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Spam Government The Courts The Almighty Buck Your Rights Online News

Aussie Spammer Faces Millions in Fines 173

Posted by CowboyNeal from the big-bills dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An alleged Australian spammer could face millions in fines if he's found guilty of breaking the country's anti-spam laws, reports ZDNet. The Australian Communications Authority alleges that Wayne Mansfield and his company, Clarity 1, sent at least 56 million commercial e-mails in the 12 months after the Spam Act was enacted in April 2004."
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Aussie Spammer Faces Millions in Fines More

Aussie Spammer Faces Millions in Fines

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @07:50AM (#12899140)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Do people really make millions, plural from spamming?

      • Re:Fines, hm? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I think I read somewhere that like 1 in 10 people have responded to spam, so perhaps it's worth more than you give it credit for.

        [BTW: My verification words is "ASSFOKR" Say it out loud.]

      • Re:Fines, hm? (Score:3, Informative)

        by tha_mink ( 518151 )
        I think the going flat rate for spamming is like $0.002 for each mail sent. There are different ways to purchase your campaign but as far as flat rates go...that's about accurate. So 56,000,000 * .002 = $112,000.00. So that particular batch of campaigns didn't make his fine money. But he could have designed his campaigns to get bonuses for click throughs and stuff like that.

    • Re:Fines, hm? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vo0k ( 760020 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @07:59AM (#12899190) Journal
      FTFA:

      The Spam Act carries penalties of up to AU$220,000 per day for first-time corporate offenders and up to AU$1.1 million per day for repeat offenders.
      So he'd have to make AU$1.1mln per day to break even. I don't think even the most successful spammer could earn that much.

      • So he'd have to make AU$1.1mln per day to break even.

        To put that into perspective, I'll translate that into other prominent currencies: 1,100,000 AUD == 844,000 USD == 699,000 EUR == 463,000 GBP == 1,041,000 CAD

    • Re:Fines, hm? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dont send him to jail??!?!?! Send the fucker down and put him in a cell with a guy with no ears and lots of tatoos. Make an example for other wouldbe spammers.

      "If you want to spam, think again. If you do, your ass will be big enough to fit an entire prison through"

      • Re:Fines, hm? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by linsys ( 793123 )
        Are you kidding, now don't get me wrong I think SPAM is crap, but putting someone in JAIL for SPAM is rediclous. We (at least in the U.S) have far too many people in prison and jail what we need to better technology and "theraputic" remedy's for criminals (not that I think there is some theraputic cure for being a SPAMer).

        It always amazes me how the EASY answer is JAIL, jail is not a deterant, never has been and never will be, people always think "they won't catch me", or "I can get away with it this tim
        • Euhm no jail? Too harsh?

          Look at me. I'm able to prevent myself from sending out millions of spam email every day. I dare say it's actually quite easy not to send millions of spam emails a day. I almost happens on it's own.

          People who willfully and explicitly go out of their way to do a crime, deserve all the jailtime they get, times two.
          • The problem with jail is that it's not really all that affective a deterrent, and that it costs the taxpayers money.

            Violent offenders need to be in jail, simply for the safety of the public. Non-violent offenders should be punished differently. Hit them where it hurts, in the wallet. Heavy fines, with enforceable means of collection. Long probation terms (with the penalty for violating probation being more fines, rather than jail).

            The problem with throwing non-violent offenders in jail is that the jai

        • Re:Fines, hm? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by NotZed ( 19455 )

          Hey they held some poor kid over here in custody for 12 days for attempting to steal an ice cream [indymedia.org], so spamming should deserve years!

          Why is white-collar crime somehow not deserving of punishment like gaol? Some kid who steals a $30K car, screams down a street and writes it off against a tree is expected to end up gaoled, but someone causing a nuisance to far more people and costing millions of dollars is not because he didn't get his hands dirty doing it?

    • I don't want him to be thrown in jail for 15 years or anything

      You're right... how about 50 years instead?

      • To steal my favorite +5 Funny Slashdot ever, 15 years would be fine if..."His cellmate had a lifetime supply of penis enlargement cream and herbal viagra."

    • Case in point (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the_mighty_$ ( 726261 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:25AM (#12899348)

      If fines are all he gets, there's still a chance that he's profitable and the spamming is "worth it" to him.

      Case in point:

      My grandfather is a seafood salesman in Quebec (Canada). He sells to many restaurants. One of major restaurants in the Montreal area was one of his customers. He sold all kinds of different food products to them. One thing he sold was frog's legs.

