Virginia Arrests Man For Spamming

volpe writes "According to this Yahoo news story, Virginia arrested a North Carolina man for spamming in violation of a new state law. He was arrested Thursday afternoon in Raleigh, NC. The story is pretty fresh, so the news details are still pretty thin."

Comments

Jurisdiction?

[junkymailbox]

Although based in North Carolina, Virginia is asserting jurisdiction over Jaynes because he sent messages through computers located in the state.

Roughly 50 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through Virginia, home to big Internet companies like Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX - news) American Online unit and MCI (Other OTC:WCOEQ - news).

I like this new so called 'state' law.
Prosecutor: Your spam is illegal. You'll be prosecuted in all 50 states and more on different state crimes since your email traveled through all 50 states.

Hmm .. on second thought .. this might not be such a good thing for people who actually send emails.

Prosecutor: Your email allows us to prosecute u at least 50 times minimum.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[junkymailbox]

But each spam sent can be tried a different crime ..

20 years??

[Anonymous Coward]

I know we all hate and despise spam, but doesn't a possible 20 years in the clink sound a bit excessive?

Seems to me that the punishment should fit the crime - in this case, economic penalties (aka, "big fat fines"), and mandatory loss of Internet access would be more appropriate.

Spammers are Terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone did as much damage to the phone system as spammers are doing to email, they would be labeled terrorists and imprisoned/executed.

The real issue:

[Ayanami Rei]

Your email travels through lots of routers in lots states during it's delivery. So who gets to prosecute? The state with the most stringent anti-spam measures, I would assume. But making this sort of distinction sets precedence for things OTHER than spam: for example decency/access laws w.r.t. adult materials.
And at some point in the future, this may extend to deciding who gets to levy state taxes on an electronic purchase. Buyer's state? Business's state? Location of the webserver? Warehosue? They may point to this case and say: in the course of an Interstate transaction, computers critical to the transaction completing in XYZ state are enabling commerce, and thus the transaction is subject to XYZ state's tax laws.

Once you start recognizing the computers in-between the end points of a transaction, you open yourself up to all sorts of state legislation designed to take advantage of internet traffic.

This may be a little premature an assessment, however, because the article doesn't say whether or not the spammer spammed AOL customers, in which case it's a direct offense on a business located in VA... this does not set precedence because if that were the case, AOL would be the endpoint of the spamming (regardless of whether the spammee is in another state as well, having yet to download it). For all we know, the filters caught the spam, it never reached the customers, and AOL reported it to the police.