The Virginia Supreme Court declared an anti-spam law unconstitutional, which led to one of the country's most notorious spammers to be released from prison.prison.

Jeremy Jaynes, who became the first person convicted of a felony for sending spam in 2004, sent thousands of e-mails to America Online users over a 24-hour period on at least three different occasions. He initially wanted the charges dismissed on the grounds "that the statute violated the dormant Commerce Clause, was unconstitutionally vague, and violated the First Amendment." The circuit court denied Jaynes' motion.

The Virginia law "prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment," said Virginia Justice G. Steven Agee.

Specifically, spammers in Virginia who are convicted of altering e-mail headers and basic routing information along with sending 10,000 messages in a 24-hour window or 100,000 messages in 30-day time windows could face jail time and heavy fines.

He was eventually sentenced to nine years in prison for spamming thousands of AOL users, and that is when he decided to take it to the Court of Appeals.

The anti-spam rule was deemed unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment's free-speech protections due to it restricting commercial e-mail and all other unsolicited e-mails. For example, political, religious and other protected speech are lumped into the commercial e-mail ban.

Most states with anti-spam laws, and the federal CAN-SPAM Act, only forbid commercial e-mails, not the political or religious e-mails.

Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell plans to immediately appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The government has taken a harder stance on spamming, with convictions of alleged spammers continuing to increase in prison terms and fines. "Spam King" Robert Soloway was sentenced to 47 months in prison in July after he plead guilty to fraud, tax evasion and spam offenses.

Source: Daily Tech