I hope they do a decent job with the rest of the case and do him for a few years it would be no more than he deserves. When their done with it can I have his laptop.

Wow, a Virtual Hit and Run/Slapping Match and in Real Time too.

Nice One, Uncle Sam. Way to Go.

I presume they may now have enough information to identify these 7000 zombie PCs now? Just what do they do about them? Notify their owners? Send out a command to all of them to shut down their bots (at the risk of some liability, I expect)? Or are they simply considered a honeypot to catch other hackers? Or a new tool for law enforcement monitoring of internet activity? With the potential of keystroke logging, screen capture, video cameras-- I'd think 7000 controllable PCs would be a pretty tempting resource for more than a few folks.

When your bank is made aware that your information has stolen, there are laws requiring you to be notified. Access to your computer however, may still be fair game-- shouldn't we start hearing about people getting letters from the FBI about their computer being controlled by someone they nabbed?

.... there's a-gonna be a lynchin'!

I was gonna say "Spammers. Death's too good for them". But hey, it's close enough. It'll just have to do.

Well, only until we can think up a fate worse than death, that is ...

"Well, only until we can think up a fate worse than death..."

Windows Vista Ultimate. Pentium 4/1.2GHz, 512MB RAM, 7-inch display, 32-bit color, all settings locked and the prisoner has "unprivileged user" status. All food and drink must be ordered via the Internet Explorer interface to Hotmail. Bathroom breaks likewise.

Did I mention he's on dialup via NetZero?

How about makin the b*****d READ every single bit of spam they can lay their hands on, day in day out...... let him go when he's read it all >90)

Maybe they need to be charged as accessories. Maybe once tens of thousands of people are charged and action taken against them, a few people will do something about their systems.