Turns Out Email Bombing Your Old Boss In The UK Will Get You A Slap On The Wrist

from the stay-home dept

Wed, Aug 23rd 2006 10:12am — Mike Masnick

A year ago, we pointed to the case of a teenager in the UK, who email-bombed his ex-employer, taking down the company's servers. The interesting part was that the court let him go, noting that it didn't appear that denial of service-type attacks were actually illegal under the law. This created a bit of a frenzy over in the UK, with higher courts being asked to review the case and politicians rushing frantically to change the law, perhaps going too far in the process. Back in May, the higher court felt that the lower one was wrong and that such attacks actually were illegal, so the lower court needed to revisit its original decision. They've done so today, and it becomes clear that they still don't think email-bombing is that big of a deal. The teen has been sentenced to two months of a curfew, which the judge made sure was timed so it wouldn't interfere with his work, and would end right before he went off to school. Basically, the kid needs to be at home after 12:30am each day -- which doesn't seem particularly onerous.

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15 Comments

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EasyJim, 23 Aug 2006 @ 10:28am

This is news because why?
If it's not illegal, its legal. No?
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Guard, 23 Aug 2006 @ 10:53am

It seems like the kid would have to pay for any damages caused from the downtime at least. Otherwise, what is keeping every kid from attempting to shut down every company server over in the UK?

But hey, if its legal with curfew as the only punishment right now, there should be a contest as to whom can cause the most damage, scaring the hell out of the courts and creating laws that are as screwed up as possible.

And I think he has to be home before 12:30am, not after :p
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Mila, 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:00am

Sentence is irrelevant
They're imposing a curfew so that this kid can... get home in time to get a few hours of work in on his computer, figuring out more ways to spam or better yet hack into systems? Not to mention the fact that 12:30 is hardly a curfew anyway. This sentence has nothing to do with the actual crime committed. It's kind of like a really lame slap on the wrist. Spam clogs up our inboxes, this shouldn't be excused so easily. At the very least, they should be taking away his computer and Internet access.
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Chris, 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:00am

Re: This is news because why?
It's called common sense and principal my friend, just because its not illegal doesn't mean its right. That's mostly whats wrong with the people these days.
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John Q Public, 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:14am

What's the law in the US?
What about here? I can think of one or two competitors I'd love to f with
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Mike (profile), 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:17am

Re: This is news because why?
If it's not illegal, its legal. No?

As the article said, the courts changed the ruling and said it is illegal.
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UrbanSage, 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:21am

Great
More power to him...
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:28am

Re:
it says needs to be AT HOME after 12:30 AM
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fuzzmanmatt, 23 Aug 2006 @ 11:45am

I had a restriction placed on my driving privileges, and I'll tell you what, it's not what time the restrictions are, it's the simple fact that they exist that pissed me off. It worked, though, and I don't screw around all the time anymore.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2006 @ 12:21pm

Why blame the kid for being smart enough to email-bombed the server and taking it down. This guy is a smart dude and be rewarded not punished. The IT department needs to fix its vounerable system.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2006 @ 12:21pm

Why blame the kid for being smart enough to email-bombed the server and taking it down. This guy is a smart dude and be rewarded not punished. The IT department needs to fix its vounerable system.
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James (profile), 23 Aug 2006 @ 12:45pm

Re: Sentence is irrelevant
Well, they have internet access in prison, so if he actually broke a concrete law involing, say, hacking or something of the sort he'd still have internet access. He still has net access at school, and you can't tell me the school staff are gonna want to be monitoring him, specificly. I'm not even touching the grounds for appeal that'd provide.
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Bob Jones, 23 Aug 2006 @ 2:59pm

Oh no.

Looks like I am going to have to stop being a whiny brat and crashing every server of company that displeases me.

I should mailbomb the politicians who made this silly law and turned the UK in to a law state.

----
Its common sense not to allow this, or our supermarkets would be shutdown by every hacker who couldn't get what we wanted for free.
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Silverwolf308, 23 Aug 2006 @ 4:04pm

Ramblings
I'm not sure how it's regarded in the UK but I'd assume it's the same.

We do not have a justice system. We have a legal system. It doesn't matter if it's right, it matters if it's legal. If there were no law at the time of the event then right or wrong, he is innocent of any crime.
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Tek'a, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:14am

yeah..
"Its common sense not to allow this, or our supermarkets would be shutdown by every hacker who couldn't get what we wanted for free."

you get your groceries from a poorly configured business server?
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