Thursday, November 02, 2006
Australia gets it right
There are certain canards or myths we see in the US media when they do an (all too infrequent) spam story. One of them is that spammers are beyond the law, or laws can never be effective, or some such nonsense.
Spamming is illegal in the European Union and Australia. When Australia began its criminal proceedings against big-time spammer Wayne Mansfield, he stopped spamming. Mansfield was convicted last month, and he and his company have been fined about US$four million. Alan Ralsky was regarded as the biggest spammer in the world. He stopped spamming, as far as I know, when the FBI raided his basement network operations center last year. (Mansfield might keep spamming. I believe spamming manifests a mental disorder of some kind, like kleptomania, and career spammers may be unable to stop. But it will be a lot harder for him now.)
Law enforcement can stop spam. It can do it without infringing anybody's rights. Spammers commit a variety of crimes under existing law. Using someone's computer without their permission is a crime in every civilized nation. Almost all spam involves fraud of some kind. All it takes is the political will to do it.
Spamming is illegal in the European Union and Australia. When Australia began its criminal proceedings against big-time spammer Wayne Mansfield, he stopped spamming. Mansfield was convicted last month, and he and his company have been fined about US$four million. Alan Ralsky was regarded as the biggest spammer in the world. He stopped spamming, as far as I know, when the FBI raided his basement network operations center last year. (Mansfield might keep spamming. I believe spamming manifests a mental disorder of some kind, like kleptomania, and career spammers may be unable to stop. But it will be a lot harder for him now.)
Law enforcement can stop spam. It can do it without infringing anybody's rights. Spammers commit a variety of crimes under existing law. Using someone's computer without their permission is a crime in every civilized nation. Almost all spam involves fraud of some kind. All it takes is the political will to do it.
