Spammer’s Nine-Year Sentence Overturned
Debbi BresslerIn the “You’ve Got to be Kidding Me!” category, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the nine-year sentence of Jeremy Jaynes, who was listed in Spamhaus’ ROKSO database as the eighth more prolific spammer in the world.
Jaynes had been convicted of violating Virginia’s Computer Crimes Act, by sending unsolicited bulk email via a fake address.
The Virginia law, which has been around for five years, defines spammers as those who send high volumes of spam email (10,000 messages in 24 hours or 100,000 messages in 30 days), AND use a fictitious name.
So, what got Jeremy Jaynes off the hook? It seems that the first Amendment protects those who use anonymous names when sending emails expressing their political and religious opinions. This goes all the way back to the Federalist Papers, which advocated ratifying the U.S. Constitution and were published with fictitious names.
The Virginia ruling states that since political and religious emails (with fake names) can’t be classified as spam because they are protected under the first Amendment, that same ruling must be extended to others….like Jaynes.
