[TriLUG] Raleigh Spammer Charged

[Magnus Hedemark]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, John Franklin wrote:

> I am in no way an advocate of spam, but I think there are some serious 
> issues with how spam is being fought, especially in this case.  The 
> concept that you can be charged in a jurisdiction because the data went 
> through a machine there is wrong.  It would be like charging a winery 
> because the truck with their shipment went through a dry county.

No, it's not.  The truck driving through a dry county left no damage 
behind.

A spammer pushing mail through an out-of-state server is putting load on 
that server that requires more exotic hardware than a server that never 
has to handle spam.  There is also the added personell costs as sysadmins 
must deal directly or indirectly with the repercussions of the spam 
entering the server.

This is more like a man in North Carolina lobbing a mortar shell over the 
Virginia state line.  Should he be tried in NC for the damage he did in 
VA?