I doubt that this will be a great blow to spammers around the world. I think it is a fruitless exercise, myself... but it is emotionally gratifying. I loved it when AOL raffled off the confiscated spammer's Porsche.

We will only be able to effectively battle this with better and more accountable architecture, protocols and accountability. I worry about the solution as much as the disease though, for with such control comes the opportunity to censor, to tax...

In the current day and age where the quality of information brokerage defines success and those who impede the flow of ideas become dead wood... I don't think that the world will suffer such a Pyrrhic victory.

A brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted Wednesday in the nation's first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors.

Jurors recommended that Jeremy Jaynes be sentenced to nine years in prison and fined Jessica DeGroot $7,500 after convicting them of three counts each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information.

Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore applauded the convictions and called Virginia's anti-spam law the toughest in America.

"Spam is a nuisance to millions of Americans, but it is also a major problem for businesses large and small because the thousands of unwanted e-mails create havoc as they attempt to conduct business," Kilgore said in a statement.

Posted by Michael at November 3, 2004 11:07 PM