Monday, March 03, 2008

Spam is a felony

It almost sounds too severe to hear that sending spam can result in a felony conviction.  However, with unwanted email messages constantly clogging the byways of the Internet, it’s obvious that spamming can be a genuine threat to the free exchange of information.  With that in mind, Virginia’s Supreme Court held up the first felony spam conviction late last week.  For sending millions of email messages over a two month period, Jeremy Jaynes will spend nine years in prison.  It’s believed that Jaynes sent about ten millions spam emails per day, and he was charged in Virginia because he sent them via AOL’s servers.  His offence was committed in 2003, but it’s taken this long for the case to reach the state level.

The decision by the state Supreme Court wasn’t unanimous.  Some judges were bothered by contradictions in the CAN SPAM act (the act was the basis of the prosecution’s case).  The dissenting judges didn’t like the fact that the act doesn’t make exceptions for spam which is religious or political in nature, citing that that both those subjects are protected as free speech by the First Amendment.  I hope the dissenting judges aren’t losing any sleep over their positions, because I’m sure the majority of Americans think unwanted email is unwanted email, regardless of the topic.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 03/03 at 03:24 AM
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