[pchelpers] News:Spammer Hoisted on His Own Profits

Posted on: Sunday, 23 December 2007, 06:00 CST

By McNamara, Paul 

NET BUZZ News, Insights, oddities 

More big-time spammers may do longer stretches behind bars - and
wouldn't that be swell - if a federal judge's firstof-its-kind
sentencing decision in a Denver case becomes widely applied. 

At issue in this case, which featured testimony from Microsoft antispam
experts, was the thorny matter of determining the actual financial harm
to ISPs done by a particular spammer over a particular period of
time.When Congress enacted the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 it anticipated this
difficulty and included language allowing for a spammer's profits to be
considered in sentencing when financial damages caused by his crimes
could not reasonably be calculated. 

Last month, U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock accepted a Colorado
prosecutor's contention that this case, the United States vs. Min Kim,
represented just such a situation. Microsoft says this is the first time
a judge has applied CAN-SPAM sentencing guidelines in this manner. 

If not for the use of Kim's profits - an admitted $250,000 - as a
sentencing determinant, the 24-year-old spammer would have faced a
prison stint of 24 to 30 months instead of 30 to 37 months. Citing Kim's
first-time offender status, Babcock sentenced him to the minimum 30
months called for in the more punitive range. While that may appear
generous.it likely represented a 20% stiffer penalty than Kim would have
received absent the profit-based calculation, and it could have opened
the door for as much as 13 months additional time. 

More here:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1192978/spammer_hoisted_on_his_own_profits/index.html?source=r_technology
-- 
John Durham
Site http://modecideas.com
Server hosted on Ubuntu 4.10
Good advice is like good paint. It only works when applied.



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