Virginia Anti-Spam Law; FTC Forum on Spam

kiwimate writes "According to this press release, the state of Virginia has just passed a statute making 'the worst, most egregious and fraudulent kinds of spam' legally actionable. And yes, this includes header forging. The article reads like a big AOL PR piece in some places -- the VA governor led the signing at the AOL HQ in Dulles. The story also states this comes on the eve of the first-ever FTC forum on spam in Washington D.C." The FTC also made the insightful discovery that most spam is fraudulent in some fashion.

Comments

This isn't new

[RJ11]

Virginia has had an anti-spam law since 1997, which is part of the Virginia Computer Crimes Act (VA Code 18.2-152). It makes spam with forged headers illegal: http://www.spamlaws.com/state/va.html

AOL, Verizon, and other large ISPs based in VA have been suing under this law for years (though they almost always go to federal court, pursuant to U.S.C. 85 1332). I have burninated a few spammers in small claims court under this law as well (I was actually in court today suing etracks.com). The law allows the recipient to seek civil relief for the lesser of $10/message or $25,000/day. For ISPs, it's the greater of the two.

Re:Either it's all illegal or the law is wrong

[ad0gg]

From the article

To qualify for the felony provisions the sender must:

consciously (with intent) alter either e-mail header or other routing information (a technical characteristics common to most unsolicited bulk mail, but not present in normal e-mail messages); and

attempt to send either 10,000 messages within a 24/hr period or 100,000 in a 30-day period OR the sender must generate $1,000 in revenue from a specific transmission, or $50,000 from total transmissions.

Its a clear definition. Alter the headers and send over 10,000 emails in day and its illegal.