlns.starring.se/ [starring.se] and in one case it worked so well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_security [wikipedia.org] that the spammers declared war on the internet in defense of their right to spam.
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Just think if one in every 10,000 people you spammed actually bought the product, that gets you some revenue. Then take all the banner adds you have on your site (some non-techie people may click the link just to see), more revenue. That fine may just be a drop in the bucket for a "successful spammer."
But you need to look at the other side of things too. Anti-spam companies are making a lot of money from spam too. Just look at all of the different Anti-spam products [google.com] y
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Another cost that spammers should have to fund when they are caught. We shouldn't have to pay for anti-spam services, the spammers should.
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People can just go through and manually delete the 150+ pen15 enlargement adds they get a day.
Its kind of like making a robber pay for your home security system after they get caught. We shouldn't have to pay for it, we are not going to rob our own house.
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I also understand your point. I really would like to bill for the % of bandwidth consumed by spam and the time I spend deleting it though. Considering that spam is illegal spammers should not only be fined, they should spend time in prison like any other thief. Spam is worse than telemarketing calls, with them I can check my caller ID and not answ
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No, I have a cell phone and my service comes with caller id... but you do have another good point.
Re:Is it enough? (Score:4, Funny)
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why exactly? running a spam filter costs me, the companies etc extra money in loss of CPU idle cycles. why sh
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not true. back in the day we could run 20x the email, now we have to filter it and virus check... that reduces the amo
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true. but the SUV is not illegal just yet, it will be soon, and in the UK there are talks to heavily tax the things off the road, which i agree with, totally. but, it's illegal to spam. so its about time we t
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That's just a terrible analogy. It's more like someone hacking into your print server and making all of your p
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Spamming is like phoning with reverse charges [userfriendly.org]. It costs you!
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Impact on business is less than torrent hosting? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet, only fines for impacting a HUGE number of people/business??
Re:Impact on business is less than torrent hosting (Score:1)
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Lock them up instead. Fines are just business. Jail time is incentive to behave.
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The judgment against him includes an injunction against further spamming. If he violates that injunction he probably will go to jail, even though that isn't a normal part of the penalties for breaking the law. Injunctions like that are intended to prevent lawbreakers from thinking of fines as "the cost of doing business", I guess.
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Coming up next... (Score:5, Funny)
The gavel falls (Score:5, Informative)
The original court decision [austlii.edu.au] was handed down last April; this is the punishment. Additionally, when the case went to court in 2005, the courts handed Clarity1 an an injunction against sending more spam [acma.gov.au]. So it sounds like Mansfield first violated the law, then violated a court injunction.
I wonder if he can pay the fine in e-mail promotion services?
Re:The gavel falls (Score:5, Funny)
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I understand that Mansfield appealed the initial injunction, and it was changed. I think the argument went something like this.
Govt: He's continuing to break the law, your honour. Order him to stop.
Judge: Fair enough. So ordered.
Wayne: Hang on, I'm not breaking the law! I have permission from all those recipients: that's my point. If I can't send email for the duration of this case it will be crippling to my business.
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Re:There's no apostrophe in its when it's possessi (Score:2)
Were they indicted, also?
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You are mistaken. RTFA:
Yes, because it would obviously be impossible to do both. Why should someone who's pulling down a salary as an editor actually have to edit?
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Pay attention before you post such a response.
...from the Slashdot post, NOT the article itself (There was nothing wrong with the "its" in the article). The Slashdot editors don't need to edit a user submission, even if the user mistyped something from the original article.
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Yes, editors DO need to edit submissions. I actually am an editor in real life, if I let crap like that get past me I'd be out of a job.
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I don't think they let it "get past" them, I just don't believe this
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Obviously they don't care. You want to give them a pass. I don't. There's nothing I can do to change their minds, but I refuse to endorse this unprofessional attitude. They get paid to edit, it's not a hobby. Proofing a dozen paragraphs of text a day is not a great burden.
And still I see no admission that your original reply was off-base
I don't unde
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You have a six digit UID, and are still here - and slashdot has been this bad, if not worse for nearly a decade now. There are more important things in life than bitching about an apostrophe in the contraction of it is...
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No.
There are more important things in life than bitching about an apostrophe in the contraction of it is...
