Va. Supreme Ct.: Spam Law Violates First Amendment
Wow! Access the opinion here [pdf].
Quick thoughts: the court concludes that the prohibition of false routing information infringes on "[t]he right to engage in anonymous speech." The court focused on the fact that the law was not "restricted to transmission of illegal or otherwise unprotected speech such as pornography or defamation speech":
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the circuit court properly had jurisdiction over Jaynes. We also hold that Jaynes has standing to raise a First Amendment overbreadth claim as to Code § 18.2-152.3:1. That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Accordingly, we will reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and vacate Jaynes’ convictions of violations of Code § 18.2-152.3:1.The court's analysis is pretty brief. I would have expected more. It would also have been nice to see whether the holding was based squarely on the federal or state constitution. I think that's going to become relevant as there is likely to be a further appeal.
This is a good line from the opinion (I'm not sure whether it lends weight to the opinion or undermines it):
For example, were the Federalist Papers just being published today via e-mail, that transmission by Publius would violate the statute.I don't know about you, but I would be happy to receive federalist paper spam . . . .
Posted by Venkat at 9/12/2008 6:42 AM 
Categories: First Amendment, Investigation and Enforcement, Anti-Spammers
Categories: First Amendment, Investigation and Enforcement, Anti-Spammers
I agree with the legal analysis, but the court got a key technical fact wrong: you don't need to forge IPs or domains to send anonymous mail. I have a blog entry that says more.
Reply to this