DailyTech – Virginia Supreme Court Overturns Spammer’s Conviction — This isn’t good.
A notorious spammer is out of jail because of First Amendment right violations
The Virginia Supreme Court declared an anti-spam law unconstitutional, which led to one of the country’s most notorious spammers to be released from prison.
Jeremy Jaynes, who became the first person convicted of a felony for sending spam in 2004, sent thousands of e-mails to America Online users over a 24-hour period on at least three different occasions. He initially wanted the charges dismissed on the grounds “that the statute violated the dormant Commerce Clause, was unconstitutionally vague, and violated the First Amendment.” The circuit court denied Jaynes’ motion.
The irony is not lost on me that it was the Virginia Supreme Court…
I think everyone who reads or has ever read this blog should send him a congratulatory email. over and over and over and ……
I would love to get the opinions of our ‘Founding Fathers’ on all of this! Can you imagine what Ben Franklin would say?
Actually I agree… Maybe, he wasted some electricity.
Just like I am doing right here.
Have you ever seen a Gutenberg press? Now that’s spamming!
Getsmart, you are correct about commercial free speech (Sullivan vs NY Times).
But the overriding point is that the creep can have free speech all he wants. We just shouldn’t have to listen and shouldn’t have to pay ISP fees for him to advertise freely.
Those judges couldn’t win a dime on “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?”
He can make all the spam he wants… just don’t put it on my private computer… that’s invasion of privacy.
I hate spam BUT…
The solution has to be technological, not legal.
As long as there is money in it, new spammers will pop up.
Far-be-it for everyone in this country to actually have the first amendment applicable to them.
If he used his own computers to do the spamming then the government doesn’t have a leg to stand on, as he’s paying for the bandwidth. If he is using other people’s computers without their consent, then he should be locked away.
I despise spammers as much as anyone, but we CANNOT let first amendment rights be thrown away for ANY reason.
Especially since you can friggin ignore his asinine garbage, like I do for all ads on all pages on the internet.
or are we going to persecute dvorak.org for having ads on the left and right side of the page that I have to ad block?
#11 “So we aren’t allowed to protest at summit meetings of rich people,”
Where weren’t you allowed to protest?
Can we tar and feather the schmuck?
#8 – How is it an invasion of privacy?
Darn that pesky Constitution!
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27796
Commercial speech is not and can not be protected under the Constitution. The Virginia Supreme Court is wrong in so many ways.
The law only condemned the transmission of email sent anonymously or with altered headers. It did not prevent the transmission of valid messages.