      One day, the restaurant stopped buying frog's legs from him. He asked the owner what had happened. The owner said that they had found someone that could undercut my grandfather's price per pound by $1. My grandfather said surely its impossible. Theres no way you can get frog's legs so cheap.

      About a year later the restaurant was temporarily shutdown for investigation. The owner had been selling rat's legs instead of frog's legs.

      After the investigation was over and the restaurant reopened, my grandfather went to the owner and said, "I knew you couldn't get frog's legs that cheap." The owner said, "Listen, I was selling one thousand pounds of frog's legs per week. At one dollar a pound I saved $1000 every week for a year. The fine was $1500."

      He laughed and said that he would do it again because it was worth it.

      True story that happened about 20 years ago, but I'm willing to bet that if the fine on this spammer isn't high enough, he will say it was worth it too.

    • I don't want him to be thrown in jail for 15 years or anything

      ...but I do!

  • Watershed case (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @07:50AM (#12899142)
    This case will demonstrate to the international community that spam laws work if this case succeeds, otherwise, it will provide a reason to stop legislation on spam and possibly illustrate the futility of enforcing laws on the web. It's sort of a win-win situation.

    • Re:Watershed case (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kaorimoch ( 858523 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:24AM (#12899342) Journal
      I think it demonstrates that spammers who actually spam in countries that enforce their anti-spam laws are idiots. If I were an antispammer, I'm sure I'd have my spamming servers in Russia and merely link to them through my Australian broadband connection via a encrypted tunnel network (or something like that). I'd also have my money going through Swiss banks and Cayman Island arrangements to obfuscate its source and destination and send it back to Australia in amounts under $10,000 to avoid scrutiny as finance loans. But hey, most spammers are stupid aren't they?
    • Why is spamming bad, and should be illegal, but not copyright infringement? Surely if spammers can be punished, you can't excuse piracy. Neither of them are 'taking' anything. It seems that people on this site are hypocrites who choose their opinions based on what favours them the most.

      • Re:Watershed case (Score:2, Interesting)

        by hostyle ( 773991 )
        Spammers take up my bandwidth and time - both of which have financial value. Copyright infringers have yet to cost me anything (that I know of).
        • Piracy definitely costs the copyright holders money. Someone who downloads something instead of buying it is costing people money. I think both piracy and spamming should be illegal, but it's inconsistent and dishonest to condemn one because it inconveniences you, and to approve of the other because you find it convenient. The sooner people admit they're basing their opinions on their own preferences rather than objective logic, the better.

          • I'm sorry but that's fallacious reasoning and a crap argument. First, the cost of spam is measurable and comes out of the pocket of the receiver--the spamee, who is you or me. The cost of copyright infringement is not a cost to the owner of the IP, but a (possibly) lost opportunity-- an opportunity that would not have existed without the copyright law in the first place.

            Copyright infringement and spamming have no relationship to one another, except the one you've made up in your narrow little mind by read

  • We want millions and millions
    We're coming to get you
    We're offensive with lawyers
    So don't let it upset you

    With apologies to Frank Zappa [wonderlyrics.com]. He would obviously have come up with some far more scathing criticism of spammers.

  • Each step (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BCW2 ( 168187 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @07:53AM (#12899156) Journal
    Every one of these clowns that gets taken down is a step in the right direction. Large fines and lots of press will start an intimidation factor that will slow new people from replacing the ones taken out. Each time it happens in a different country it means fewer places to hide.

    Of course just tieing them all to trees upside down and feeding them Ex-Lax for a week would be a more fitting punishment.

    • Re:Each step (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
      Right up there with the war on drugs and the war on terrorism right?

      If you want to stop a fire take away the fuel source.

      What drives people to spam?

      1. Greed
      2. Zero talent or drive to do real work
      3. It's easy [which reinforces #1].

      Make spamming hard [e.g. hash-cash or something similar] and you essentially remove any financial backing to spam.

      Let's keep in mind that not all the spam you get is from one source. There are many smaller time spammers out that by using their fourth grade math knowledge t

      • Re:Each step (Score:1, Offtopic)

        by tha_mink ( 518151 )
        As for drugs I have a simple solution to that problem. Expulsion. I don't see how a university can legitimately claim they have a serious admitance program [e.g. you need the high marks, pass an essay or oral exam, etc, etc, etc] when they let students drink and do drugs all the time.

