Virginia law bans anonymous remailers

[Declan McCullagh]

Bill, you may be right -- I used the Subject: line since I wanted to make a 
point.

But you're arguing the way a defense attorney would, taking the minimalist 
view of this law. A prosecutor is not bound to take that view, and would 
likely take an expansionalist approach.

-Declan

At 11:35 PM 3/28/01 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Remailers aren't for falsifying email transmission information -
>they're for concealing and deleting that information.
>You're not pretending that your mail originates at foo.remailer.net,
>you're just not telling anybody how it got there.
>Even a nymserver doesn't do that - joepseudonym at foo.nymserver.net
>isn't claiming to really live inside that mail server,
>just to have an address on that server.
>The features in Netscape and Eudora that let you pick your From: info
>might count, and of course Fakemail and similar programs definitely would.
>
>A more interesting issue is how this applies to AOL screen names,
>and also how involved AOL was in the creation of the law,
>since they're largely a Virginia-based company.
>
>At 11:39 PM 03/28/2001 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>>See also:
>>http://www.politechbot.com/p-01862.html
>>
>>http://www.spamlaws.com/state/va.html
>>§ 18.2-152.4. Computer trespass; penalty. B. It shall be unlawful for any 
>>person knowingly to sell, give or otherwise distribute or possess with 
>>the intent to sell, give or distribute software which (i) is primarily 
>>designed or produced for the purpose of facilitating or enabling the 
>>falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other 
>>routing information; (ii) has only limited commercially significant 
>>purpose or use other than to facilitate or enable the falsification of 
>>electronic mail transmission information or other routing information; or 
>>(iii) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that 
>>person with that person's knowledge for use in facilitating or enabling 
>>the falsification of electronic mail transmission information or other 
>>routing information.
>>
>
>