If I had an email databse of about 8 million email accounts, would it be legal to send a mass email to them, or do I need some sort of licence. NOTE: they have not subscribed to anything. Cheers.
Well, it would be viewed as spam or Unsolicated Commercial Email. You may be hit by laws in regards to doing that. You can only ethically send out to people who opt-in to your mailing list. How did you option the 8 million email accounts ? Did they opt in to your mailing list requesting that you mail them about updates or they were bought or harvested from the internet ? If it is the latter, do not bother about the list. The license you need is the explicit permissions by the email account owner to have their email in your database.
Just because a lot of people are doing doesn't mean its ok or that you can get away with it. Risks include prosecution, civil suits, having your host drop your account, having the site and all associated sites blacklisted and /or dropped from the serps. Not to mention all the enemies you're gonna make.