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Mafiaboy Gets His Wrist Slapped
An anonymous reader writes: "Mafiaboy, the Canadian 'hacker' that did the DOS on Ebay, Amazon, Excite, CNN, etc. has gotten 8 months in a youth detention centre and 1 year probation. Prosecuters think this will be a message to 'hackers' that do this kind of thing. I say the message should be to the scriptkiddies who obviously don't know how to cover their tracks, to at least learn to do so before they download malicious software." The other message is that even if you get caught, your sentence will be ridiculously easy.
So, basically, the message is "Don't try to fight us - you'll be slapped?"
That's not a good message at all. It should either be: Don't even try cause you can't break through (which is crap) or Don't even try because we'll use our lawyers to grind you into a financial and legal pulp.
Neither of these are very helpful to the government, or to industry...
What a wishy-washy end to a case that could have set some important precedents and lessons...
When nuance becomes the only objective we lose the ability to function
At least, this Mafiaboy has gotten a "bad boy!" message...
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
hopefully he doest get the "been there, done that" attitude, I mean sure 8 months, will this "scare him straight" or will it not scare him, and cause him to do worse acts because he's "been there before"?
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
Before judging on a sentence on a juvenile in the province of Quebec, you need a crash course on the approach that is prevalent here with kids, and works very well.
- Kids are NOT sent to jail. Whatever they commited. Why? Because jail is not where you learn about life as an adult.
- Juvenile centers are not vacation centers. My mother has been working in one for over 25 years, and the kids are severly watched, and most definitely not free to do what they want. They are locked in their rooms at night, and whenever they cause any kind of trouble. As long as they behave, they get to interact with other kids there, and they are forced to go to school.
Most of Canada wants tougher laws towards the kids, but Quebec's system has the lowest rate of kids being sentenced that commit other crimes when they grow up. By any means, 8 months is not a light sentence, and the kid will have that time to think about what he did, and perhaps find something else he is good at, instead of thinking how he will make society pay for his incarceration when he gets out of jail."I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
A few weeks ago at the center near where I live a new inmate was beaten to a pulp by fellow inmates less than an hour after he was admitted. To top it off, they pissed and shit all over him. This happened despite the fact that it is the policy of the center to have guards check on the well being of every inmate at least once an hour. Events like these are so routine it didn't even make the news. I only know about it from people who work there.
The perpetrators' excuse was "We were bored and wanted something to do."
What you have to understand is this: you cannot compare this sentencing to the kind of sentencing he could have received had he been tried in the US or even in Ontario. Mafiaboy was not judged on US soil, by the US judicial system and under US laws.
If you compare sentencing in the US with sentencing in other countries of the industrialized occident, the US in no way comes out as an average nation. Comparatively speaking, the US judicial system is extremely harsh. Prison sentences are much more common and much, much longer. Another example of this harshness is the death penalty, which is much more widely used in (parts of) the US than in the rest of the industrialized occident.
Mafiaboy was judged and sentenced in Quebec, Canada. The Quebec judicial system operates on Canadian federal laws, but with largely distinct underlying values and interpretations. Whereas what is usually called "English Canada" generally wants to move towards a harsher, US-style judicial system, Quebec gererally wants to go towards prevention, leniency, and re-integration. This is especially true for young offenders. Young offenders in Quebec are not sentenced to five-year prison terms, even for violent crimes. Their anonymity is secured and they are sent to youth centers.
Interestingly, it seems that the efficiency argument is on the side of lenient Quebec in this case. Quebec has a very good track record at maintaining low crime and violence rates amoungst youngsters. Prevention and re-integration obviously fails in many cases (as we all know), but apparently works "often enough" or "well enough" to give Quebec very good results.
(My personal opinion? All other things being equal, I prefer shorter sentences. I will favor any solution which just works, but luckily, it seems that the one naturally prefer does precisely work. Yet if you must know, I am definitely for a "dangerous offender" clause which keeps total, dangerous lunatics off the streets for good.)
So whoever was expecting a 15-year prison sentence (or anything vaguely similar) is not very well-informed. That is of course understandable: Quebec and Canada are not very well known outside or... Quebec and Canada. Some would even say respectively. But the amount of surprise apparent here just goes to show how much many US citizens believe "their way" to be "the standard way."
And please remember: this is a DDOS attack; not a mass rape, not a murder, not a bloody beating. And if you stop thinking about magical, crime-banishing 25-year prison sentences for just a second, you might realize that 8 months in a youth detention actually is no small deal for a 17-year-old. I rather enjoyed beeing free during my teenage years.
Google. :)
http://www.google.com/preferences?hl=xx-hacker
Yes, I laughed my ass off too....