NewsDude
09-15-2008, 06:30 PM
The Supreme Court of the State of Virginia has released a spammer previously sentenced to nine years in prison. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., was convicted in 2004 of sending tens of thousands of e-mails from his home.
In part, the ruling handed down by the court last week said Jaynes' conviction "is constitutionally deficient as overbroad under the First Amendment and therefore the statute cannot be enforced."
Court Reversal
This unanimous decision by the Virginia Supreme Court comes only six months after a circuit court refused to hear the case and upheld the previous decision.
According to reports, Justice Steven Agee said the Virginia law under which Jaynes was convicted was too broad and did not protect free speech. The court determined that the law as it stands would prohibit political and religious speech, and therefore is a threat to the First Amendment.
Jaynes allegedly sent tens of thousands of e-mails from his home through AOL servers in Virginia advertising shady financial offerings. The Virginia law prohibits sending 10,000 e-mails per day and also prohibits the alteration of e-mail routing information.
When Jaynes was arrested and convicted, the federal CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited ****ography and Marketing) had not been implemented; the federal law specifically protects noncommercial speech. At the time of his arrest, Jaynes had CDs containing nearly 200 million e-mail addresses.
State of Spam
While CAN-SPAM is a boon to prosecutors after most spam merchants, individual states have written their own laws, either supplementing or predating existing laws. Virginia is one such state.
The Internet's most notorious spammer, Robert Soloway, was sentenced to 47 months in prison in July under the CAN-SPAM law. In a separate ruling in 2005, Soloway was ordered to pay Microsoft $7.8 million for using MSN and Hotmail accounts to send spam.
While many spammers have been...
More... (http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=61857)
In part, the ruling handed down by the court last week said Jaynes' conviction "is constitutionally deficient as overbroad under the First Amendment and therefore the statute cannot be enforced."
Court Reversal
This unanimous decision by the Virginia Supreme Court comes only six months after a circuit court refused to hear the case and upheld the previous decision.
According to reports, Justice Steven Agee said the Virginia law under which Jaynes was convicted was too broad and did not protect free speech. The court determined that the law as it stands would prohibit political and religious speech, and therefore is a threat to the First Amendment.
Jaynes allegedly sent tens of thousands of e-mails from his home through AOL servers in Virginia advertising shady financial offerings. The Virginia law prohibits sending 10,000 e-mails per day and also prohibits the alteration of e-mail routing information.
When Jaynes was arrested and convicted, the federal CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited ****ography and Marketing) had not been implemented; the federal law specifically protects noncommercial speech. At the time of his arrest, Jaynes had CDs containing nearly 200 million e-mail addresses.
State of Spam
While CAN-SPAM is a boon to prosecutors after most spam merchants, individual states have written their own laws, either supplementing or predating existing laws. Virginia is one such state.
The Internet's most notorious spammer, Robert Soloway, was sentenced to 47 months in prison in July under the CAN-SPAM law. In a separate ruling in 2005, Soloway was ordered to pay Microsoft $7.8 million for using MSN and Hotmail accounts to send spam.
While many spammers have been...
More... (http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=61857)