Its not there to scare them. It just notifies them what the fees and facts are. They can't argue they didn't know what the costs were. Nor can they argue the service was offered for free. Nor can they claim the fees are punitive or otherwise specific to their particular use. Anyone, regardless of race, creed, or commercial orientation who uses our services without authorization agrees to these fees. $90/hr is our regular rate for sysadmin work. We bill quite a bit each year at this rate. The $1 and $10 fees are quite reasonable in comparision to prices of making a stock trade off the street without signing up for some deep discount service. Making a stock trade and processing messages and bounces I think are very similar in computer resources. UCC2 makes agreements between electronic agents binding. And when the unauthorized relayers are tried criminally, they can't claim they didn't intend to commit a crime. Intent, I'm told, makes a big difference in how things get treated.
Well, they can try to claim it was free, and they didn't know what cost was, or that more than a certain amount was a crime, but their arguments are made weaker.
I didn't get the reference to guns. I must be tired... Do you mean that telling people the consequences of gun crimes is pointless? Whether it actually prevents the crime or not, at least in some cases intentionally disregarding the law is supposed to be punished more severely than merely breaking the law. So you should try to make sure if they do the crime, they get the most severe punishment. If they think twice, and don't do the crime, you won't ever know, will you?
--Dean
Around 03:18 PM 11/23/1999 -0500, rumor has it that Daniel Golding said: