Spammer Gets The Slammer
 

May it be merely the first drop of the flood.

Spammer slammed
LEGAL | Virginia court upholds first felony conviction in U.S. for man who may have sent 10 million e-mails a day

March 1, 2008
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
RICHMOND, Va. -- A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation's first felony conviction for illegal spamming Friday, ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world's top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison.

''This is a historic victory in the fight against online crime,'' state Attorney General Bob McDonnell said in a written statement. ''Spam not only clogs e-mail inboxes and destroys productivity; it also defrauds citizens and threatens the online revolution that is so critical to Virginia's economic prosperity.''

Jaynes allegedly used aliases and false Internet addresses to bombard Web users with junk e-mails peddling sham products and services. The court's majority said misleading commercial speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection.

''Unfortunately, the state that gave birth to the First Amendment has, with this ruling, diminished that freedom for all of us,'' Jaynes' lawyer, Thomas M. Wolf, said in a written statement. ''As three justices pointed out in dissent, the majority's decision will have far reaching consequences. The statute criminalizes sending bulk anonymous e-mail, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion.''

Prosecutors presented evidence of 53,000 illegal e-mails Jaynes sent over three days in July 2003. But authorities believe he was responsible for spewing 10 million e-mails a day in an enterprise that grossed up to $750,000 per month.

Jaynes was charged in Virginia because the e-mails went through an AOL server in Loudoun County, where America Online is based.

Go Virginia!! Now if the other 49 will follow suit.

The scary part is the dissenting opinion of three judges on the Virginia supreme court who thought there was something wrong with, "The statute criminalizes sending bulk anonymous e-mail, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion.''

Darn tootin'! Honest people don't need to operate under a cloak of anonymity. We need another constitutional amendment, giving us to right to shoot judges who have totally lost their minds.

I was once on a spam list directed at pastors of Black churches. It was even more annoying than the usual run of drug, sex aid, and porn spam.

Now I'm wondering that the heck a pastor of black church would want to buy that's any different from pastors of all other churches in world.

One of the advertisements was for a muck raking book about corruption in the Black church organization. There were other ads that specifically mentioned Black churches and a few that talked about "your congregation," that's why I assumed the spam was directed at pastors of Black churches.

The really crazy thing... they got my email addy from a sort of eGroup dedicated to a MUD called Dragon Realms, and I was in that group with that email address for about 15 minutes when I decided to switch it to another one. The only reason I can think of for adding the members of the group to their spam list is the presence of the word "cleric" in some of the posts. The structure of the group was identical to an eGroup, but it was a provider other than Yahoo, so I can't call it an eGroup.

Sometimes I wonder if a law that either forbade the selling of mailing lists and email addresses or one that works like the do not call lists would be the way to go.

It would be probably be more difficult to enforce a law against selling lists of email addresses, but I seem to recall that it does exist.

I'm becoming increasingly reluctant to give my email address to anybody these days. Even if it's someone you trust, there's always a risk that someone will post it on a web site to send you an ecard or invitation to some party, never realizing that spammers operate those sites to collect addresses.

/me cheers

Now we need a ruling like that in the UK as well. The amount of junk mail that comes through my letterbox is only outweighed by the number of email spams that my great Thunderbird email client deletes. But it costs more trees.

I suspect that prosecuting spammers in the US will have some effect noticeable in the UK as well, but really the law would have to be adopted by every nation on Earth for it to be truly effective.