Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Anti-Spam Law

Skater writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the Virginia Supreme Court has struck down the anti-spam law that was used to convict spammer Jeremy James, on the grounds that the ability to be anonymous was more important than the problem of spam. Strangely, the same court only a few months ago upheld the law. 'The court noted that "were the 'Federalist Papers' just being published today via e-mail, that transmission by Publius would violate the [current Virginia] statute." The court suggested that the law does not limit its restrictions on spam to commercial or fraudulent e-mail, or to unprotected speech such as pornography or defamation. And when the state suggested that the court merely tailor a restriction to the law within its opinion, the court declined.'"

Comments

Clueless judges

[jmorris42]

If 'Publius' spammed my inbox with the Federalist Papers I'd want the asshole's account yanked as much as the latest grow yer tool spam. Spam is unsolicited broadcast mail, period. Zero tolerance.

The correct way to publish would be for Hamilton & friends to open a blog under the Publius pseudonym.

Re:Clueless judges

[jellomizer]

Well if the courts gave a law that made it illegal for you to send an email anonymously it would probably have just as many slashdotters saying how it is a violation of our rights. Sometimes to protect your rights you need to deal with people who abuse them.

Re:Clueless judges

[beakerMeep]

So what's the difference between sending a whistle blower email anonymously to a reporter and saying "H1! my f3llow 3recti1e dy5funcktion Fr@nds!" to your 100,000 of your closest personal buddies?

lipstick.

Re:Clueless judges

[The Cisco Kid]

You have the right to send a message anonymously, so long as *you* bear all the costs associated with its transmission and receipt. Since there is a cost in terms of time to review, that pretty much covers sending anonymously to private individuals. The media, your representatives, and perhaps even law enforcement, might be expected to accept anonymous messages - but not by email, generally.

If you send me an email, the mailserver at my end *WILL* record the IP address of the server it gets it from (right in the message headers), and unless your email providers server is horribly misconfigured, it will have already recorded either your PC's IP address, or in some cases some other information that can be used to identify who controlled the Internet access account that was used to send it. (Or, misconfigured servers that *dont* record that information, are generally placed on blocklists and my server wont accept any email from them)

You want to send anonymously - put your message on paper in an envelope, pay the proper postage, and mail it.

Bad analogy

[R2.0]

If Publius sent the Federalist Papers via email to hundreds of thousands of people, it would BE spam. The Federalist papers were items that people VOLUNTARILY sought out - they weren't shoved into everyones mailboxes and under their door thresholds. If they were, they would have been ignored and thrown away just like junk mail is today.

Political freedom of expression is protected; what isn't protected is having ANYTHING shoved down my throat using my own resources.

Re:Bad analogy

[VeNoM0619]

You walk through the street, someone shoves a petition in your face. Do you lock them up as well?

As much as we hate it, there is no fine line of liberties... we may be a "free" country, but not entirely free.

We try to define "freedom until you harm others", but seeing how much more of babies we've become (with less violence, wars, etc.), we see minor things "cause us (mental) harm" and try to justify that.

I hate spam just as much as anyone else, but they should have the freedom to send me it, since I am not physically harmed.

Oh and for those "give us your e-mail then!" people, its my username at hotmail. Good luck cause I last checked it a week ago, the 2nd to last time I checked was 6 months ago.

Just funny, cause back in the day, all drugs were legal, cause you weren't physically harming someone (stabbing etc.). Now it's justified with "you might harm someone if you abuse it" so they removed it entirely to prevent the chance for abuse. I'm not for or against drugs - just an example of how freedom is a slippery slope that can never be truly solved.

Re:Bad analogy

[R2.0]

If someone is holding out a piece of paper for me to take, I can say "no thanks"

If someone is shoving that piece of paper in my pocket, and doing the same to THOUSANDS of others simultaneously, he would be arrested for assault.

That's the problem - there IS no "real world" analogy that fits properly. The problem, in this case, is that handbilling is an even poorer analogy than most. Junk mail would be a better analogy, except for the fact that the costs are paid by the mailers, not the recipient. Probably the best analogy would be telemarketing calls to cellphones, where the user pays for a call that they don't want. Oh, wait - that's ILLEGAL.

