Virginia Court Overturns anti-spam law
On Friday the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the state's anti-spam law, and with it the 2004 conviction of large-scale spammer Jeremy Jaynes, on the grounds of First Amendment overbreadth. While not disagreeing that Jaynes was guilty as charged and convicted, they found that the law could place too great a burden on non-commercial speech. CAUCE president John Levine commented in this blog entry.
While CAUCE is dismayed at this outcome, we see little practical effect beyond this single case. This case predates the Federal CAN SPAM law, which does not have the First Amendment issues of the Virginia law, which would clearly apply if Jaynes were to do the same things today he did in 2003. Nor do the other state anti-spam laws have similar overbreadth issues. CAUCE believes that it is possible to create more effective anti-spam laws than the weak CAN SPAM without running afoul of First Amendment issues and will continue to work to help pass them.
CAUCE Executive Director Neil Schwartzman interviewed by CBC Radio
ACLU, Anti-Spam Laws, and the First Amendment
It's been interesting to watch the ACLU wrestle with anti-spam legislation. Their entire purpose is to work through the legal system to protect our civil rights, as defined in the First Amendment -- which is why I've been a card-carrying member since before I was old enough to vote -- so of course they're going to push back against any perceived abridgment of the right to free speech, including anonymous speech. Yet as Tim Lee argues, the amount of speech afforded to spammers before they run afoul of the Virginia statue is enormous: "someone may (a) send out an unlimited number of emails using a real email address, (b) send out 9999 emails per day (99,999 per month, 999,999 per year) while falsifying email headers, or (c) send out an unlimited number of emails with falsified addresses to people who have previously consented to receive them."
In order to violate this Virginia statute, you have to be very bad. In order to violate CAN-SPAM & get even more federal attention, you have to be even worse. Anyone with a real need for free, anonymous speech will have a myriad of other, simpler, and very likely cheaper avenues available to them -- including, unfortunately, sending 9999 forged, unsolicited emails each & every day.
US Senate Approves Bill to Dramatically Improve Cyber-Crime Laws
- remove the requirement that each affected individual must have suffered at least $5,000 in damages
- "make it a felony to install spyware or keystroke-monitoring programs on 10 or more computers regardless of the amount of damage caused"
- give identity theft victims the ability to seek restitution
- criminalize attempts to extort companies by threatening to publish stolen information
These provisions were added to an unrelated bill, the Former Vice President Protection Act, which must next be voted on by the House of Representatives before it becomes law.
CAUCE is very pleased that the Senate has taken this action to protect people living within the United States, and particularly support the provisions adding a private right of action against the criminals who prey upon all of us daily.
Eddie Davidson
Such are the sad events surrounding the murder-suicide that ended convicted spammer Eddie Davidson’s life today. For further details on the situation, please follow this link.
CAUCE extends our sympathies to the friends and families of the victims of this needless tragedy.