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Court Rules Sending Too Many Emails Is "Hacking"

Posted by samzenpus on from the if-you-send-it-more-than-twice-your-hacking-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An appeals court has ruled that having people send a company a lot of emails (in this case, a union protesting a company's business practices) qualifies as hacking under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. We're not even talking about a true DDoS action here, but just a bunch of protest emails. Part of the problem is that the company apparently set up their email to only hold a small number of emails in their inbox, and the court seems to think the union should take the blame for stuffing those inboxes."

5 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Got it wrong in one by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The "problem" is that hacking and disrupting services is governed by the same laws, without much distinction. And it is disrupting services if the sender knew about or had reason to know about the limitation of the recipient.

    1. Re:Got it wrong in one by LateArthurDent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The "problem" is that hacking and disrupting services is governed by the same laws, without much distinction. And it is disrupting services if the sender knew about or had reason to know about the limitation of the recipient.

      No, no it's not. If the limitation of the recipient is an unreasonable limitation, you can't blame the union. If they were using a bot to mass-spam them with the intention of crashing their systems, I'd agree with you. Manual protest e-mails are a valid form of a communication with the company. If we allow considering this "disruption of services", companies will start having crappy e-mail systems on purpose just so they have the option open to sue people.

    2. Re:Got it wrong in one by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Every time you send an email you are checking if they can receive them. Did the mail server sent back 421 or 422 or did it accept the mail?

  2. Re:Does it work the other way 'round? by BitHive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A company's actions, as long as they serve its profit motive, are beyond reproach. This article is about a union, which is a whole other story!

  3. Think "physical mail". by khasim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Would the same amount of physical mail result in any legal actions against the union?

    No? Then the judge is an idiot.