90% of the posts here are or of similar, or less, significance.
Re:There's no apostrophe in its when it's possessi (Score:1)
It's hard to recommend
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I've been on the internet too long (Score:2, Funny)
Australian spammers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Australian spammers (Score:5, Insightful)
They should receive 1 year of time in prison doing this for every 1 year they were SPAMming on the outside.
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You want to have convicted felons get access to and read government email?
Should this be at all levels of government (town, state, national), including the department of defense, intelligence agencies and the military?
Also, who's checking to see if they create false positives? More felons? Guarding, housing and feeding your large spam slave population is starting to sound way more expensive than using a few more servers equipped with half decent filters.
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Dude, this is Australia
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Oh, hilarious. An American making prison colony jokes about Australia. For us, that was 150 years ago. For you, it's Guantanamo Bay.
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That will do as a stand-in for Australia in a pinch. All we have to is add a few roos, hang everyone from their feet so they are upside-down, and hire Mel Gibson as a prison guard.
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Mel was born in New York. You can keep him.
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Hey, here's an idea.... (Score:3, Funny)
No Jail Time? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Really, I'd like to see SOME jail time on these if in fact a criminal law is broken, but isn't 9 years a little much? How about a token 90 days with 3-5 years for reoffending? That seems more in line. Just one catch though: he has to spend 16 hours a day of those 90 days clicking a "Delete" button.
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Of course we know that a leg
Why there are not box stuffing bots? (Score:3, Interesting)
If some activists get some action from the credit card companies, phone companies and FBI and set up honeypot phone numbers, bank account, credit card numbers to trap the spammers at the point where they try to cash in, that would be nice.
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-matthew
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-matthew
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( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (X) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(X) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the mone
d1a2ep@m for less (Score:1)
I bet that makes them depressed.
Perhaps they should seek out some Net-based therapy.
Maybe they need to subscribe to mailing lists for d1a2ep@m.
Lose weight, use Viagra, get penis enlargement (Score:1)
Even if getting thin^ner is not on your to do list at the moment, Ana`trim can help you optimize your eating and feel better than any time before! This advanced blend of nat ural ingredients puts your body in real control over what you eat, suppressing excessive ap/petite and giving you plenty of natural bodily energy. And
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be real (Score:1)
WTF? I bet they were sending that much in less than one day:
10k zombie hosts * average 0.1 successful sents per sec * 3600 * 24 = 86.4 million emails sent in 24h.
That headline (Score:1, Funny)
It's probably a dumb point, but... (Score:2)
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Here are some metrics for you... (Score:1)
That server BTW is a P4 2.4GHz running LAMP with a dedicated 1.5Mbps pipe.
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I'm sure that the number is a tiny fraction of the total number sent.
Fining? Aussie, please! (Score:2)
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( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (X) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the mone
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( ) You're a bit uptight
(X) Tasteless jokes are common on
Additionally you should:
(X) Grow a sense of humor.
(X) Quit writing such long trollish posts.
(X) Have a nice day.
Not As Bad As It Sounds (Score:1, Flamebait)
Summary is in error (Score:3, Informative)
The judge had a l337 sense of humor. (Score:2)
A$5.5 Million.
Ass.s Million.
Sure it's a potty joke in l337 speak, which is why it surprises me that on a site of geeks we all missed it.
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And no, your pen15 will never get larger. You're a slashdotter who throws Japanese into sentences at random. It's not even going to matter. Get used to it.
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Oh, and I'll be sure to relay your pessimism regarding my sexual prospects to my boyfriend.
P.S. Your screen name is paraphrased from a sci-fi film. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
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I'm actually a huge anime fan. And I'm a big dork about it. And I do throw in random Japanese words in conversation (mostly with other anime geeks). I never insult someone with the intent of making them feel bad.
My name actually came from a flash animation someone made of me on a forum (my name is Donnie).But yeah, sorry that I didn't make it clear that I wasn't trying to offend you.
And yes, I realize this is offtopic. Mods, mod me down.
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Simple: the spammer is directly costing millions of people real time and money, and raking in huge piles of cash as a result. Many of us are responsible for maintaining mail servers and have to deal with complaints from end users about spa