Spammers ordered to pay MySpace 230 mln dlrs

A US judge has ordered a pair of accused spammers to pay MySpace about 230 million dollars in what was being billed Wednesday as a record-setting punishment for such Internet abuses.

Federal district court judge Audrey Collins issued a judgment against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines this week after they didn't show up in her California courtroom for a hearing in the case.

News Corp-owned MySpace accused the pair of using their own or other customers' MySpace accounts to deluge the online community with email that tricked them into linking to sales pitches or websites that earned the men "per hit" payments.

Some of the websites contained "adult material" that put its young users in jeopardy, MySpace said in court documents.