



Virginia Top Court to Re-Hear Spammer's Conviction 216
arbitraryaardvark writes "Mega-spammer Jeremy Jaynes was convicted in Virginia of spamming in '05, sentenced to 9 years, and lost his appeal, 4-3, at the Virgina Supreme Court. But the court has just ordered a new hearing on whether the anti-spam statute is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Slashdot previously covered the appeal and the conviction."
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, in the case of spam, the spammer is forcing the recipient to pay for his speech without consent. That is why spam should be illegal, not because it's trying to sell something.
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am sorry for your inconvenience, but I think free speech is a little bit more important than that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:2, Insightful)
The law seems fine to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:3, Insightful)
And likewise in this case, you're combining those things to make something which is ultra offensive to many. You're using other people's resources to falsely advertise products and forcing your way into people's mailboxes without any way of opting out.
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:3, Insightful)
See, the first amendment says that the government can't limit my speech. As a private property owner, however, you *can* limit my speech inasmuch as you have to pay for the forum. I'm free to buy my own house and spray-paint the side of it. But when I decide that someone else should foot the bill, that's not a free-speech issue.
Spammers cost other people millions of dollars, in aggregate. The only companies that any one spammer costs a bunch of money are the large AOL/Google/Hotmail/Yahoo types. However, they still cost everybody. People who own and operate mail servers should not have to pay for spam delivery, yet they do.
I'm mystified as to why a court would think the first amendment means that someone should have to pay for someone else's speech.
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First Amendment covers ads? (Score:3, Insightful)
The First Amendment is only a restriction on government power. It does not create any responsibilities on private citizens. The government may regulate postal junk mail, but there is no law regulating postal junk mail until the government writes one. Same for electronic spam: The First Amendment (probably) allows the government to regulate electronic spam, but there is no law about it until the government writes one.
As it happens, you can opt-out of postal mailings and the government will enforce your rights to do so. To get off a lot of junk mail lists, go here [privacyrights.org] Or you can remove your name some of the lists that become junk mail lists [myprivacy.com] for a fee.
Remember, the First Amendment is a restriction on government not on individual actors. To use the cliche example, the First Amendment doesn't make it illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Instead, the First Amendment has been interpreted to mean that a state legislature is allowed to write a law making it illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
Re:X-Prize for DEFINITION of spam (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't mind spam as long as they stuck to not telling lies.
Most spam I see has one or more of the following lies:
1) False return address and sender (recently one of them used my email address as return address)
2) False Subject
3) False names
4) False content e.g. "Email me at xxxx@yyy only, because I am using my friend's email to write this"
When someone has to lie so much it should be pretty obvious they are doing something wrong, even they themselves know they are doing something wrong (otherwise why use someone else's email address instead of their own?).
They just lie to themselves and others that they aren't doing something wrong.
I believe fraud is lying for personal gain.
I doubt fraud is protected speech yet.
I suppose we don't normally categorize political campaign speeches as fraud, but they do seem to fit