Friday, September 08, 2006
Editorial: Lying spammers banned from Virginia
An appeals court has upheld Virginia's tough anti-spam law, but the fight still lacks national leadership.
From the RoundTable blog
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The Virginia Court of appeals this week upheld protections for people tired of spam in their e-mail inboxes. A state crackdown, however, will not much dent the spam machine. Effective federal legislation and enforcement is required.
First a quick lesson on the spam arms race.
As unsolicited e-mail became an increasingly annoying and expensive problem, Internet service providers and individuals began filtering their mail. Every e-mail carries information about who sent it, basically a return address. Computers can look at that data and trash messages from known spammers or from anyone not on a "white list."
To evade such filters, spammers forge their return addresses, making their unwanted messages appear legitimate. If the spam winds up in Virginia, such forgeries could land the sender in jail.
A fake return address on more than 10,000 pieces of spam in a day, 100,000 in 30 days or 1 million in a year is a crime in the commonwealth. The law also caps revenue from distributing spam and prohibits involving a minor.
The child clause is there not because spam is akin to child pornography but because spammers might evade prosecution by having children do their dirty work.
The recently decided appeal stemmed from the arrest of a North Carolina spammer who sent more than 10,000 pieces of spam to America Online subscribers on three days in 2003. A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to nine years in prison.
The spammer, on appeal, argued that the Virginia law violates his First Amendment right to free speech.
Not so, judges concluded. The First Amendment does not protect fraudulent speech, which is what the law targets. Forbidding people from forging their identities to gain access to places they are not wanted is constitutional.
Score one for Virginians. Well, at least a half. The case involved AOL, whose servers are located in the commonwealth. Spammers outside Virginia will be harder to track, capture and convict.
Nevertheless, a spokesman for Attorney General Bob McDonnell says the Computer Crimes Unit will aggressively pursue miscreants hawking sex, drugs and scams with unsolicited correspondence. Officials had been waiting for the appeal's outcome before going after other spammers.
Yet, the widespread nature of the Internet limits what Virginia can do alone. Many other states have spam laws, but enforcement is spotty. Only a coordinated, comprehensive federal effort has a chance to ease the scourge.
