Spammers should by either fined or put in jail

This just in from the LATimes:

Flooding the inbox is no longer enough.

Now spammers have gone beyond e-mail and are attacking instant-message services popular with teenagers, authorities said Friday as they announced the arrest of a young man suspected of broadcasting 1.5 million ads for pornography and cheap mortgages.

Federal prosecutors said it was the first criminal case involving this new form of spam — known as "spim" because it targets so-called IM services.

"It's absolutely unsurprising that spammers would find a new way to spread their slime through any crack and crevice available," said Anne Mitchell, president of the private Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy.

Anthony Greco, 18, was arrested Wednesday at Los Angeles International Airport, where prosecutors said they lured him from his upstate New York home for what he expected would be a meeting with the president of MySpace.com, a popular social-networking company whose users Greco allegedly spammed.

End of slice:

I don't know what the maximum sentence is for Anthony Greco, should he be found guilty, but it should be something that hurts a lot.