Opinion ID: 3090871
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Spam (Simpson)

Text: Simpson next argues that his conviction for aiding and abetting the transmission of spam under 18 U.S.C. § 1037(a)(2), a provision of the CANSPAM Act, is invalid, because the statute is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad under the First Amendment. Alternatively, he argues that the evidence supporting this conviction is insufficient. Simpson is correct that commercial speech receives First Amendment protection, if the commercial speech is not false, deceptive or misleading. See Bolger v. Youngs Drugs Prods. Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 69 (1983). However, misleading commercial speech receives no First Amendment protection. See RTM Media v. City of Houston, 584 F.3d 220, 224 (5th Cir. 2009). Section 1037 provides in relevant part: “(a) In general. – Whoever, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly . . . (2) uses a [computer used in interstate commerce] to relay or retransmit multiple commercial electronic mail messages, with the intent to deceive or mislead recipients, or any Internet access service, as to the origin of such messages . . . shall be punished[.]” 18 U.S.C. § 1037(a)(2). The statute also includes a minimum volume of messages that must be sent within a single day, month, or year to be punishable under the statute. Id. § 1037(d)(3). There is very little case law interpreting this statute. However, the subsection of § 1037 that Simpson was convicted under is expressly limited to “commercial” electronic mail that is sent “with the intent to deceive or mislead recipients, or any Internet access service, as to the origin of such messages.” 18 U.S.C. § 1037(a)(2). Given that the statute specifically targets and punishes only unprotected, intentionally misleading commercial speech, and thus excludes commercial speech that is not misleading and all political or charitable speech, we conclude that it is not facially vague or overbroad. 10 Case: 12-10574 Document: 00512501580 Page: 11 Date Filed: 01/15/2014 No. 12-10574 Regarding his assertion that the evidence supporting the conviction is insufficient, Simpson has clearly failed to show that no reasonable juror could have found him guilty. He primarily argues that the CAN-SPAM Act reaches only email, but that his conviction was based on evidence of phone and fax spam. The statute prohibits the transmission of misleading “commercial electronic mail messages.” § 1037(a)(2). The district court specifically instructed the jury that “electronic mail message” meant “a message sent to a unique electronic mail address.” There is no basis to conclude that the jury could have thought that “electronic mail address” meant a phone or fax number, as opposed to an email address. Further, there is sufficient evidence supporting Simpson’s conviction of aiding and abetting spam based on the email messages. The government points to evidence showing that UDC, a company run by Faulkner, had many customers who sent spam. In 2006, an employee of UDC asked Simpson—who was then working at TxLink—to give him information about a server he could use to help push spam traffic through, and Simpson provided server information to the employee. Further, trial evidence showed that Simpson was involved in hiding spam from service providers. Evidence showed that after some spam complaints were received, Simpson told Faulkner not to bother rerouting spam traffic around TxLink’s network connection with Level 3, a service provider, because the spam cop could not tell what connection the spam was coming from. Simpson then told Faulkner and another employee how to adjust the system so that the provider, Level 3, would no longer receive copies of the spam complaints. Given this evidence, Shafer has not shown that no reasonable juror could have found him guilty of aiding and abetting the transmission of spam.