Spammer must pay $11bn to ISP – Security Strategy – Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com — Huh? Wha?
A Florida man has been ordered to pay $11.2bn for sending millions of spam messages through the network of a small US internet service provider (ISP).
Iowa-based CIS Internet Services won the ruling against James McCalla, who sent more than 280 million unsolicited emails touting debt consolidation and mortgage services, a report from local newspaper the Quad City Times reports.
CIS owner Robert Kramer is reported to have said he will probably not see any of the money.
This, of course, never gets collected making a mockery of the whole case. It should bust the spammer to zero at least. Will it? I doubt it.
What ever happened to Wallace Spamford!!
Remember that moron was the largest producer of spam ever and now I think he runs a nightclub in rural Mid west USA…
Sanford should have gone to jail for the amount of spam he sent!!
in fact any spammer should go to jail IMHO.
Something along the lines of a year in Jail per Million emails sent!!
Love the TWIT podcast BTW.
Regards…
Agree, 1 year per 1 million spam email sounds good.
I like the suggestion over at slashdot that the debt might be (all or partially) forgiven and the burden of hounding the fellow thereby transferred to the IRS.
What DOES spam cost every year? Bandwidth, hard disk space, wasted labor, etc? Any idea? It’s gotta be a huge figure.
One report estimates that it costs on average is $1934 / year / employee but I’m not sure what that means, exactly.
11 billion dollars is a meaningless figure on the order of eleventeen gazillion dollars. Why not something with more meaning (and teeth)? Something like the RICO statutes; confiscation of profits and assets. I think that would be more of a deterrant than what was awarded here.
Jim – Great idea!
Sic the IRS on his ass – thats better than cappin the bastard.
I like the idea of forgiving half the award so the IRS would be on his tail. With the other half the ISP could still have a claim in case he gets some sort of waiver or agreement from the IRS.
I believe that VISA and MASTERCARD should be partly responsible for accepting payments on behalf of the spammers. That is where RICO could be used. This would be especially useful when the spammer is offshore.