Supreme Court to revisit divisive spam case

Slashdot It! The Supreme Court of Virginia yesterday agreed to a limited rehearing of its closely divided decision upholding the first felony spam convictions in the country. In a 4-3 ruling in February, the state's high court upheld three convictions against Jeremy D. Jaynes for violating Virginia's 2003 Anti-Spam Act. He was sentenced to nine years in prison. The ruling was hailed by authorities as a victory for e-mail users and decried by others as a violation of constitutionally protected speech rights. Yesterday, however, the justices agreed to hear arguments on whether Jaynes could challenge the anti-spam law as unconstitutional in general, even if it was constitutionally applied to him. J. Martin Tucker, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, said of yesterday's decision: "While we are disappointed that the court has granted rehearing, we believe that the court will sustain its original holding." Jaynes' lawyer, Thomas M. Wolf, just returned from Hong Kong on business yesterday and had not read the opinion. But he said: "I can tell you it means we get another chance to convince the court to do the right thing to protect the First Amendment in Virginia." Jaynes was convicted in Loudoun County in 2004. He was considered one of the worst spammers in the world -- authorities estimated he sent out more than 10 million spam e-mails a day. He was prosecuted in Virginia for sending almost 46,500 e-mails with falsified routing and transmission information through AOL's network during a three-day period in 2003. AOL's servers are in Loudoun. Among other things, Jaynes challenged the convictions on the grounds that the Virginia law violated his First Amendment right to anonymous speech. A majority of the justices disagreed. But three justices dissented, contending that Jaynes had a right to argue that the state anti-spam law was too broad because it prohibits anonymous unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post