Racing Fan Guilty Of Flooding TV Station With E-Mails: Sent 500,000 Messages

The Associated Press ^ | August 13, 2003

[new cruelty]

BOSTON -- A fit of anger is costing a NASCAR fan plenty.

Michael Melo pleaded guilty in May to a federal misdemeanor charge of damage to a protected computer system for flooding Fox Entertainment with angry e-mails after a Boston Red Sox baseball game pre-empted an auto race he was watching.

Melo already has paid $36,000 in restitution and has to fork over $2,000 more in fines. He admitted that he wrote a computer program that blitzed Boston's Fox affiliate with more than 500,000 e-mail messages.

The e-mails were automatically forwarded to the station's Los Angeles parent company, Fox Entertainment. The network, thinking it was a hacker attack, shut down Internet communication with the affiliate and was forced to spend about $36,000 to clean up after the barrage.

Melo has also been sentenced to six months of home detention for his May 2001 stunt.

[al_c]

So can we now sue spammers and make them pay for all the down time they cause? ;o)

[al_c]

Try fighting the constant g-forces and heat that these guys face while "sitting down."

[LooneyTick]

These guys are possibly the most physically fit of all athletes.

[Sloth]

Baseball is gay. NASCAR rules.

Both are gay. Virtually every pro sport I can think of is extremely gay.

[Cooter]

Guess there is no room to debate that. : )

Oh, yeah?

[new cruelty]

Well, he did say 'Period'. That kind of cements it.

[Az Joe]

Is orbiting the earth a sport? They face greater G-forces and more heat.

[Az Joe]

Astronauts are physicaly fit. That doesn't mean what they do is a sport.

[gitmo]

$38,000: the price of Spam.

[mt tom]

most football players suffer from severe drain bramage and most can't put a sentence together and there is more than one reason the center and the q-back share the same traveling room

[Jeff Gordon]

Nice screen name you've got there.

Take it from me. He is really, really cruel. I know from personal experience.

[new cruelty]

[al_c]

Is orbiting the earth a sport? They face greater G-forces and more heat.

Apples to oranges, Joe.

For about 10 to 15 minutes ... then they're in 0-gravity. Also, there's no competition ... nobody's trying to get to space before them. NASCAR drivers are in a race to a finish line (there's your competition angle) and in constant heat and oppressive Gs (comparable to fighter pilots) for up to 3 hours.

[Az Joe]

How about airplane racing, log rolling, tree climbing, chain saw log cutting, poker? Are all of those sports too? There has to be a line drawn!

[TexasCajun]

This guy rocks. Baseball is gay. NASCAR rules. Period.

Ditto That! Good Buddy.