UK Makes Spamming a Fineable Offense 310
woodhouse writes "The BBC has an article about the new UK anti-spamming law which comes into force later this year. Under the new law, spammers can be fined up to 5000 pounds in a magistrates court, or an unlimited amount in the crown court. Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."
How about a restraining order (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a good start (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prison should be reserved for violent criminals... (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Still, this does make it a lot harder for the very few spammers in Britain to, well, spam. Moving your servers to Zaire isn't exactly easy.
Warped world view.. (Score:5, Insightful)
-molo
Laws don't apply to scum (Score:3, Insightful)
Enacting laws is a nice symbolic step, but we need a technical solution if we are to ever to put the brakes on spammers.
In abstentia (Score:3, Insightful)
From the article:Under the new law, spammers could be fined 5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury.
and
Earlier this month Italy imposed tough regulations to fine spammers up to 90,000 euros (66,000) and impose a maximum prison term of three years. EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect. Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach.
Couldn't the spammers be found guilty in abstentia? Remember how the US snapped up Dmitry Skylarov when he entered that country.
The folly of law (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the same logic that got us into the situation where someone who gets caught having sex with their boy/girlfriend on lover's lane (especially if you're in Mass. and happen to be in a non-missionary position) can end up having to walk around to all of your neighbors and tell them you're a sex-offender... joy.
Yeah, so the definition of a spammer is what? If you get 1000 messages a day with my name as the return-address, do I get fined? What if the headers are *very* convincing? What if it's "from" someone else, but it came from my network? What if that was someone who I let put thier virus-infected laptop on my wireless network?
This is not an easy problem.
Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The folly of law (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's think about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.
Slashdot seems to me to be the place where people gripe about overly harsh sentences for people who are involved in things like P2P and software "piracy," and then say how it's totally out of whack because you go to prison for 5 years for rape and 25 for copyright infingement.
While agree that spam is a social ill and needs to be curtailed, we need to be careful not to go overboard.
Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim (Score:3, Insightful)
A bit extreme (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's Bob. He's not pissed off, he is only fuming. He wants a law to prevent whatever it is that makes him fume. Calls his Senator and gets his law.
What's wrong with this? BOTH ARE THE SAME!! Its coming to a point where there will be a law for not picking your nose, or a law to not cut your fingernails in public.
Man, doesn't anybody get this besides me?
Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals (Score:4, Insightful)
Jail time for spammers is justified, IMHO, when we're talking about the career spamming scum. The ones who illegally hijack foreign servers, illegally hijack unused netblocks, continue spamming despite being terminated from multiple ISPs, continue spamming despite court orders to stop (Sam Khuri comes to mind), etc. etc.
I don't think a first time offender should be jailed, but there is NOTHING else that will stop the career spamming from spamming other than locking him up (with no Internet access). These people are sociopaths, they belong in jail.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers
Would I be in trouble today? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about a restraining order (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, except that times have changed and it's increasingly necessary to touch a computer to perform basic tasks of living and working. I'm not talking about software engineering or other high-tech work; I'm talking about being a clerk at a convenience store.
Even the suspected author of one variant of the MS Blaster worm, Jeffrey Parson, was told by the judge that he could use the Internet to look for work. Judges are increasingly unwilling to place permanent draconian restrictions on computer criminals because that could leave them unemployable, and an unemployable person can be forced back into crime by that very fact.
I agree that aggressive, repeat spammers -- the sort that end up on the SpamHaus.org ROKSO [spamhaus.org] (Register of Known Spam Operations) list -- deserve to be thrown permanently off the Internet. But maybe we should think of some more practical ways to deal with them?
Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not going to be able to force anyone to be productive members of society. "Hey, you. Stop spamming. Do good". Won't happen.
I also believe the so called "white collar criminals" that bilk millions of dollars from corporations and investors and such should get jail time too, along with the other criminals. Who knows how many lives they've ruined by their greed. Hell, their negligence probably CAUSED some down-and-out fathers to resort to crime. Just because they didn't use a gun doesn't mean they don't deserve jail time. Perhaps the same is true for spammers. Just because they aren't violent doesn't mean they don't deserve to be punished or have enough of a threat of a nasty punishment to deter them.
Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
>> of the new law."
I'm glad. While I hate spam as much as the next person, the penalty needs to fit the crime.
I don't like the spammers, but should they go to jail for sending e-mail? No.
For those who disagree, do you think those downloading mp3s should be taken to court?
Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Doing this is, technically, spam. But it also isn't spam in that I'm not offering penis enlargements, impossible mortgage rates, questionable knock-off drugs or soliciting assistance in moving large sums of money from African banks.
It is also merely an extension of what companies did prior to wide adoption of email - snail mail campaigns based upon the exact same criteria. I feel, both as a potential sender and recipient of this type of campaign, that this business tool needs to be protected from being lumped into the same category as the other annoying spam which has absolutely no legitimate business usage.
Enforceability not the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals (Score:3, Insightful)
May as well give up then, huh?
We need to make an example of one or more of them. Nothing else will help.
I thought you said that wouldn't work in the last sentence?
Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim (Score:3, Insightful)
horse (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, because Britain's prisons are so empty that they're just crying out for more harmless inmates who pose no danger to the public.
They're dumb money people, not evil people. Make it uneconomical and they'll go away.
fines better than prison for white collar crime (Score:5, Insightful)
the cost of putting a person in the slammer is not negligible.
Fine them for all the money made polus damages plus court costs etc.
Ban them from the use of computers A-La Mitnick.
See just how long they continue their practices.
Leave the prisons for the truly dangerous criminals that we do not want on the streets.
Re:Warped world view.. (Score:2, Insightful)