Virginian law is constitutional
US judge rules Virginia’s anti-spam law is constitutional.
A judge in the US has ruled that Virginia’s anti-spam law is constitutional.
Back in May this year VB reported that the counsel representing a man charged
with spam offences had called for the case to be dismissed since, they argued,
the Virginian anti-spam law violated the federal Commerce Clause and the First
Amendment (see VB, May 2004, p.S1). Last month, however, Loudoun Circuit Court Judge
Thomas D. Horne upheld the constitutionality of the law.
Horne ruled that the subject heading is the only part of an email that
can be argued to contain any content protected by the First Amendment.
He said that the law does not penalize people who wish to remain anonymous
in their emails, but, "It is an enforcement mechanism to sanction abuses of
private property interests through purposeful falsifications of routing
information."
While the defence attorneys representing the alleged spammer Jeremy Jaynes
and his co-defendants argued that the spam law violated the due process rights
of their clients because the provisions of the law are "impermissibly vague",
Horne found the felony provisions to be constitutional. Horne commented that
the courts have struggled with how to apply the history of the Commerce Clause
to the Internet, which he described as "a communication medium that knows no
geographic or political boundaries". Defence attorneys argued that the spam
law violated the Commerce Clause because it controlled the commerce of other
states; however Horne ruled: "The statute is not content-based, vague, or
offensive to interstate commerce." Jaynes and his co-defendants will stand
trial in early September.
27 August 2004
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