Is this a fair punishment for spammers?

If nothing is damage, I would suggest community service. Unless they are hacking into your system or used your email as sender to send millions of emails, and you are receiving millions of mailer-daemon error bounce back..

Sounds totally fair and reasonable to me, Michael! They should also have to forfeit any profits (if any) that they made from their irritating spam emails.

They deserve that and must be thrown to a deserted island

They shouldn't only just get jail time of the equivalent of our precious time wasted, they should also be made to pay the equivalent of time wasted in cash as damage. If you are to sum up the amount of people's time wasted I'm a year, you can imagine the amount of money, leisure e.t.c we would have derived.

I wonder what a spam clickthrough rate would be from an untrust worthy recipient because I can't imagine buying stuff from people desperately and illegally spamming me. There desperation clearly signifies their dangerous URGE.

Needs more: their entire sentence also involves reading and deleting spam emails from victim's inboxes. One. At. A. Time.

Why no, I'm not a sadist. Why would you say that?

59 days is too low... and maybe jailtime is a bit harsh, but what about confiscating all of their equipment plus the interdiction to use a computer for 5 year?

I disagree. They should be fined, and the money should be given
to the victims. It's much better this way. Spammers should be
put in jail only if they fail to pay or if they keep repeating
the offence.

sounds like someone with to much time on there hands to me
I dislike hitting the DELETE key myself from some of these clowns on this forum that send 10,20x aday but even thinking of sending someone to jail for you DELETING a email is stupid.
There is way to many nuts on the streets to be worried about a email spammer.

There's no need to punish spammers when using a spam filter removes the email. This isn't 1998 anymore

I think the math is good and the punishment is only fair. I would only add this to it:

while in prison, they have to keep reading SPAM emails during the day, and have SPAM read to them through some loud speakers at night.

I'm with you Michael. It should also include those that sell or share your email address without permission to the spammers.

lol. great thinking that punishment is well deserved for the value of your time spent... though I'm too lazy for all that math I'd say fixed 100days of jail time.

Sounds pretty fair, but I would go a step further. If they're guilty of sending 1,000,000 spam emails, they should be SENT 1,000,000 spam emails, and only ONE of those would contain a "get out of jail" coupon. They have to find that email before being released.

It's over the edge. There's not enough jail space now for violent felons and all the rest. Where do the resources come from to send these people to the pokey? Taxpayers, us. So that means we get punished looking at Viagra ads and then punished to foot the bill to send the Spammers to minimum security club fed where they get the latest movies and learn to play scrabble. I'm with you in spirit but it ain't practical.

All for Adies community service idea - putting them in jail just means we need to spend more time and effort on them. At least make the *******s give back!

I would make them pay a fine equal to the damages done (depends how many spams were sent out) AND do at least 500 hours of community service.

If they still don't learn, then throw them in jail although it would be odd having email spammers sit in the same cell with a person that was charged with assault and battery.

This is a two sided thing. Though I will say that a large percentage of "email marketing" is largely spam either way. People just try to send multiple offers to users with links that they arent interested in. Not saying all is this way, but it is certainly common.

Totally ridiculous, why not the death penalty for those who print out the paper flyers as well as for the postman who distribute them?
Spammers are like toddlers, if you ignore them, they will go away, end of story.
And when idiots will stop clicking on links to lose 200 pounds and get a 3 foot penis then maybe spam will go away

Email spam was already bad enough, but now we have cellphone spam. The same spam bullshit you receive in your email is now being sent via SMS. The whole purpose of spam is one of deception, so why not punish them? I've fixed the computers of people who's systems were damaged because they opened a spam email. To me, it's not only about a minor inconvenience in time. It's also about the spammer's ruthless intentions.

Well I say that it's a not so fair punishment but may work nonetheless. Anyway, before people start thinking about punishments, we should first set a very specific definition for spamming or at least spamming that we consider "illegal" because I think the definition is still a bit broad.

Regarding the punishment, it's not so fair because I believe jail time would not just be too harsh but will also be a bit useless if the "spammers" can still do what they did again. Monetary restitution/indemnification is a little bit beneficial because to those who were gravely affected but I think monetary forms of punishment is a bit easy to walk away from. So I guess people should find of new ways of punishment like more surveillance or control over ones use of Internet capabilities, etc.


~^_^~

I think the punishment should fit the crime, If they spam me, I get to rape and kill there entire family in front of them. then sell all their assets on eBay.. I feel justified in the severity of this punishment, Perhaps I am a bit cranky from an hour session of deleting spam also

Remember that stupid kid who went overseas about 15 years ago and vandalized a bunch of stuff....and they publicly "caned" him?


That's what should happen to spammers.

I wondered how much of this was tongue in cheek - I'm inclined to think that not much of it is. Wow. Jail, huh? For spam?

