Britain is to update its lone cybercrime law, a 1990 pre-Web relic widely regarded as inadequate to deal with growing computer criminality.
   
Organised gangs around the world are honing their hacking, spamming and virus-writing skills while thinly stretched police resources are struggling to cope.
   
The legal update will be closely watched by other countries, many of whose own laws against cybercrime are considered insufficient to fight what has become one of the fastest growing global crime waves.  A group of parliamentarians will hold a public debate to explore ways to bring the Computer Misuse Act, or CMA, into the Internet era.
   
Working with the UK's Home Office, the aim is to have a new cybercrime bill introduced in the next six months, MP Brian White told Reuters.
   
"Organised crime is getting into this area of criminality in a really big way, and they are way ahead of government," White said. "We need to address this in Internet time."
   
Police say cybercrime costs UK industry hundreds of millions, and perhaps billions, of pounds annually. Globally, the figure is staggering, law enforcement officials say.
   
"Serious and organised crime groups, and potentially terrorists, are moving into cyberspace simply because it's easier to hide there," said Simon Moores, a computer crime expert who works with the UK government. 
  
The need for an updated law is most evident to prosecutors and police. The Home Office said there were just 14 convictions under the CMA in 2002, the last year statistics were tallied.
   
White added that police resources is the primary culprit behind the low number of convictions. He said just 240 British police officers are trained in basic computer forensics and yet the number of cyber-investigations, ranging from child pornography rings to hacking crimes, is on the rise.
   
Even so, the UK is considered one of the tougher legal regimes for prosecuting cybercrimes in Western Europe. It is just that the CMA carries lenient prison terms and fails to cover some modern hack attacks, critics point out.
   
For example, the law was adopted in 1990, long before hackers had perfected denial-of-service attacks, a type of data barrage capable of knocking Web sites out of commission.
   
In such scenarios, attackers demand crippled Web site operators pay a "protection fee" or the attacks will continue. The creation of cybercrime laws with extra-territorial powers will become the norm in the coming years, experts say.
   
"One country cannot tackle this problem alone," said Jonathan Riley, a partner at UK law firm Lawrence Graham's Commerce and Technology Team.