A Hong Kong magistrate ruled yesterday that a systems administrator did not
commit an illegal act when he used two other companies’ networks to spam
thousands of e-mail addresses.
Ng Ming-sum, an employee of Karin
Electronics, allegedly used the networks of public relations
consultancy Euan Barty Associates
(EBA) and Web design firm HKName Design
Co. to send unsolicited mail promoting his own Web design and hosting
business.
The ruling has provoked mixed responses from the Hong Kong Internet community.
Maren Leizaola, a member of the Anti-Spamming Taskforce of the Hong Kong
Internet Service Providers’ Association (HKISPA), said that both EBA and HKName
have open mails relays making it easier to spam.
The HKISPA Anti-Spamming Taskforce is working to encourage network
administrators to adopt more advanced and secure e-mail servers and to use
their ISPs to send out e-mail.
Leizaola pointed out that there is no law against spamming in Hong Kong.
“The reason I reported it to the Police is because I felt it was an abuse
of our facilities,” said Fergus O’Rourke, the EBA Group’s Director of
Technical Services.
“We are using one of the top e-mail server programs used worldwide,” said
O’Rourke. He said that EBA did not install the server and that the
installers never indicated that it was an open e-mail relay.
“There are thousands of companies with e-mail servers in Hong Kong,” added
O’Rourke. Some of them have open e-mail relays and don’t know it. According
to O’Rourke, the server is now spam-safe.
Yat Siu, the founder of the Instant Portal firm OutBlaze, commented, “If I leave my
apartment door open, does that make it right for someone to come in and
help themselves to a cup of coffee.”
Siu indicated that when someone spams off another company’s servers, they
are using that company’s resources including CPU power, hard drives, and
bandwidth.
“It’s illegal in the US. In Hong Kong, the Internet can not be used in that
way,” insisted Siu. “If people outside of Hong Kong think that they can use
Hong Kong IP addresses to spam, then we have a problem.”
“If you make an example, it will scare people from doing it,” added Siu.
Leizaola said,”Unauthorized use of someone else’s computer is actually
against the law in Hong Kong. It’s just hard to prove.”
Another IT professional pointed out that, according to the press reports,
the magistrate “did not have a clue what he was talking about.”