        If kids honestly feared ending their academic careers the serious ones would avoid drugs and the less serious [e.g. bench warmers] would fall out.

        Are you serious??? I mean really? I tried really hard to find sarcasm in
        • I am not advocating drugs and drinking but seriously...Expulsion??? Lots of kids these days don't care about ANYTHING much less their academic careers.

          I didn't care about my academics, I cared more about beer and being punk. This is during high school, not college. I watched my grades slip from straight A's to barely passing. The fact that I could pass at all when I was lucky to show up once a week was amazing. I was kicked out (I was asked to leave, really) and I didn't care. Then I realised, I had
          • I'm not saying we can't help kids/students. I'm saying if they choose to be criminals you have to be tough.

            By time a student hits grade 9 they're well aware of the negative implications of drugs. We did D.A.R.E. training in grade 6 for crying out loud.

            The thing is to keep tabs on students and help them out [e.g. when grades slip] but once they go, let them go.

            I'm not saying the way you led your life is "wrong". It's not about life choices being "right" or "wrong". It's about having consequences.

            In y
        • That's exactly the point "kids don't think that far ahead so we should excuse their actions.."

          I'm sorry but I was thinking of my career path since I was roughly 14 or so. It wasn't a big mystery that I would end up working computers and/or math doing one thing or another.

          If a 16,17,18-yr old can't reason that "I ought to actually focus on some key majors and not be a total pothead" then maybe they're not serious enough to actually attend school.

          More so they think this way because people like you let the

      • Right up there with the war on drugs and the war on terrorism right?

        So destined to fail?

        You can't win a war against an intangible, because you can't conquor an ideal. The "War on Drugs" is a PR nightmare, because it hasn't done anything to "improve" the situation in the past 10 years. It would be an even bigger PR headache to call off the war on drugs because then it looks like we've lost.

        As far as expulsion goes we already take away their financial aid, which is the same damn thing to most studen

        • Re:Each step (Score:3, Insightful)

          by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
          No it's a problem because we excuse stupidy.

          I don't see the direct correlation between going to school and doing drugs. Like as if you MUST do drugs to get through school.

          What if we replaced "drugs" with "theft" or "murder" or what not? Actually, look at the UK with the "bitch slap cell phone" thingy going on.

          That's really popular apparently. Does that mean we should excuse it just because "it's tough trying to fit in when you're not a criminal"...

          Bullshit.

          And you know what you do in schools, you wi
      • As for drugs I have a simple solution to that problem. Expulsion.

        You hear that sound? Its every drug dealer in the country laughing thier asses off ;-) Yes, kicking kids out of college for drinking should end all demand for drugs and alchohol. I'm sure of it! LOL!!!!!

        Of course then the US will have record low enrollment in colleges and record high enrollment in welfare and drug dealers won't be able to keep up with demand, but besides that it seems a very good plan ;-)
        • If none of your actions have consequences ... you think your society will be better off?

          Ok. I salute you.

          Tom
          • You don't really understand why people do drugs, do you?

            People do drugs to FEEL GOOD. If you take away one path for them to succeed in society by effectively telling them they are not allowed to feel good "in that way", they're going to feel worse and possibly do more (possibly different, possibly harder) drugs. Now think about the consequences to society for expelling all the pot-smokin' mushroom-eatin' college kids who still manage to pull a 2.0 to 4.0. The former good students that were exercising their
          • If none of your actions have consequences

            Actually, its the opposite. ALL actions have consequences. Have you thought through the actual realistic consequences of your "simple solution". I guess maybe your thinking a threat of expulsion would cause the VAST majority of kids to not do it. I can tell you that isn't realistic! A more realistic consequence to this plan is what I said in the previous post. Lower college graduation rates, lower average income rates, more poverty, more drugs.

            The "war on dr
      • I hear this, and then I realize most people are simply clueless about what most drugs do, and the actual harms they cause. The vast majority of people who try & use these do so without any serious consequence to their life, yes a small percentage in the single digit range do have problems, most of them minor, and of them a small percentage in a single digit range go on to have major problems. I could just have easily replaced the word drugs with caffeine, chocolate, dextroamphetamine, opioid of your c
      • Are you joking me? The solution to drugs is to make it so that anyone caught has their future crushed? That sounds like a great idea. I am sure the kid going into college with a 4.0 for engineering who gets caught smoking pot and ends up working at a gas station for the rest of his life will NEVER contemplate doing drugs again. I mean, after having your life ruined for something you did as a kid couldn't possibly have any negative side effects, like increased drug use.

