tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6617561217353117325.post5376253754744084535..comments2022-08-11T19:39:04.705+01:00Comments on LawClanger: A tempting target, but a dubious tacticSimon Bradshawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14233721281522686341noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6617561217353117325.post-66519559640928840472011-12-01T21:07:30.444+00:002011-12-01T21:07:30.444+00:00Tom,
With respect, that's pretty much the lin...Tom,<br /><br />With respect, that's pretty much the line that Mr Lennon took - and which the Court of Appeal comprehensively dismissed. Yes, the Sun was inviting emails. But if there is an organised campaign to send a vast number with the express intent of crashing their hotline (and you do say that is what you wanted to do) then your intent, and the intent of everyone who took part, wasn't to communicate with the Sun, it was to degrade or shut down the Sun's mail server. (Well, I suppose that was a form of communication in itself, but it certainly wasn't the form of communication that the Sun was inviting.)<br /><br />You're quite right that the content is irrelevant though. As far as I can see your sample letter isn't abusive, threatening or defamatory. The only issue the Sun could have with you is that you contrived to deluge them with such vast numbers of copies of it that their hotline collapsed under the strain.Simon Bradshawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14233721281522686341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6617561217353117325.post-53396088780812416512011-11-30T11:43:35.285+00:002011-11-30T11:43:35.285+00:00Interesting questions here. But I think you're...Interesting questions here. But I think you're wrong. Email bombing is not done by individual people but by zombie botnets for example. This means they are coming from one source, not from individuals. The emails in our case were actually requested by the Sun - they asked people to send examples of benefit scroungers - which is what we did. The fact that their own campaign ends up being so successful they get so deluged with emails is not at all against the law. Of course, the fact they don't like the content of our particular emails is also not a matter for the courts. <br />The courts could not allow individuals to be prosecuted in that situation because they would have to accept that sending an opinion to someone who openly asked for it was illegal. Now, they could try to prosecute the person who started the campaign - in this case me. And that would be an interesting test case. Of course,the fact of the matter is that some people would be more than prepared to go to court for things they feel strongly about. The publicity would be more than welcome. Do not underestimate how prepared some people would be to even do prison time over such issues. I know I would. By the way, our campaign was successful. The Sun's line is now closed and seems to remain so.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6617561217353117325.post-6353325010601550162011-11-29T23:56:47.620+00:002011-11-29T23:56:47.620+00:00Alasdair,
You're right that the risk of someo...Alasdair,<br /><br />You're right that the risk of someone who sent an individual email being prosecuted is low - in part because the effect in isolation is small, but also because it might be hard for the CPS to get over the objection that they were unfairly singling out people just because they had been caught. (Of course, that defence didn't get very far with those who were caught committing otherwise minor offences during the riots.)<br /><br />However, I'm not sure I agree with your distinction between public and private mailboxes. The point made in <i>Lennon</i> was that whatever purpose a mailbox is set up for, it's not there to be deluged in mail sent for the purpose of rendering it unusable.<br /><br />As for overloaded sites in general, s.3 CMA 1990 only applies where the excessive access was deliberate or reckless. There is an interesting argument as to whether trying to direct hits to a competitor's site so as to overwhelm it would count as a DDOS attack; I've even seen the question raised as to whether, with elastic-demand cloud computing, it's legitimate to try to drive up a competitor's usage billing this way. (Something along the same lines was apparently done with pay-per-click ads.)Simon Bradshawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14233721281522686341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6617561217353117325.post-75307930555213371972011-11-29T23:31:07.160+00:002011-11-29T23:31:07.160+00:00I can see that it would be an offense for someone ...I can see that it would be an offense for someone to say, set up a mail sending bot that, on it's own, sent so many emails that it would overwhelm a mailbox. But surely while the cumulative impact of thousands of people sending a single email would have the same effect, it would be very hard to prove that any single one them them did?<br /><br />Further, there's a difference between my private email, which I don't invite the public to send their opinions to, and a mailbox that has been expressly created for that purpose.<br /><br />Otherwise any website that goes down under high load could argue that they'd been effectively DOSed by their customers, and that they were entitled to have their customers prosecuted for showing up and not buying - they used the website in such way as to prevent others using it for it's intended purpose.<br /><br />Surely the defining feature in the criminality is that it has to be one person, or at least an identifiable group doing the flooding? I can see that the guy calling for the massive action might be on dodgy ground, but sure if enough people chose to participate by sending a single email each, then each of them is only doing what the Sun has invited them to do?Alasdairhttp://www.black-ink.orgnoreply@blogger.com