Court Finds Spamming Not Protected By Constitution

eldavojohn writes "In a split (4-3) decision, a Virginia court has upheld the verdict against the spam king making it clear that spam is not protected by the U.S. Constitution's first amendment or even its interstate commerce clause. '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. '"

uncomfortable...

[LingNoi]

Talk about uncomfortable...

Prosecutors presented evidence of 53,000 illegal e-mails Jaynes sent over three days in July 2003.

Email 1 - Do you want enlarge your penis? g39
Email 2 - Order Viagra - Fast, Easy and Confidential. Special suggestion for you!
Email 3 - Most popular ma|e organ enlargement

..... 15 Hours later .....

Email 52,999 - C|al_is 20mg x 10 p1lls = $89.95
Email 53,000!

*hears a sigh of relief from the jury*

My first "You're advocating a ..."

[jonaskoelker]

Your finding advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

(My first of these; how did I do?)

the verdict

[hoto0301]

the verdict should have been announced to him over 50,000 times

Form "You're advocating..", side .b

[LingNoi]

Your finding advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. It worked in this instance. Here is why it won't work again. (One or more of the following may apply to this particular criminal, and (s)he may have other flaws which are not listed.)

( ) The spammer was dumb
(X) (s)he lived inside the united states
(X) They made too much money
(X) They had been doing it too long
(X) They stole from a corporation
(X) Didn't leave the country quick enough

Specifically, your technique fails to account for

(X) few spammers get caught

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) taking out one spammer, 10 more pop up

Re:What's most worrisome

[dissy]

Lacy, Lemons, and Koontz. 10 seconds on Google would have gotten you the answer.

I think what we all wanted to see posted to slashdot is their email addresses ;}

Re:argh

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get a little editing please?

We already get "little" editing - very little, in fact. I'd prefer we get a whole lot of editing. From qualified editors.

Where does Slashdot dredge for their editors, anyway? Do they get hot tips from McDonald's managers who fire employees?

Re:Excesses

[Detritus]

The real solution will have to come from society at large.

I'll bring the tar, you bring the feathers.

Re:You should be able to send all the spam you lik

[Duncan Blackthorne]

..and again, I still have them and wish I could use them now, effing Flamebait! :P

Re:uncomfortable...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Hey, how are you reading my inbox???

Re:$750,000 A month?

[Andy_R]

You dont need to sign up, our records show you already opted in.

Re:Spam is a freedom of speech issue

[tomhudson]

IAAL and this is simplistic. the government gave a permit for that building. therefore, you do have some rights. for real world examples see the tall building in boston (prudential center?) which had to be constructed with mirrored glass since it was violating a churches right to daylight/natural light.

Be careful what you ask for. They could have constructed it so that it concentrated the light, and the church could have had burning bushes, etc ...