At the time Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in a federal prison in 2005, he was described as one of the world’s worst spammers, using AOL servers to distribute 10 million spam mails every day.
Today he’s a free man, that conviction overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court, which said that the state’s anti-spam law, under which unsolicited bulk e-mail is considered a felony if it goes to more than 10,000 people in a 24-hour period, violated the First Amendment right to free speech.
In its unanimous ruling the court stated:
"That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face 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 States Constitution."
"Accordingly, we will reverse the judgment."
Jaynes had had an appeal turned down in May.
