It's déjà vu all over again. I see that Jeremy Jaynes has won his most recent argument in Virginia that the state's anti-spam law is unconstitutional. (Once again, thanks to Slashdot for the heads-up.)Jaynes would have us believe that spamming is protected speech under the U.S. First Amendment. The court didn't exactly say that, but concluded that the law as written was overly-broad, because it didn't explicitly differentiate between commercial speech and any other kind of speech (e.g., political expression).
While I agree that anti-spam laws shouldn't restrict political speech, I have a couple of issues with this decision:
- Spam is spam, whatever the content; I'd hate this to be seen as a license for nut-jobs to fill my inbox with political rants.
- Doesn't the U.S. constitution already make it clear that commercial speech isn't unprotected?
Again, I say I find it really hard to believe that the American founding fathers intended my inbox be full of spam.
More at today's IT Blogwatch EXTRA...