E-mail spam breaks law says judge
People who bombard innocent victims with a blizzard of unsolicited "spam" e-mails are breaking the law and could face up to five years in jail, London's High Court rules.
In a test case that puts spammers in the same league as people who spread computer viruses, two judges said that these cyber-spammers could be prosecuted under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act.
The ruling came as the two overturned a district judge's previous ruling that 18-year-old David Lennon had no case to answer after being accused of using a computer program to send five million e-mails to a firm which had fired him.