In the long run, not very, and I anticipate that it will even be somewhat useful. As John Levine points out, the only real application of the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision as far as the Virginia statute at issue is to Jaynes himself.

I’m not going to belabor the First Amendment section. It’s been covered well enough by plenty of other people. So, if you’re looking for me to do a sweeping First Amendment analysis, you’ve come to the wrong place.

What I did notice, though, was a useful bit about jurisdiction. Not everyone knows, or really understands what jurisdiction is about. Jurisdiction is the ability of a particular court to hear a case. Often it is confused with venue, which has to do with the location of the court, usually in relation to one or more of the parties or some element of the events giving rise to legal action. That is, which one of the courts with jurisdiction should hear the case. Sometimes, jurisdiction deals with place, and this is one of those cases.

As a general rule, the courts of one state do not have jurisdiction over defendants in another state. Applicable to this case, the courts of Virginia do not, barring exception, have jurisdiction over Jaynes, a resident of Raleigh, North Carolina. One of those exceptions is a nexus rule. That is, there has to be a (pretty firm) connection between the state that is prosecuting and the defendant. If that connection doesn’t exist, then neither does jurisdiction.

And Jaynes makes this argument. His argument is that he did not “use” a computer in Virginia, he used a computer in Raleigh, North Carolina, so he couldn’t have committed a crime in Virginia. That his email ended up in Virginia was merely incidental.

The Virginia Supreme Court isn’t buying though:

“It has long been a commonplace of criminal liability that a person may be charged in the place where the evil results, though he is beyond the jurisdiction when he starts the train of events of which the evil is the fruit.” Travelers Health Ass’n v. Commonwealth, 188 Va. 877, 892, 51 S.E.2d 263, 269 (1949) (citing Strassheim v. Daily, 221 U.S. 280, 284-85 (1911)).

There is an exception to this, though. If someone else intervenes between the events set in motion and the “evil” that results then all bets are off. And Jaynes tries for this one, too.

Jaynes argues that an e-mail could be routed through a number of different mail handling networks before the e-mail reaches its destination, and that an e-mail sender cannot control the route used.

But, again, the Court isn’t buying. They cite, as their reason for rejecting his argument, something from the page before:

As the evidence established, all e-mail must flow through the recipient’s e-mail server in order to reach the intended recipient. By selecting AOL subscribers as his e-mail recipients, Jaynes knew and intended that his e-mails would utilize AOL servers because he clearly intended to send to users whose e-mails ended in “@aol.com.” The evidence established that the AOL servers are located in Virginia, and that the location of AOL’s servers was information easily accessible to the general public. Applying our standard of review to the evidence presented along with all reasonable inferences therefrom, we conclude that the evidence supports the conclusion that Jaynes knew and intended that the e-mails he sent to AOL subscribers would utilize AOL’s servers which are located in Virginia.

Now, here is why this is potentially important: Jaynes wanted to argue that because the mail could have touched servers outside of Virginia on its way to the AOL servers in Virginia that he can’t be held responsible for obeying Virginia’s laws. But, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected that reasoning on the basis of the selection of addresses in a particular domain. Since it isn’t hard to find out the location of AOL’s servers, then he is presumed to have had that knowledge and intentionally sent email to the location of those servers.

Now, notice a couple of things here. First, there is no demand of actual knowledge. The ruling says “the location of AOL’s servers was information easily accessible to the general public.” It doesn’t assert that Jaynes knew that location, only that the information was easily accessible and that because it was easily accessible he was presumed to have known it.

Second, the “chain of events” includes incidental server touches. Jaynes argued that his email “touching” other servers in other places was enough to cause him to not be responsible. The Court rejected that argument. This tells me that the chain of events must, then, include any incidental routing.

Finally, and this is probably the most important part, it is the domain and the equipment that is used by the domain that controls location. Notice the language of the Court:

Jaynes knew and intended that his e-mails would utilize AOL servers because he clearly intended to send to users whose e-mails ended in “@aol.com.”

This is the first criminal spam case of which I am aware in which this is so explicitly stated. AOL, LLC is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York City. Neither of those controls, nor did the locations of its users. It’s the location of the servers associated with AOL.

Yeah, it’s obvious. But, it sure is nice to see it stated.