Anti-Spamming Felony Conviction Is Upheld

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By Bill Brubaker (Contact)

Saturday, March 1, 2008

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The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday narrowly upheld the nation’s first conviction under a state anti-spamming law that makes it a felony to send unsolicited mass e-mails.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., was convicted in Loudoun County Circuit Court in 2004 of illegally sending tens of thousands of e-mails to customers of AOL, then known as America Online. Prosecutors said he flooded the servers at AOL’s Dulles headquarters with e-mail advertisements for stock pickers and computer programs. Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in prison. In 2006, a state appellate court upheld the conviction.

Yesterday, in a 4 to 3 ruling, the state Supreme Court rejected Jaynes’s contention that the five-year-old law violated his constitutional right of free speech.

Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell (R) called the ruling “a historic victory in the fight against online crime.” Jaynes’s attorney, Thomas M. Wolf, said, “The state that gave birth to the First Amendment has, with this ruling, diminished that freedom for all of us.”

Tagged: AOL

Comments:

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This is a real shame - that he didn't get the electric chair, that is.

Trying to argue that spamming is exercising free speech laws is akin to claiming that stalking or peeping is exercising the freedom of movement. Spamming literally costs millions upon millions of dollars in software and hardware to block spam, let alone the 'soft' costs of having to wade through it. Everyone should sign his attorney up for tons of spam, so he can get the true 'free speech' experience.

Posted by Hoq (anonymous) on March 3, 2008 at 8:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)

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