Jeremy Jaynes was a well known spammer who went under the name Gavin Stubberfield. He was pretty famous in anti-spammer circles for sending horse porn spam. In 2003 he was arrested under the Virginia state anti-spam statute. He was initially convicted but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Ethan Ackerman has blogged about this case, including a recap today.

Venkat Balasubramani has also blogged about this case.

Mickey Chandler has the docs.

John Levine weighed in.

News Articles: CNN, Washington Post, CNET

What’s notable about this law, and what made it vulnerable to First Amendment challenge, are two characteristics. The first is that it applies to the falsification of e-mail information, which could sweep in both spammers and, say, someone using a pen name or pseudonym. And we know, despite efforts under way at a United Nations agency, that the First Amendment clearly protects anonymous speech.

The second characteristic is that the law regulates both commercial and noncommercial e-mail, meaning that political speech would be covered as well. (Now, it’s not clear that commercial speech deserves to be treated as a second-class citizen, but courts have generally said it’s OK to slap more regulations on it.)

As many others have said, too, what Jaynes did is a violation of CAN SPAM, but his prosecution pre-dates the implementation of that law.

“That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face,” the ruling concludes, “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 State Constitution.”

Mickey has the full text of the ruling up. Ed Falk has some commentary up.