        The biggest problem with drugs is
        • You're confusing "curbing drug use" with "getting rid of hacks".

          I don't know about you but of all the people I knew [or very well suspected to know] took drugs during college, very few of them were highly productive people.

          This line of thinking that potheads are all somehow smart or something is plain idiotic.

          Frankly I'm tired of this "help the poor bastard out". I'd rather have time and energy spent on the students who can't make ends meet and/or need a tutor than forgiving those who cheat on assignmen
          • I think you are confusing a 'pot head' with someone who occasional does drugs. All drugs, and I absolutely include alcohol as a drug, have the potential to be destructive to your life. Hell, that glowing box you are sitting in front of has had a destructive effect on more then one person. That said, you can absolutely do something recreationally on occasion without any harm to your life. Some people have a beer with dinner. Some people smoke some weed. Some people take mushrooms once a year. None of
      • As for drugs I have a simple solution to that problem. Expulsion. I don't see how a university can legitimately claim they have a serious admitance program [e.g. you need the high marks, pass an essay or oral exam, etc, etc, etc] when they let students drink and do drugs all the time.

        If kids honestly feared ending their academic careers the serious ones would avoid drugs and the less serious [e.g. bench warmers] would fall out.

        Yeah, great.
        So what about the ones who go to college, do the work, get good re
      • How many of these fargin iceholes think that they are doing anything wrong? I doubt it is that many. They have a message and a means to distribute it. We have mailboxes. I'm sure to most of them, it is no different than junk mail in our postal mail box.

        I understand that we pay for their junk through bandwidth costs and ISP server upgrades etc. How sophistcated are these guys? Are they wrong? Yes. Should they be forgiven? Maybe, but only after their sentence and spam is something talked about as a

      • "Despite the fact that drug use is more or less consistent across racial lines ... African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the 'New Jim Crow.'" -- http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/race/ [drugpolicy.org]

        It's also a good way to keep minorities from getting an education.

    • Is that how Tub Girl got started (no, I'm not going to link to it)?

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by dreamquick ( 229454 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @07:53AM (#12899157) Homepage
    An anti-spam law that works like it's supposed to, didn't think those babies existed!

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yog ( 19073 )
      Yes, but 50 million spams a year is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions sent out every day. This guy is small potatoes. Spam kings in developed countries like Australia and the U.S. tend to get shut down pretty fast. They need to go after China and eastern Europe where the real culprits are.

      And someone needs to shut down those blasted zombie Windows computers that are relaying all this rubbish.

      Just a thought: If only there were a way to make spam explode when opened, to discourag
  • Anyone know if there's a death penalty in Australia?

    Please list suitable tortures for spammers.

    • Re:Death! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Hsien ( 864759 )
      No, we do not have the death penalty.

      Generally speaking, were not self-righteous enough to believe we hold absolute truth which gives us the right to take the right to take the life of another.
      And considering our convict heritage, an understanding and empathy towards the potential falability of the law is not supprising.
      • But you would accept "swift beating" as something to be applied to particularly egregious offenders? At least most of the Australians I know seem to be in favor of this as a remediation for gross negligence, dishonesty and stupidity, and they're the better for it :)

        That said, you could send him to Singapore and claim he spray-painted a few cars.
    • Here's a good torture.

      Force him to copy every spam he's ever sent...in longhand.

    • Re:Death! (Score:5, Funny)

      by tobiasly ( 524456 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @09:04AM (#12899593) Homepage
      Anyone know if there's a death penalty in Australia?

      Please list suitable tortures for spammers.

      Have you people heard of the notion of "innocent until proven guilty"? It says an alleged Australian spammer. Let's make sure he really is Australian before we start jumping to conclusions.

      • Have you people heard of the notion of "innocent until proven guilty"? It says an alleged Australian spammer. Let's make sure he really is Australian before we start jumping to conclusions.

        Who cares what the spammers' nationality is? Seems to me a million dollor fine is a bit steep for someone who was only spamming Australians.
        • >>Have you people heard of the notion of "innocent until proven guilty"? It says an alleged Australian >>spammer. Let's make sure he really is Australian before we start jumping to conclusions.

          >Who cares what the spammers' nationality is? Seems to me a million dollor fine is a bit steep for >someone who was only spamming Australians.

          No he is advocating a death penalty for being australian not, for spamming. Can't you read what it says.
          • No he is advocating a death penalty for being australian not, for spamming. Can't you read what it says.

