Jason Smathers reportedly teared up when he was sentenced on Aug. 17 to a mere 15 months in prison for stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses from AOL, then peddling them to spammers.
But maybe those were tears of joy rather than remorse. The guy got off way too lightly.
Smathers cooperated with the government after he had been caught. But that shouldn’t get him off so easily.
Those spammers used the stolen data to flood cyberspace with up to 7 billion unsolicited e-mails (you’re probably thinking that most of them went into your inbox).
According to the Department of Justice, Smathers could have received as many as five years each for conspiracy to traffic in stolen property and trafficking in stolen property.
Internet users are fed up with the needless aggravation and headaches caused by spam, most of which are scam jobs — “scam spam” — preying on the vulnerable.
The maddening dissemination of spam also has real costs – possibly as much as $1 million to AOL in this case.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein should have made an example of Smathers, and he could have handed out a harsher sentence. Can anyone spell “restitution”?
(Most interesting is the fact that Hellerstein ditched his AOL account in December because — get this — he received too much spam. It’s really hard to make up such stuff.)
One of the public policy questions we need to address is whether digital crimes should be punished like analog crimes, or should we have different standards?
Either way, spammers need to know that the country is sick of their abuse and the government should get serious about putting real shackles on them.
But when light, toothless sentences are meted out for major transgressions, the risk for breaking the law and being a public nuisance is low.
At least Smathers will have 15 months to reflect on his crime. That will be just about enough time to clear out all the spam from his inbox.