I don’t mind the spammers getting some payback for the boatloads of garbage that fills my mailbox daily but I don’t think jailtime is fair either.

Again, I feel this is an area where a spammer’s isp can handle it rather than leaning to the Gov’t to take over. The isp can simply global-black-list the spamming users which would disallow them any broadband line in the country… or even a dialup line, for that matter. IMHO that’s better than taking up ever decreasing available space in our prisons that could be better suited to murder’s and rapists.

That said, I know it wont happen that way. Over the last couple of years every move our Gov’t has made regarding the internet has lead to their increased levels of control over whats transmitted through it. The whole point if the internet is ‘freedom’ of information and everyone on the net knows that concept scares the crap out of the Gov’t because it’s something that isn’t as easy to monitor as our phone calls (been being monitored for many many years, duh) especially with encryption protecting us from their prying ears/eyes (ever wonder why they dont want you to use high encryption? It’s because the 4,096 bit keys available on one of the common p2p programs takes a long time to decrypt. It’s not for national security because frankly the ‘world’ has had access to this encryption for a long dang time!)

If they can arrest a spammer, they can arrest you for sending a chain message to your friends in pm through icq/aim/yahoo/msn/jabber/whatever… and in time, they will.

We really ‘REALLY’ should put a tight leash on our Gov’t because in time we will all be living in a Gattica-type place and wondering where our freedoms went.

Just my 10 cents.

_-Jile-_

Let’s just say that one of these programs hijacks your e-mail address and next thing you know you’re standing tall before the Judge. Could you prove that you didn’t send the e-mail?

Think of the future where political activists send out e-mails to “subscribers” and someone complains that it’s spam. Do we jail them as well?

And finally sending this person to prison, much like sending hardened convicts into the gen pop. will only spread the process among other convicts who when released will multiply the amount of spam out there by 100.

So I recommend that we define spam as unsolicited e-mail for commercial gain OR place regulations on it so that consumers can easily filter it out. Yes there are a few people who actually like getting spam and they do buy the products. Jail time isn’t going to solve the problem and with all the publicity “he made 24 million USD” think of all the people who will want to get into this. The crime is easier, seems to make more and has lower risk than selling drugs on the street for example.

Here’s a hypothetical I’d like to hear y’all weigh in on.

Let’s say your’re a small business that sells mousetraps. You have a brick & mortar store front, and an online store. You’re not a huge business, but you have a solid product, and satisfied customers.

You buy a list of users from the national association of mouse trappers, and send them all an unsolicited email telling them about your latest product. You don’t fake your return address, your contact information is real and leads right to your business. You don’t hit them more than once or twice a month, and you offer a way to get off the list.

Is this spam? I don’t think so. What do you think?