Good news, local robots and assorted electronic bugs: the Supreme Court has defended your right to annoy everyone with pornographic video offers and viruses and other terrible e-mails! George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and all those people knew this day would come, and behold, the First Amendment has survived.
The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected a case arguing to reinstate Virginia's 2003 anti-spam law, which the Virginia Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional last September, under freedom of speech grounds. (Again, though, these things are written by robots, so consider.)
The Washington Post asked various "Internet law experts" if they thought the Supreme Court's ruling was Internet-legal, and they said, sure, why not, it doesn't matter anyway:
In addition, Internet law experts said it is not likely to increase spam in Virginia because federal law also prohibits spam, spam filters screen much of it and expert spammers often are out of the country.
In other words, find an e-mail provider offering spam filters (all of them), don't click on dumb things, and then we can all stop annoying the United States Judicial Branch.
Or if there's going to be a law against Internet e-mails, try to come up with criteria that isn't completely arbitrary.
The law made it a misdemeanor to send unsolicited bulk e-mail by using false transmission information, such as a phony domain name or Internet protocol address. The crime turned into a felony if more than 10,000 recipients are mailed in a 24-hour period, and the 2004 trial in Loudoun County of mass e-mailer Jeremy Jaynes resulted in the nation's first felony conviction for spamming.
And you know what they do to spammers in prison.
Jim Newell writes for the Internet at Wonkette and IvyGate.