            Yes. Yes I can read what it says.

            Can you get a joke?

            • >>No he is advocating a death penalty for being australian not, for spamming. Can't you read what it says.

              >Yes. Yes I can read what it says.

              >Can you get a joke?

              What was there a joke somewhere? Shouldn't there be a deathpenlty for being australian?
              • Original lame joke was to read the phrase as "(alleged Australian) spammer."

                My lame joke was to read the phrase as "alleged (Australian spammer)".

                Of course any humor has long ago been sucked out of this thread.

                As for death penalties for being Australian - what the hell. I'll miss my Australian friends but you do what you gotta do.

  • 56 million? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by William Robinson ( 875390 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @07:58AM (#12899184)
    If an average commercial spam is about 5KB, he has wasted bandwidth of 280 TB over 12 months. Multiply this by number of spammers you could think of. What a waste!!!!

    A clear indication that better laws should be able to prevent this abuse.


  • Just fine him a dollar per spam...sounds equitable to me.

  • partners in crime? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by scarish ( 770648 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:00AM (#12899191)
    Wouldn't it be worth to also know which businesses hired/paid money to this man's marketing company to carry out such unsoliciated marketing campaign.....I reckon those businesses which paid for such services must also be prosecuted......much like when you are prosecuted when you pay someone for carrying out an act of crime (eg: murder)

    • Re:partners in crime? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:46AM (#12899481)
      Wouldn't it be worth to also know which businesses hired/paid money to this man's marketing company to carry out such unsoliciated marketing campaign.....I reckon those businesses which paid for such services must also be prosecuted

      That might be harder than it sounds. Many of these guys are set up as affiliate marketers. Meaning, no one pays them to do this, they only pay them when some twit happens to buy some V1@gra. The actual vendor can (with almost a straight face) claim that they established an affiliate program so that legitimate partner sites could honestly pass along real referrals... and that, gee, they can't police the activities of every affiliate, and all they knew was that they were getting traffic, and gosh, etc.

      It's up to the affilate engines to sniff this stuff out and simply shut down the offenders (by disabling their accounts). Of course, the affiliate engines make their piece of every transaction, too, so they're not going to be terribly motivated. Especially if they have no redeeming social graces whatsoever, sons of bitches.

      That being said, there are some first rate affiliate engines with real, certifiably well-behaved partner networks (see Performics [performics.com] and CJ [commissionjunction.com] as decent examples. They're not without their abusive users, but those get slammed pretty hard, and money can get locked up with you play naughty, so that usually works.

      I wonder if this Aussie was using one of the more notorious AM engines from Australia (DarkBlue [darkblue.com]).
    • Wouldn't it be worth to also know which businesses hired/paid money to this man's marketing company to carry out such unsoliciated marketing campaign.

      As practically anyone with a .au email address knows, this guy was different. Most Business Seminiars Australia spam promoted, wait for it... business seminars.

      The irony is that I've heard that his seminars were actually pretty good.

      Just too bad they were promoted by floods of spam.

  • Only Partially the Right Approach (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:09AM (#12899241) Homepage Journal
    The fully correct way of doing this would include, to use a well-worn phrase, following the money. Go to the source. Find the guys who use this dude's services.

    Mass unsolicited mail isn't always viagra spams and pre-approved mortgage scams. A colleague who does email security for (insert major UK bank here) recently forwarded a mail their head postmaster dude received from an eager (one would presume) intern at some marketing outfit.

    Basically, it was a survey spammed to all postmasters of large outfits, making no attempt at subterfuge or hiding content, saying "what email filters do you use if any? How do they work? How can we get an exception for our mails? We mass-mail for large, reputable clients" with example spam from Nike and other big, well-known companies attached. The reply from postmaster was hilarious sardonic--you could tell that he realized that marketing-boy just didn't have a clue what he'd just sent; postmaster was barely restraining his trigger finger and trying to be at least vaguely civil.

    Point being? Someone is paying these fuckwads to spam. Just like the Lycos screensaver attempted to do with basically a DDoS, it is technically doable to find spammers' clients and take them out. Spammers are just the messengers, middle-men, crooked little street dealers--nailing their shrivelled little testicles to the wall, while gratifyiing and a right step, won't solve the problem.

    That said, I don't think fines are a good thing in this case. Public beatings, well...
    • I'm noticing a new form of link spam/social engineering/etc. I maintain a government site, which has links to a variety of other sites. Every so often I get a message which asks me to add a link to something entirely unrelated. Two of them were:

      "I noticed you link to site.something.ca. That site doesn't exist anymore. Please update your link to othersite.com". Yes, the link was dead, but I checked out the new site and it was a search engine associated with spyware.

