The U.S. Supreme Court Monday rejected Virginia's appeal to maintain its Computer Crimes Act, considered to be one of the toughest pieces of anti-spam legislation in the country.
The Supreme Court without comment upheld a Virginia Supreme Court ruling determining its 2003 Computer Crimes Act was unconstitutional due to the fact that the law also banned political, religious and other types of messages in addition to commercial solicitation sent via bulk e-mail.
The ruling also overturns a 2004 conviction against known spammer Jeremy Jaynes, who was charged with sending more than 55,000 unsolicited e-mail messages to America Online users the previous year. According to court documents, Jaynes used false header information and sender domains to entice users to open his messages, many of which were fraudulent.
An investigation by federal authorities to Jaynes' Raleigh, N.C. home found that he possessed CDs containing 176 million e-mail addresses and 1.3 billon e-mail user names, many of which were lifted by a former AOL employee.
The Virginia ruling was the first of its kind that resulted in a conviction for known spammers.
The Virginia Supreme court subsequently struck down the anti-spam law and overturned Jaynes' nine-year sentence for his computer crimes. However, Jaynes remains in federal prison on other fraud charges.
