Duelling Spam Kings?

I'll admit, I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to legal regulation of Email spam since I wrote a law review article about it (now vanished from the net) back in law school. But today (via SL&P) I see two separate articles dealing with the criminal travails of two Spam Kings. Yes, there are two of them. Who knew?

Spam King #1, Edward Davidson, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison (plus more than $700,000 in restitution) in April and was doing his time at FCI Florence. Until Sunday, when he walked away from the facility. Well, more like drove away, actually, after his wife had visited. What was the King's offense?

Between 2002 and 2005, Davidson's Power Promoters spamming network promoted watches, perfumes and other products, U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said. Then he started concentrating on a Texas company's penny stock.

Eid and prosecutor Tim Neff said the e-mail messages Davidson and his subcontractors sent to hundreds of thousands of addresses contained false header information that concealed the actual sender.

Spam King #2, Robert Soloway, was sentenced yesterday to 47 months in prison in federal court in Seattle. That was less than half of what prosecutors were after, but still quite a bit longer than Davidson. Soloway's crime?

Soloway violated the Can-Spam Act, in part, by falsifying the header information in his e-mail messages. The program he used automatically substituted the e-mail recipient's name for that of Soloway's, making it appear that the recipient had sent a message to himself or herself or used bogus addresses in the from field. The purpose of these digital gymnastics was to get around any spam filter on the recipient's computer.

So, it's been a bad week so far for Spam Kings. Of course, with Soloway in the can and Davidson on the lam, who will step in to wear the crown next?