Virginia Supreme Court judiciary = idiots
...Unfuckingbelievable. Are we swimming amongst a sea of fools and idiots? Please tell me that there are at least a handful of judges who understand these newfangled intercomputerwebthingummies.
The article has intimated the sheer stupidity of this whole thing a few times, but hasn't gone so far as to explicitly state this - but I'll do the legwork for them.
Their argument for overturning the ruling is so full of holes it's laughable.
"The court unanimously agreed Virginia's anti-spam law is "unconstitutionally overbroad" because it bans all unsolicited bulk email with false or misleading originating addresses, both commercial and noncommercial."
So what's the problem? It's UNsolicited - and it's technologically unfeasible to have the email equivalent of a Do Not Call list unless you want to turn yourself into the internet equivalent of a Xenophobe (accepting no email at all except for from a close circle of friends, and that's not a sacrifice you should have to make just to avoid spam).
"Justice Steven Agee wrote in today's ruling that the state law violates "the right to engage in anonymous speech, particularly anonymous political or religious speech" protected by the First Amendment.
Agee added that "were the Federalist Papers just being published today via e-mail, that transmission by Publius would violate the statute."
"Publius" was used as a pseudonym in 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to argue for ratification of the US Constitution."
As the article intimates, for political comment this is fair enough - there was nothing like email in the 1800s. If someone had gone round posting unwanted "prolonged enlargement of the phallus" letters to the gentry of the land, they would have been promptly lynched (and maybe we need to revisit that concept).
Are they stuck in the 1800s themselves? Do they not *GET* the entire concept of email? Fortunately Bob McDonell seems to have an ounce of a clue, and let's hope that he can convey the bleeding obvious to an Appeals court.