Perhaps most readers haven't tried accessing Twitter in a web browser without allowing its Javascript to run (NoScript). That stopped working years ago, putting up a page saying it was redirecting you to the old interface, but then it actually just looped back to the same redirect page endlessly.

Most recently, if you try to read a Twitter thread without being logged-in to Twitter, it stops you at a certain point in the thread and refuses to let you go on. Popup: "See more Tweets from [username]. When you log in youâ(TM)ll be able to see every Tweet from [username]." And when you don't log in -- you'll go read some other website that is friendlier to the freedom to read without tracking and spying on every reader.

It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way their wind is blowing...

You people are totally obscene. "Hey, we didn't actually shoot the messenger, we only stole nine years of his life. See, we didn't like the message he was bringing!"

If the guy defrauded people, convict him for that. There are plenty of honest ways to sell people something useless for $40 without fraud; Microsoft and preachers both have it down.

Convicting him for sending email is a direct First Amendment violation. He communicated, you didn't like the communication, so off to jail he goes. The spam mail wasn't even anonymous -- there was SOME way to contact him, otherwise all the morons wouldn't have had any way to send him their $39.95. Is it really worth 9 years in prison because his contact info was in the message body rather than in the header? And what happened to the Slashdotters who love anonymous wireless Internet and anonymous P2P and anonymous untraceable web access? Do your principles stop at port 25? Or do you just not have any principles?

If society is lucky, this accused emailer will have stashed away some of his alleged millions, to pay some lawyers to uphold fundamental rights for all of us (and himself). If society is unlucky, then somebody like EFF or ACLU will have to spend your contributions to uphold all of our rights, with him as the test case. If society is really unlucky, then nobody will challenge it, and we'll have mob rule, where merely pissing off a few million people is enough to get you thrown behind bars. And that won't make it a friendly country for somebody like me (who tells off both the government and the citizens when they deserve it) to live in.