And don't say that it doesn't cost the recipient anything. I pay for my connection, and that money goes to a number of different people to pay for bandwith, among other things. If spam were gone, bandwidth needs would lessen and my rates would decrease. So I AM paying for spam, just not directly.

anonymous != fraudulent

[khasim]

Agee noted that in order to send an anonymous e-mail, the sender must "enter a false IP address or domain name."

No. That is wrong. You can be anonymous without spoofing IP addresses or faking domain names.

And "the right to engage in anonymous speech, particularly anonymous political or religious speech, is 'an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment," Agee wrote, citing a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court opinion.

Correct your usage of "anonymous" first and then I might agree with you.

The court noted that "were the 'Federalist Papers' just being published today via e-mail, that transmission by Publius would violate the [current Virginia] statute."

Bullshit. You still don't understand "anonymous".

Bravo.

[spazdor]

And here we get to a fundamental question about what we want the Net to be. The court was entirely right to balk at deciding this for us.

We can have the right to communicate anonymously over the Net. Or we can have the right not to be contacted by anonymous people. We can't have both.

Other laws are still valid

[Anonymous Coward]

It is illegal to sell prescription drug without a prescription. Its also illegal to offer drugs to children in most states. Everyone here needs to call their country District attorney and ask them what they are doing about peddling drugs over the internet. It almost election time and some of them are trying to get elected as a state DA so now is the time to get on their case.

Honestly, I can't fault them for this.

[Millennium]

The court is right about one thing: the law is too vague. Fix the law, and then there will be no problem with the courts.

I defend not what you say...

[gillbates]

but your right to spam everyone with it?!

First Ammendment in action?

Spam is the ideal litmus test for where someone stands on the rights of free speech. It's almost universally objectionable, never warranted, and offensive to just about everyone.

Yet I'm not sure if there's anyone in the ./ crowd who will stick to their free speech principles when such principles inconvenience them personally. Is there anyone here who, upon receiving spam, remarks to themselves, "Ah, yes, free speech is not dead. I'm glad that - although I personally could care less about replica watches or increasing the size of my body parts - that somewhere, someone out there is free to send such materials to my inbox. USA! USA! USA!"

Because it stands to reason that if spammers have no right to send anonymous messages, then neither do you or I. While a lot of people may not like this particular consequence of free speech, it's far more dangerous to do away with the legal protections for anonymous speech.

Re:I defend not what you say...

[zarkill]

while you're correct that speech should be protected even if it is universally objectionable, never warranted, and offensive to just about everyone (and most people who really believe in freedom of speech would agree with you), i think the sticking point for spam is that spammers cause other people to unwillingly foot the bill for their publication.

when someone publishes a book, they have to pay to have the book printed and distributed. but when a spammer sends spam, they're not paying those bills, they are passing the cost along to other people against their objections.

using a first amendment defense to spamming is more like stealing someone's printing press, publishing your book with it, and then complaining about being prosecuted for stealing the printing press in the first place.

if it was really only the content of spam that was objectionable, then you're right, any true supporter of free speech would grudgingly accept spam. but there's a question of resources being improperly used, and people losing massive amounts of time and money against their will, all to pass along dubious messages from third parties.

Mod Parent Up

[mpapet]

The rest of the posts missed this entirely. The court was right here too...

And when the state suggested that the court merely tailor a restriction to the law within its opinion, the court declined.

Courts more or less interpret laws and process law breakers. Changes in the law are supposed to come from legislation, not the bench.

In perspective: Text messaging

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if spammers sent you hundreds of text messages to your cell phone every day. Imagine you do not have unlimited text messaging. Lets say each message costs you $0.10 or so. People would be up in arms (hence why we don't see spammers doing this).

Your free speech ends where my money begins. Using my bandwidth and my energy costs me money, you have no freedom of speech there, it's not a public resource.

Federalist Papers...

[msauve]

Is the Court truely so clueless ("were the 'Federalist Papers' just being published today via e-mail, that transmission by Publius would violate the [current Virginia] statute.")?

The Federalist Papers were never forced upon unwanting recipients who had to pay for their receipt, they were made available to those who wanted to read them. There was choice involved.

The Federalist Papers were originally published in newspapers, so there's absolutely no parallel to spam. In modern terms, it would be a better comparison to blogs or websites. That can be done anonymously.

Big FAIL for the Court.

Email is not publishing

[wcrowe]

That's just wrong. Email is NOT publishing. Comparing email to publishing the Federalist Papers is the kind of argument one would expect from a high school debater.