Reply to post: "the odds of being taken to court under the act are vanishingly low"

"the odds of being taken to court under the act are vanishingly low"

The odds of being taken to court under the Computer Misuse Act have always been vanishingly low. Way back in 2004 I investigated how the Act was being applied, and found that police forces generally tried to avoid it wherever there was an alternative piece of legislation that would fit the bill (no pun intended) - often because it was difficult to prove that specific actions were in contravention of it.

One of the big problems has always been refusal on the part of the legislators to define their terms. As a result, the Act has been and remains difficult to apply with assurance. Unfortunately, the problem of generating specific enough definitions of offences that are nevertheless not technology-bound (and thus prone to obsolescence) seems so far to be insuperable.