British Teen Cleared in "E-mail Bomb" Case 155
legaleagll writes "According to this article , a British Judge has ruled that a teen who sent approximately 5,000,000 e-mails to his former employer was not in violation of the U.K.'s Computer Misuse Act. It appears that the Computer Misuse Act is a bit outdated being that it was created 15 years ago when a number, perhaps most, of the current methods for misuse of computers were not contemplated."
Your Rights Online? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Proof... (Score:3, Interesting)
If 1000 people camped out in the middle of a public road in front of the entrance to a company, would they be breaking a crime by not allowing people to enter/exit? In essence, they would be executing a "denial of service" attack to the companies road.
Or what if a few 18-wheelers decided to park in the middle of an interstate to block it. This is also a DOS attack.
What if 1 million people concertedly & simultaneously dialed 911 for "testing purposes" once a month. This would also be a DOS attack.
In each case different laws might be violated but the principle is the same: resources are being purposely mis-used in order to deprive others of them.
Now a question arises: is the Internet a public utility or just a privately owned network? IANAL, but the latter would seem to make the Britisher's offsense a Civil one, not a Criminal one.
Re:Time for a new server. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Only 5 million emails and the server crashed? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a question of minimizing the disk I/O -- or more importantly minimizing the amount that the disk heads need to move.
Re:spam (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Time for a new server. (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, some people like a bit of local control over what's going on with their data. Sign up with a $25/mo "solution", spend a few hours studying their non-negotaible Terms of Service, hope they don't go bankrupt, get bought out, etc.