Jail for Selling Email Lists to Spammers 172
amigoro writes "UK will start jailing the people who trade in email addresses, or any other personal data. The current Data Protection Act only fines people who do that, but the money one can make from trading in personal information was far higher than the measly GBP 5000 one had to pay if caught. The new regulations will result in a two year prison sentence for violating the Act."
US (Score:5, Insightful)
Jail Time (Score:5, Insightful)
The price of spam lists (Score:3, Insightful)
What about people who inadvertantly give away (Score:4, Insightful)
Should the offender be tracked and punished? After all, (s)he gave away my personal info without my consent. Not intentionally and didn't make any money, but its an interesting question nonetheless.
Re:Jail Time (Score:2, Insightful)
The creeps making tons of money from the prison industry believe we should feed them even faster. This isn't about punishment, much less rehabilitation. Profit motive is driving it. And the taste of revenge is sweet indeed.
Re:Jail Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Jail time is something that people can't miss.
I agree that two years should be a terrifying thing to take from somebody; it's scary that so many people are willing to risk jail time nonetheless.
Punishment is always a problem. Nothing really works universally. Deterrence obviously fails to deter. Rehabilitation also fails more often than it helps. Vengeance comes with its own problems.
Jail terms are always quantifications based on all three factors and more, which will always lead to absurdities of proportion, where some minor crimes get larger sentences than major ones. The laws are always compromises, and the numbers end up as the result of splitting differences and argumentation rather than an understanding of what works.
Re:FROSTY PISTOLIERS! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FROSTY PISTOLIERS! (Score:3, Insightful)
What happened to punishment fitting the crime? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I wouldn't be opposed to say a sentence that put them in jail every weekend for two years. They can still try to earn an honest buck, and get a solid reminder of what they did wrong.
Re:Jail Time (Score:2, Insightful)
There really aren't that many spammers in the world. It may not seem like it, but that's because the world has a lot of spam- it's a crime that has a huge number of victims by definition. If you consider all the lives that are improved by jailing a spammer, it compares favorably even to jailing violent criminals. There are comparatively few lives that are improved by jailing (say) an average rapist, and even if each potential rape victim's life is improved a lot by the rapist being in jail instead of being free to rape, there's just a few rape victims per rapist (usually less than a hundred). Jailing a spammer can improve the lives of millions of people by a little, and receiving X spam emails is about as bad as being raped (for some value of X). And raping people isn't like spamming- it takes time, effort, and legwork, and the number of people you can rape is limited just by virtue of the fact that it's a difficult crime to computerize. If nothing else, at least one thing you can say about rapists is that they are not as lazy as spammers, and that should really be considered when coming up with sentences for them. Spamming may be as "nonviolent" as selling drugs, accepting bribes, or rigging elections, but spammers still belong in jail. If nothing else, it will prevent them from spamming, in a way that fining them will not. A spammer can cover any fine you impose by further spamming.
Re:US (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jail Time (Score:3, Insightful)
actually, it's worse than that, you have to not only remove the financial incentive, you also have to remove the PERCEIVED financial incentive. the former is actually not that hard, and in some cases is already accomplished. the big problem is that even if people aren't able to make a penny off of spam you will still have people who THINK they can make money off it, and that will continue to cause people to try.
what is needed most is for people to expect to get caught. people do their own risk/benefit analysis and if they think they are likely to get some benefit, and don't think there is any risk they will continue. the way to solve this is to make people think that the risk isn't worth it. which means better investigation, better prosecution, and better computer security making it harder for people to hide the origin of the spam.
Re:Jail Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, waking up in the morning and finding 70 emails, of which 65 are spam is pretty damn annoying, but it's nothing in the bigger picture. You need to seriously take a step back from the computer and get some fucking perspective.
Re:Jail Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, can we get back to lynching spammers?
No jail sentence will be handed down - Policy (Score:4, Insightful)
While the threat of jail is still there, the chances of anyone actually getting a custodial sentence for such crimes is virtually non-existant, when even major crime gets punished with fines and community service.
So, yet another UK law that looks good on paper, but will be as effective as the USA CAN-SPAM laws.
Re:Er, can be (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll get down off my soapbox now.
*: I suspect those figures are entirely bogus though. Most likely calculated in the same style that the RIAA uses to say that piracy costs them 100 trillion dollars per nanosecond or whatever they're claiming these days.