Who Can Really Say?

Eugene Volokh relates that a NY state rat bastard spammer has been sentenced to 3.5 plus years in prison. But was he convicted and sentenced under an anti-spam law? Unfortunately no -- he received his sentences for identity theft and forgery, the crimes that he used to cover-up his spamnming operation.

Volokh just reports it and links, with a few quotes, to a News.com article, in which an Earthlink rep. states his belief that this sentence sends a strong message to spammers. But the News.com article (via Reuters) leads with these two sentences:

A New York state man who sent out millions of junk e-mails was sentenced to three-and-a-half to seven years in prison, the state attorney general's office said Thursday.

Howard Carmack, known as the "Buffalo Spammer," received the maximum sentence for 14 counts of identity theft and forgery, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said.

Well call me a cynic but I'm deeply unimpressed. Maybe I don't understand the mechanics of spamming in the 21st Century -- maybe it can't be done effectively without stealing identities and forging stuff -- but I'd feel a helluva lot better if he'd actually been charged with spamming.

In an unrelated post, Volokh again points out that CNN's online QuickVote polls are junk, and says:

But if the result doesn't represent the public's opinion, and only reflects who happened to be better organized online to drive up the statistics, then why should a news organization that aspires to accuracy and candor report it? My sense is that the reason this thing draws eyeballs is precisely that some readers, who aren't knowledgeable in statistics, do wrongly ascribe some meaning to it.

I don't know but it seems to me the reason why they run these idiotic polls is not to mislead those unknowledgable in the meaning of polls and statistics -- it's to drive eyeballs to CNN.com, pure and simple. From a who gives a shit it works marketing standpoint, this is a slam dunk, no?