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Quote:A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation's first felony conviction for illegal spamming on Friday, ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world's top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Almost all 50 states have anti-spamming laws. In the 4-3 ruling, the court rejected Jaynes' claim that the state law violates both the First Amendment and the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution...

Quote:I wanted to highlight for you in a ruling in a spammer case,  Jeremy Jaynes v. Commonwealth of Virginia just decided by the Virginia Supreme Court, which struck down Virginia's anti-spam law as unconstitutional. Since the headlines about this story, such as this one in the Washington Post, Virginia AntiSpam Law Overturned, Spammer Walks, naturally point out that a notorious spammer has avoided jail time as a result, I wanted to make sure you understood the why of it.

... It's a matter of free speech, not because the law should allow spamming, but because the law in Virginia, unlike federal and other state laws, was found to be overbroad, since it blocked religious and political speech too. Virginia's legislature can fix that problem, but a judge can't substantively rewrite laws to make them constitutional. At issue in the case was false headers in emails, and the court significantly decided that the way email works, providing IP addresses and domain name information makes anonymous email impossible, so banning false routing information without narrowing the scope would end up banning constitutionally protected speech as well: ..