I read a post on this site from someone relating a conversation with a neighbor who was a direct mailer. When asked why he stuck with direct mailing and hadn't gotten into IM, his response was, "There aren't any spam filters in snail mail."

I guess we should lock up little old ladies who drive 10mph under the speed limit too? After all, she is wasting people's time, those following her, including vehicles that are working, like delivery trucks. Costing companies money, etc.

Should we all dial 911 when we find anyone wasting our time? That's a whole bunch 'o dialing in a day if you venture out in public.

Sending a person to jail for days, weeks, months or years for wasting a few seconds of YOUR time is beyond harsh. You are all talking about class action criminal courts - no personal injury or victimization by any one person was all that great. Because a spammer can send out thousands does not negate the fact that the actual 'crime' (ya'lls word - not mine) any person suffered was minuscule as well as common place in everyday society, namely someone wasting your time with something they are doing, be it spam or talking on a cell phone and not paying attention.

With citizens like you guys, who needs the institution of Big Brother - a lynch mob BB could be proud of (tongue in cheek - well, kinda but kinda not).

No need for new laws to give us an even bigger prison population, especially when a spammer has unpunished counterparts in every element of society - those who waste your time with their actions.

Judge not lest ye be judged. No doubt EVERY single person reading this post has wasted many people's time one many occasions through some sort of action or inattentiveness. Are you ready to imprison yourselves for the crime of wasting people's time, or is that just for some other abiritraily chosen schmuck who annoys you and you then separate your time wasting from? Y'all go lock yourselves in your room for a week to atone for your crimes . . .

This may be an unpopular viewpoint but sending email is free speech. The can spam laws are a violation of the first amendment. There are anti-spam programs available to block most unwanted email anyways, we don't need draconian laws when we already have over crowded jails and prisons.

Don't hold back Paul!!! I agree they should be punished. A fine and possible jail time, just not sure how that would be worked out.

I keep wondering why Gmail is so split personality on what it throws into the spam folder. I have 6 gmail accounts (1 personal 5 biz) and the way gmail will handle the same email across the accounts is ODD! time of delivery, spam flagging, etc - I have one account that throws HALF of what it gets into spam. HALF! Some of the lists are the same as I am on in other gmail accounts, and the mail gets through just fine..

Then I get the most OBVIOUS garbage spam in my inbox!! (Like today, i was FLOORED at the blatant, dangerous looking spam hitting priority inbox" today!)

Jail time sounds good, or at least - community service cleaning peoples actual physical trash cans LOL

Spammers are a prime example of how most of us have to live with the consequences of a small minority of people who just don't give a damn. Paul has already pointed out the cost which results from this. Every single legitimate IMer is impacted negatively by what these few people do -- they have and continue to cost everyone in the email marketing business and business in general.

There's what you can do and what you should do. Some of us know the difference and others need to be taught by laws which unfortunately, often impact the innocent law abiding members of society as well.

Or to put it another way...Hangin's too good for em! Burnin's too good for em! They oughta be torn up in to little bitty pieces and buried alive!


How's that Paul?

Regards,
jim

In a movie trailer voice: "Paul Myers has managed to refrain from revealing his true feelings about spam thread after thread. But everyone has a breaking point, and somebody *cough*JoeRobinson*cough* slipped some extra caffeine into old Myers' coffee. There's a spammer among us, and Paul has found a bat. Let's see what happens..."

*Gets out popcorn*

Good luck with you're proposal,

Just in case that you havn't heard, there is national budget crises dilemma,
Jail time here in California is being cut in half, and convicts are released too early.
These are hardcore criminals ill leave that one to you're imagination.
You still think spamers will serve time?

Newsflash, new guy: Cost-shifted advertising is NOT protected under the First Amendment.

And for those who try to pretend it's only an email or two, and that the time doesn't matter... I hope you one day get as much spam as I would without the layers of blocking and filtering I have in place. Or that you put in the work to create a really useful asset and see it overwhelmed by these scumbags to the point where it's more cost to you than it's worth, and you end up having to throw away all that time and effort.

I hope it's your identity that's stolen next, and your computer that's locked up so badly it costs you a couple of hundred dollars to clean it off.

I wish all the evils spam has to offer fall on your silly, addled little heads, so you come to understand just what a plague it really is.

Without the talent and expertise of thousands of programmers and technicians around the world, your email inbox would be absolutely worthless. If you only get a few spams a day, you have them to thank for it. And if you value any blog or forum, you need to remember that the content you see is only useful because the people who own them or maintain them spend their time protecting those resources and that value from the slime. I don't make the rules. If I did, those people would all be simply removed from the site, immediately and without exception. As would all the people selling "manual" backlinking services and any other remotely spammy systems or services.

A lot of it is already verboten here. See the rules in the WSO section.

Mind you, not all automation systems are scumware. I'm talking about the stuff that is. Which spammer? Is there anyone worse than someone who sells fake meds to sick people, who buy because they can't afford the prices their pharmacist wants for them? Or the person who drains a single mother's bank account through phishing? Or the identity thief who costs a family their home? Those are real. And there are a lot more examples.