      "Don't delete this! This is a real person

  • Theft of service? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remember it's not theft if the server's still available to process other email.

    • What???

      Where exactly did you pull that from? Of course it's still theft of service...you seem to be confusing theft of service with denial of service.

      They're two completely seperate things.

      • Re:Theft of service? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by isotpist ( 857411 )
        It sounds like a sarcastic comparison of spamming and copyright infringement. It's not stealingif the original is still there. I don't think they are the same, but there is some parallel.

  • Treating the Symptom, not the problem. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LifeMatesCanada.Com ( 893630 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:18AM (#12899297) Homepage
    Going after the spammers won't help - they know how to cover their tracks too well. Its a simple supply and demand issue. As long as there are people who will click on the garbage coming in their inbox every day, and companies willing to pay the spammers to send it, trying to rid the world of spam by imposing fines on the spammers themselves is like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. We need a two pronged approach: 1. Education - More net-savvy people will mean less clicks on spam ads. 2. Corporate Accountability - If the companies who retained the spammers services had to pay the fines (say $1.00 per spam, and maybe some sort of painful audit or SEC investigation), we'd see a dramatic drop in the amount of spam.* *Except for AOL and MSN.
    • And they can't cover their tracks. They need to be visible to their customers, and their customers need to be visible to the spam victims.

      Using the law to close down the professional spammers will get rid of almost all the non-virus related spam. If the cases are publicised enough, it will also be a deterent for the amateur spammers, i.e. those who spam for their own goods rather than functioning as midlemen.


    • Why aren't we seeing PSA-type TV spots pointing out the evils of spam from big online ISPs?
  • A story about a Spammer right after a story about copyright infringement. I love it when 'sentiments collide' like that.

    You KNOW that these stories are about greed, as much for the spammer, who rips us off by coercing us to pay attention to shit, as for us, who are used to getting shit for 'free', for our paying lip service to listening to an advertiser.

    Human beings have always had problems deciding on value. One man's trash and so on... The oldest document extant is the "Code of Hammurabi." "An eye for a

  • The Aussie Prime Minister is also a spammer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by microbrewer ( 774971 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:41AM (#12899447) Homepage
    John Howard used his sons IT company to send thoundands of emails to potential voters in his electorate spaming them but do we see him being charged .

    http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/26/10935180 06795.html?oneclick=true [smh.com.au]

  • Warnings (Score:2, Funny)

    by propagandize ( 894243 )
    From TFA:
    An ACA spokesperson told ZDNet Australia Mansfield had received several warnings before it raided his company premises in April.

    Of course they all went into his spam folder.

  • Crime Still Pays (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ehaggis ( 879721 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @08:59AM (#12899554) Homepage Journal
    Unfortunately, the profit margin for spammers is still obscene and the loopholes are enormous. According to a Ciphertrust whitepaper [infosecon.net] the supply vs. demand ratio, cost of entry and lack of real overhead makes spam a low hanging fruit. Addressing these three issues is paramount. Legislation is an after the fact hand in the cookie jar approach.

  • Lethal Cailis/Viarga injection (Score:3, Funny)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @09:15AM (#12899695) Homepage Journal
    I think they need to give him a lethal injection of Viagra/Cialis.

    "Surprise your girlfriend."

    Forcibly lengthen his penis -- the punishment needs to fit the crime.

  • or individuals that submit the spam mail to this guy at Clarity 1? It seems like those companies have it good because all they have to do is pay Clarity 1 to send their spam. By doing this they avoid any penalties and Clarity 1 takes the fall.

  • As far as spammers go, Wayne Mansfield is one of the worst. Once he's safe in his jail cell I'm considering sending his cell-mates a generous supply of viagra and herbal penis-growth pills.

  • 56 million.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skuinders ( 740028 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:36PM (#12901696) Homepage
    thats almost 2 emails per second for a year straight
  • I went to one of this guy's marketing seminars which, while interesting in some areas, turned me off totally when he touched briefly on Internet marketing. He was advocating spamming (this was back in 2000) and saying it was OK.

    He also gave out a CD with a couple of mailing lists on it and tools for bulk-sending. He claimed the lists were opt-in but a quick check revealed a few addresses that I knew weren't. Additionally, another company I knew that went tried to use the list to send updates about their pr

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