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McOwen Case Settled

Posted by michael on from the hardly-any-bloodshed dept.

ewilts writes: "Back in July, you ran a story about David McOwen, a computer adminstrator at DeKalb Technical College in Georgia, who was being charged for installing SETI software on school computers. This case has now been settled. See also the EFF press release on McOwen's web site." Update: 01/18 16:11 GMT by M : It was software from distributed.net, not SETI.

2 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. It wasn't SETI@home! by jonnythan · · Score: 5, Informative

    A lot of people seem to be under the impression that the client he was running was SETI@home and was therefore innoculous.

    Well, he was running some distrubuted.net-type decryption client where he would have WON MONEY had he been the one to find a key.

    Not so humanitarian and innoculous now, is it?

    Years in prison and a $400,000 fine are extremely way beyond reason, but I can see how this was a crime as he stole company resources for personal gain.

    The $2100 fine does seem reasonable as I think he would have won $2000.

  2. Re:Powerful implications by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although he got off relatively light, the precident set here is that sysadmins can no longer choose to install software at will.

    The case was settled out of court. Absolutely no precedent was set.