Jeremy Jaynes

The world's first criminal prosecution of a spammer, that's prosecution purely for sending unsolicited mail, not by getting the spammers through some other loophole in the law, came into effect today when Jeremy Jaynes received the 9 year jail sentence he was recommended by a jury last year. Is it too much time for a spammer? They are annoying, but I am not sure it should be a criminal offence. On the other hand Jon Praed, a civil lawyer who attended the Jaynes trial gave a thrillig, blow-by-blow account of it at the MIT spam(busters) conference in January 2005 and seemed to justify the jail sentence. I wrote this story about it. I seem to remember that Jaynes was making over a million dollars a year just from spamming.