Neil McGovern  
[FOI #9381 email]
 
 
April 14th, 2009 
 
 
 
Dear Mr McGovern 
 
RFI20090438 - Freedom of Information request 
 
Thank you for your email of March 14th requesting information about the BBC’s report about 
botnet, broadcast on the News Channel and on BBC World last month. Specifically you ask for: 
 
• 
the price paid for control of the botnet 
 
• 
the approximate size in bytes of each email sent out during the 'spam test' 
 
• 
If available, the total size of traffic transferred curing the 'web attack' 
 
The reference number for your request is RFI20090438. 
 
Please note that your request is outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the 
Act”) but you may be interested in this article on the Editors’ Blog which explains our approach: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/03/click_botnet_experiment.html. 
 
We hope you find this helpful. Your request is outside the scope of the Act because the BBC and 
the other public service broadcasters are covered by the Act only in respect of information held 
for purposes “other than those of journalism, art or literature” (see Schedule I, Part VI of the 
Act). For more information about how the Act applies to the BBC please see www.bbc.co.uk/foi. 
Please note that this guidance is not intended to be a comprehensive legal interpretation of how 
the Act applies to the BBC. 
 
The BBC does not offer an internal review when the information requested is not covered by the 
Act. If you disagree with our decision you can appeal to the Information Commissioner. Contact 
 

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details are: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, 
SK9 5AF telephone 01625 545 700. http://www.ico.gov.uk/ 
 
Yours sincerely 
 
Stephanie Harris 
Head of Editorial Compliance 
BBC News 
 
 

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