Virginia Court Overturns Spammer Convictions

EvilStein writes "CNN reports that "A judge dismissed a felony spamming conviction that had been called one of the first of its kind, saying he found no "rational basis" for the verdict and wondering if jurors were confused by technical evidence." Legal groundwork being set? Will other convicted spammers now have grounds for an appeal?"

Why, yes Your Honor...

[Frodo Crockett]

They all willingly subscribed to my penis enlargement newsletter!

Confused?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you be confused by technical evidence? That made no sense.

How much ya wanna bet the judge is subscribing to the spammers' services and is being blackmailed...?

</joke>

let em click

[Virtual Karma]

But your honor, they have the option of cliking 'unsubscribe'. That way I know for sure that its a valid email id and i promise never to send another email to that id and also not sell it to my associates who are selling viagra

300 + spam per day

[alex_guy_CA]

I say we get the email address of the judge who ruled this and make it available to all of the fine businesses who make me aware of their products all day every day.

Re:Slashdot: News for Lawyers.

[prowley]

What gives? Can we bring back the old content?

Don't worry, the old content comes back every few days.

Great news indeed

[Lead Butthead]

Now we can impose the death penality instead of the meager fine and short jail time.

Just wait

[earthbound kid]

The case will be overturned when it's revealed that Judge Thomas Horne received promises of several million dollars from an anonymous Nigerian benefactor in exchange for his help clearing a bank account. It's easy for us to look down on this sort of thing, but we need to realize that he needed the money because his wife left him because of he was being emailed by hot college coeds all the time. He tried to make it up to her by increasing the size of his sma1l p3n.i.s with he.rßal v1aggraa, but she left him before he got the drugs. Since then, he's had to remortgaged his home to afford prescription drugs like v4llium and viccodañ, but he really couldn't make ends meet.

Perhaps

[montypics]

Perhaps the judge doesn't administrate an email server. If he did, he'd surely be advocating the death penalty instead.

Re:Look at me! I RTFA!

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't take the chance that spamming is an inherited genetic trait. That gene pool must be chlorinated.

Nothing new here

[purduephotog]

The average juror's biggest selling point is their lack of intelligence and their ability to be led.

The average judge, while more intelligent, enjoys setting precedents.

Put the two together and you've got the 9th circuit out in California ;_)

(Yes I just received my jury summons... I don't think I'll make it tho...)

Quick question

[BobSutan]

Allow me to ask this simple question: why is someone sending unsolicited email to you a crime, but selling your personal information to someone who sends unsolicited email not? Or to be more precise (in regards to ChoicePoint), someone allowing your personal information to be handled by crooks.

If you ask me, our personal privacy initiatives are more than a bit skewed, and with the estimated 600 man hours it takes a victim of identity theft to recover from said crime, someone needs to be held accountable. Then again, if our privacy laws made sense it'd be illegal to sell a citizen's personal information without their consent. The beneficial side-effect would be the removal of everyone's email addresses from the hands of spammers. After all, where do you think they get their information from? That's right, data warehouses (just like ChoicePoint).

Re:No, no new appeals

[AndroidCat]

The fact that a guy got 7 years for sending 10,000 emails seems a bit absurd to me.

Yeah, that's only six hours per spam.

Of course I read the article

[EvilStein]

"Even the story submitters don't RTFA!"

I'm just drunk as hell, proving my point that even alcoholics can get stuff submitted to Slashdot. :-)

Re:Slashdot: News for Lawyers.

[TheRealSync]

What gives? Can we bring back the old content?

Yes, please, more dupes!

Re:No, no new appeals

[MysteriousPreacher]

Presidents set in countries, can affect the laws of other countries. Particularly if that president is 'the most powerful man in the world'.