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Spammer's Appeal Is Junked
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-09-07
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The first person in the U.S. to face an actual prison sentence for spamming may, in fact, begin serving that prison sentence in the near future. Jeremy Jaynes, who was first convicted in 2004, lost his petition before the Virginia Court of Appeals.
"[Jaynes] used computers in his home in North Carolina to send over ten thousand e-mails, on each of three different days, to subscribers of AOL," according to the appeals court reading (which was linked to by Roy Mark of internetnews.com - big hat tip).
"He used thousands of different IP addresses and hello domains to send tens of thousands of e-mails and avoid detection by AOL's network," the opinion continued. "Each e-mail advertised a commercial product; none contained any content that was personal, political, religious, or otherwise non-commercial."
The document goes on to explain other details of the case, including some of excuses Jaynes used in his defense. One example - Jaynes claimed that "the trial court lacked jurisdiction because he could not control the pathways his messages took." The response of Judge James W. Haley, Jr. is a model of succinctness: "We disagree," he wrote.
Jaynes may now have to serve the nine-year prison sentence he originally received. Most of the comments following a Techdirt article on the subject indicate that this is anything from "appropriate" to "far too light." "DreadedOne509" proposed an interesting alternative: "For each spam sent, the sender should pay $1 and spend a minute in jail. If that number exceeds 10,000,000 then the sentence should be death by spam (the canned variety)."
Mike McCullough seemed rather excitable. "He should have gotten 30 years w/no parole," Mike began his post. "Spam is evil; there is no other way to treat evil than punishment. If it were spyware he should have been executed on national television. We would never tolerate someone to come into a company's property and write graffitii [sic] on a wall!"
Joe was more concise. "I think they should invoke the death penalty, just kill him and get it over with," he wrote. His reply fell under the title "Death by Spam," and was actually posted twice - perhaps a mistake, or perhaps for emphasis.
Mike, the author of the article, took a different bent. "While some form of punishment seemed reasonable (perhaps more for false advertising, than spam), nine years seemed excessive and silly. We'd much prefer forcing Jaynes to sit around deleting spam for a few years instead." He then wrote something with which everyone could agree: "Perhaps it would be in the best interest of spammers to figure out how not to spam judges in the future."
Tag: Jeremy Jaynes
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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