Supreme Court Upholds Ruling Against Anti-Spam Law

Supreme CourtThe U.S. Supreme Court has refused to overturn a ruling that Virginia's anti-spam statute violates the First Amendment.

The decision means that Jeremy Jaynes will not have to serve nine years in prison for allegedly spamming tens of thousands of AOL users in 2003.

Last year, the Virginia Supreme Court reversed Jayne's conviction, ruling that the anti-spam law he violated was unconstitutional. That law prohibited bulk email senders from falsifying information about their IP addresses or domain names. But the court determined the ban was unconstitutional because it applied to senders of all messages -- ads as well as non-commercial messages.

The court ruled that the prohibition on false routing information infringed on the right to speak anonymously about political, religious or other non-commercial matters. Ads have some First Amendment protection, but not as much as non-commercial speech.

The Virginia Attorney General asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that decision because Jaynes was convicted for sending ads and not editorial commentary. The authorities argued that the Virginia court based its decision on an unrealistic scenario: "that some imagined spammer might be prosecuted for sending political or religious spam."

The U.S. Supreme Court didn't give any reason for declining to review the case.

On three separate occasions, Jaynes sent more than 10,000 messages in a 24-hour period to AOL subscribers. The emails offered AOL members the opportunity to buy products like a "Penny Stock Picker" and "History Eraser."

He also was found to have compact discs with more than 176 million email addresses. The Virginia authorities couldn't prosecute Jaynes under the federal CAN-SPAM act because that statute did not go into effect until 2004.

Jaynes is currently imprisoned on an unrelated securities fraud matter.

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