This is not about a few seconds deleting an email or three. It's about very real and serious personal and systemic damage done by parasites on a global scale.

And the folks who pay attention to this issue and see the reports can tell you: I am understating the scope and impact of the problem.


Paul

If you want freedom of speech you have to take the good with the bad. First came the can spam laws, next who knows? Will there be laws governing social networking? Selling WSOs (probably the FTC already covers that)? I am not arguing that spam is not costly. I am sure it can be. But letting Big Brother step in and legislate the entire internet, and how we use it, is infinitely worse.

This thread started out with the question should spammers get jail time. I say no. There're more important things taxpayer money should be spent on. I'm no expert on spam but believe the definition is unsolicited bulk email. If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will point it out.

The topic drifts to spam that's associated with felonious activity like the stuff below:

Spoofing - Fraud - Criminal
Phishing - Fraud, Larceny - Criminal
Bandwidth Theft - Criminal

Jail time for above because this stuff goes far beyond being just a nuisance, it's willful and malicious.

Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. The only debate is about how long your arm and my nose can be and what we do with the space in the middle The idea of the utopian web is and always has been a myth, big brother is already here.

And to add to Paul's point about the damage done...last year I was in Times Square while attending Ad Tech in NYC. I was hanging out with some co-workers when one of the street hustlers started up a convo with us. He asked what we did and when we said email marketing he replied: "Oh, you're the guys who spam me!" This from a guy who's hustling quarters in front of the Hard Rock Cafe...of course, he probably makes a damn good living doing it .

When I travel to conferences and the customs agents ask me what I do for a living, they often make remarks or ask me if I can give them tips to stop spam. We share a laugh, they send me to the strip search room out of spite and life goes on. I'm not making this up. OK, the part about the strip search is made up.

Perception is nine tenths of the law and those who spam create a perception that all email marketers are the same. That negative perception costs all legitimate marketers.

Regards,
jim

Spam is bad... but on the other hand you never know when that Viagra or a pile of cash from a Nigerian prince might come in handy

Not all of them. Some build popular forums. :p

Kidding.

To others...

Spam has nothing to do with free speech. Free speech stop at my property. You can stand on the sidewalk but you can't enter my yard. SPAM enters my yard so to speak.

As to jail, it depends. Are they breaking the law? I'd say 99.9% do and they should get jail time.

It's VERY hard to spam and not break at least one law.

I shouldn't have to filter out email.

Those of you using "verify yourself" systems should goto jail too. Not really but they clutter communication too.

Garrie

Paul,

I put kidding because I don't really think spam built the forum. It might have helped at one point but it would have killed the forum if left unchecked.

-g

Wait you guys still get spam delivered to your inbox? That's pretty retro. Spam has been going to my spambox since about 2004.

Somehow I only seem to receive spam from India SEO companies and you can put remove or anything like that in the mail or topic as much as you want. They just keep on doing it. Very annoying.

Your punishment is just, i was thinking of adding the time "prove ur not a bot" tests and email load times....

Buy punishing him, he only gets more aggressive. Next time he is out, he would device a method to spam more without getting caught.

Only possible solution that he will never spam again is to ban internet connection to him for the rest of his life BTW, I don't know how it can be done.

You guys are crazy.

Internet marketers wanting to sentence spammers to jail?

Cut throat much?

PS: Who determines what's "spam" and what's not?

Half of the WSO's you guys promote indicate some form of "spam" or another.

(Is messaging people (in bulk) on forums and other services spam?)

Be careful what you wish for.

Wow this is a creative calculation Michael, worth spreading across so there is some form of serious penalty started to impose on those big time spammers...

Ain't that the truth!

Terra

I challenge anyone here, that is an Internet Marketer to say that they never "Spammed" before.

I know conventional wisdom is to associate SPAM with only email, but there is tons of WSO's out there teaching people how to SPAM google, Youtube, Facebook, Wordpress comments, etc. etc.

Ok I agree with yall lets put them and there counter parts in Jail
so any of you that have ever used one of the None White hat methods to Rank your sites,videos etc you need to get ready to show up at the slammer.

Thank includes Twitter spam ,Facebook ,Backlinks etc
Are is it only email spam your worried about just let the others slide because Alot of you use them

Yall musta been posting same time as Me lol same thoughts >~

I think that spammers are a part of seo industry as there are so many forums fill with spamming posts but you know it's not hard to catch them.

Paul I Was sure you where one of the few that didnt,but Im also sure ALOT on here do.
Any How Im getting back to work everyone have a good spamfree day.

I think they should have their computers taken away sand banned from the internet.

I think your proposal is absolutely correct. 59 days jail would be fair.

I wonder how many people assume you're talking about the senders, as opposed to the recipients.

Either way.



All the best,
Michael