Jeremy Jaynes, described as a notorious American spammer, had his nine year prison sentence overturned due to fact that the Virginia Supreme Court declared the state’s anti-spam law unconstitutional, since its statute violates the First Amendment right to free and anonymous speech.

In 2004, Jaynes was the first person to be tried under the law which had been enacted one year before. The spammer was convicted of having sent tens of thousands of e-mails through AOL servers in Loudoun and has been held in house arrest until recently.

The decision to overturn the law was made because it aimed at outlawing all forms of unsolicited e-mail, not just the commercial junk type, president of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email John Levine stated.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a number of approximately 38 states have anti-spam laws, most of which apply to people who send junk e-mail in order to promote a business or financial gain of any sort. These laws are similar to the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which also takes aim at commercial e-mails only.

As expected, the Supreme Court’s decision prompted a response from the Internet Service Providers, which were outraged at hearing the news and stated that intruding on someone else’s mail servers was much the same as a burglar breaking into one’s home.

Consequently, Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell informed that the state would appeal the decision to overturn the law to the United States Supreme Court.