http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5120673.html

Virginia
files felony spam charges

By John Borland

CNET News.com

December 11, 2003, 3:11 PM PT

Virginia Attorney General Jerry
Kilgore announced Thursday that his office had made its first felony indictment
under the state's antispam law.

The charges were filed
against North Carolina
resident Jeremy Jaynes, also known under the pseudonym "Gaven Stubberfield,"
for allegedly using fraudulent means to transmit unsolicited bulk e-mail.
Jaynes was arrested Thursday morning in Raleigh,
N.C., and will be extradited to Virginia, Kilgore's
office said.

Kilgore's office said
an arrest warrant also was issued for Richard Rutowski, an associate of Jaynes,
on the same charges. Rutowski had not yet turned himself in as of late
Thursday, a representative for Kilgore said.

According to antispam
organization Spamhaus,
"Stubberfield" is well-known for pornographic and "get rich
quick" offers online and was ranked No. 8 on the group's top 10 spammers
list for November. The charges were based in part on reports from America
Online subscribers. Kilgore announced the indictment at AOL headquarters.

"Falsification (of
e-mail headers or routing information) prevents the receiver from knowing who
sent the spam or contacting them through the 'from address' of the
e-mail," Kilgore said in a statement. "This is what makes this e-mail
a crime in Virginia,
and the volume that was sent during this period elevates the charge to a
felony."

The criminal indictment
is a sign of a growing focus, at both the state and federal level, on bringing
the growing daily bulk of unsolicited e-mail under control.

However, policies at
the state and federal level have diverged with the recent passage
of the federal Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and
Marketing (Can-Spam) Act.

The federal bill, which
has not yet been signed by President Bush, would continue to outlaw falsifying
e-mail headers to mask an e-mailer's identity. But antispam activists say the
proposal would in fact make the problem worse by allowing businesses to send
unsolicited e-mail legally as long as it was accompanied by an "opt
out" link.

"Anyone with any sense
would, of course, realize that if Can-Spam becomes law, opting out of spammers'
lists will very likely become the main daytime activity for most U.S. e-mail
users in 2004," reads a Spamhaus analysis of the bill. "The second
main activity will be sorting through mailboxes crammed with 'legal' spam every
few minutes to see if there's any e-mail amongst the spam."

The Virginia indictment alleges that Jaynes sent
more than 10,000 e-mails a day on three days in July and August, through
servers located in Virginia.
More than 100,000 messages were sent over a 30-day period, it says. Those
amounts are enough to trigger the criminal provisions of Virginia's antispam law.

Jaynes faces four
felony charges, each of which carries a penalty of one to five years in prison,
a fine of up to $2,500, or both.

"We applaud
Attorney General Kilgore's swift action to vigorously enforce Virginia's tough antispam law," Curtis
Lu, AOL deputy general counsel, said in a statement. "Spammers who use
outlaw tactics of falsification may find themselves behind jail bars instead of
computer screens."