I was just in Virginia for a conference. It struck me as odd that so many people there still smoke, and that they smoke in public places. While the rest of the US and world move ahead with safety regulations prohibiting people from blowing known-cancerous plumes into the lungs of others, Virgina seems to be lagging behind.

Call it a stretch but I think this sheds some perspective on the latest news about protection from spam. PC Magazine says Virginia judges have not only ruled against anti-spam laws but also set a North Carolina spam king free:

Friday’s ruling found that the Virginia law is “unconstitutionally overbroad 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.”

The court found that Virginia’s law does not specifically apply to commericial e-mails, as is the case with many other state laws and the federal Can-Spam Act. As a result, the statute is overly broad and could restrict free speech, the court said.

“Were the Federalist Papers just being published today via e-mail, that transmission … would violate the statute,” according to the ruling.

That sounds like a red herring to me. I suspect only in Virgina would they try to compare the Federalist Papers to spam, and it reflects a very strange and conservative mindset. Were the Federalist Papers distributed after deceptive entry to access a printing press or newspaper? Apparently not:

The Federalist Papers appeared in three New York newspapers: the Independent Journal, the New-York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser, beginning on October 27, 1787.

That says to me that the Federalist Papers were distributed through a system that required approval of editors/managers. The ol’ system had a control point to enforce prohibitions, whereas the spam case was brought by managers of a distribution system who were trying to reduce abuse of their property.

I’ll have to go check out the wording of the Virginia law or maybe find a lawyer who has already done the analysis to see if they judges were smoking something when they decided that the Spam king should be set free to cause more damage to the Internet. It will be interesting to see how Virgina tries to position themselves as a leader in anti-spam, let alone modern thinking, after this setback.