Stone him!

To follow up on John’s post below, let me ask a question: of these three, which is the worst crime?
1. A guy burns down a warehouse, destroying millions of dollars of computers.
2. A guy sabotages Internet lines, causing millions of dollars in damage.
3. A guy releases a small program that disrupts hundreds of thousands of computers, causing millions of dollars in lost labor and lost data.
Answer: #1 is the worst, because it could involve physical harm to human beings, but #2 and #3 do not. That being said, the other two are still very bad. The day after they caught the 18-year-old miscreant who released the Blaster worm, I saw some guy from MSNBC saying that he was only a kid and that authorities shouldn’t be too hard on him. I don’t care if he was celebrating his 18th birthday the day he released the worm. He’s a felonious vandal and he should go to jail.
I’m guessing the reason people aren’t more outraged is because his damage was intangible — how do you figure the monetary value of the time and data the guy destroyed throughout the world? That, and because he’s a fat, nerdy white kid instead of a muscular black youth. People don’t feel as threatened by the former.
Still not convinced that this kid committed a serious crime? Then let’s acquit the corporate criminals at Enron. After all, their crimes were (mostly) intangible, turning on things like accounting mirages, false statements, and stock price drops.
I’m guessing that American virus and worm production would drop dramatically if more of these guys ended up in the federal pen.
[/rant]

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