California spammer Jeanson James Ancheta, who turns out to be a 20-year old kid, has pled guilty to computer misuse and fraud charges which should draw him a four-year sentence.

Good.

Ancheta is the first to be convicted of creating a "botnet," a network of infected computers hired-out to spammers and other malware authors.

Good.

Now for the big question. We've established that bots are bad. We've established that the people who create this poison deserve prison.

Now what about those who enable the crime? What about the people who bought spam generated by these botnets, or who bought ads sent by that malware? This was an economic crime, after all. It can't exist without both sides of the transaction.

Like drugs.

We don't just want to throw the pot producers in jail, the Pedro Escobars and their ilk. Isn't the point of our law enforcement to get at the "street dealers" and "users," those whose dollars enable the crime? I've seen tons and tons and tons of ads along those lines, produced by the federal government, over the last decade and more. The propaganda is accepted. We all agree.

So why not here?

Why isn't it a crime to buy the services of a spammer, or to buy the services of a botnet? Why isn't it a crime to advertise through someone's stolen bandwidth, using their stolen PC?

Spam and malware would be a lot easier to stop if those who paid for it faced hard time, too. And I don't want to hear any garbage about "distribution channels." Don't give me that nonsense that you can't police your distribution channels. Of course you can.

Or you, too, should be going to jail.

How many corporate chieftains would have to be sitting in slammers before the spam flood stopped?

What's stopping us from doing this? (And please don't say the First Amendment. Regulation of advertising messages and means is accepted under the U.S. Constitution.)