Virginia is Nation’s Toughest on Spammers

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Yet another reason I love my State. Virginia has the nation’s toughest anti-spam penalties. And it has now been proven in a court of law. If you send spam to a Virginian, you risk one million dollars in bail plus 9 years in jail.

From the WaPo here:

The Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld yesterday what is believed to be the first conviction in the nation under a state anti-spamming law that makes it a felony to send unsolicited mass e-mails.

A North Carolina man was convicted in Loudoun County two years ago of illegally sending tens of thousands of e-mails to America Online customers. Prosecutors said Jeremy Jaynes flooded the servers at the Internet company’s headquarters in Loudoun with bulk e-mail advertisements for computer programs and stock pickers.

Jaynes was sentenced last year to nine years in prison on three counts of violating the state’s anti-spam law and was allowed to remain free on $1 million bond while his case was appealed. Thomas M. Wolf, an attorney for Jaynes, said he plans to appeal yesterday’s decision.

Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell said in a statement that his office will ask the court to revoke bond and order Jaynes to begin serving his sentence.

Jaynes’s attorneys argued in their appeal that the Loudoun court had no jurisdiction over the case because the e-mails were sent from Jaynes’s home in North Carolina. The appeal also contended that the anti-spam law restrains the constitutional right of free speech protected under the First Amendment.

But the three-judge panel disagreed, ruling in an opinion written by Judge James W. Haley Jr. that circuit courts have exclusive jurisdiction over felonies committed in their areas. The anti-spam law, Haley said, “prohibits trespassing on private computer networks through intentional misrepresentation, an activity that merits no First Amendment protection.”

“You purchase an e-mail address list, alter the transmission information in the header of your e-mail to avoid retaliation, and on Easter morning send out a three-word e-mail to thousands of people: ‘Christ is risen!’ You have committed a felony in Virginia,” Wolf said.

Yes, sending a falsified email saying Christ is risen is indeed spam, stupid. And it’s a sin too, I’m pretty sure.

It is about time that prosecution of these offenders has started to take hold. the federal law under the can spam act does not appear to have enough teeth, so I like that Virginia has aggressively gone after this.

I also liked the fact that the ACLU was advocating for the spammer in this case, and they lost too.