[Gllug] A few words on the topic of stock spam

[Richard Jones]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 02:24:50PM +0100, John G Walker wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:16:48 +0100 Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org>
> wrote:
> > The law is quite well-equipped for dealing with questions of intent
> > and degree.  It is quite reasonable to let a judge decide that sending
> > 50 emails to invite your friends to a party once in a while is not
> > spam.  Whereas sending 10,000 emails, repeatedly, even when people
> > have asked you to stop, is spam.
> 
> Quite right. But there's then a question, resulting from the spammers'
> use of hijacked PCs, of *who* is doing the spamming - the owner of the
> PC or the sinister forces controlling the machine? It's this ambiguity
> that creates the difficulties in prosecuting spammers - and allows
> spammers legal loopholes to crawl through,

It is not "this ambiguity that creates the difficulties in prosecuting
spammers".  It's perfectly simple to trace spammers -- for example by
tracing the purchases of stocks that they are pimping, or looking at
the sellers of diet pills, etc. etc.  The problem is that (a)
politicians don't care enough to get together and make some laws on
the subject and (b) the police aren't given resources to do something
about it.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat
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