interesting. we in the EU have laws about EU spammers sending unsolicited emails to EU residents. this just made the spammers pay US spammers to do the job for them.
i hadn't realised that the US had started implementing similar laws.
In this case though, the "interstate transportation of stolen property" offence is just downright weird to people from the UK/EU
it must have been hard for lawyers to distinguish between civil crime, the employee illegally using another employees access codes to gain the email addresses, then the cost of AOL implementing a system that maybe they should already have been thinking about.
looks like they are actually trying to get damages as a criminal offense, compensation to AOL, rather than AOL or their insurers going to civil court to claim damages against the employee. but each country/community has different laws.
at the end of the day, all countries across the world should make spamming illegal, with massive fines, it needed to have been done years ago really. proving is difficult though if the spammers hack consumers pc's, sticking a trojan in to use their email systems to send 200 emails an hour, having a big chain of these hijacked machines to send thousands, tens of thousands of emails an hour. even with our snail mail postal system residents are a bit funny about royal mail being paid to put leaflets through peoples doors with their usual mail. the argument for unsolicited anything goes on. but surely in cases like this, laws can be drafted up and implemented very easily. the question is, who is in charge of these potential new laws and why haven't they acted sooner? do these people share responsibility when cases like this come up, for not having made those preventive laws
