1996 Economic Espionage Act and DirectTV

Pharmboy writes "The Register reports a 19 year old will plead guilty to the 1996 Economic Espionage Act for giving away DirectTV secrets, even though they admit he did not pirate the service or profit from the theft." See our original story on this case.

Comments

DirecTV Secrets

[Bearded Pear Shaped]

Yes gentlemen
Thank you all for coming here today
The bidding for these DIRECTV SECRETS
Will begin at

ONE MILLION DOLLARS

MUAH HA HA HA

No, spice network is extra.

Kids are wacky

[L. VeGas]

It may or may not be true that information wants to be free, but it is definitely true that 19 year-old kids want to do stupid things.

What were the secrets?

[Joe the Lesser]

It was in the form of a memo:

To: CEO of DirectTV
From: Quality Assurance Engineer
Re: Our service

CEO,

I regret to inform you that our product is inferior, and should not be purchased. I pray no one gets wind of this discovery.

~QA

Yep, we definitely need a law against stupid...

[0x69]

So our junior genius is working with a client's tip-top-secret documents, 10,000-to-1 he's signed some heavy-duty non-disclosure agreement and knows his uncle's company could get fried if anything leaks, yet he decided to make a hobby out of sending copies of the documents to the whole world.

I'll agree that the law's a poor fit, and this young kid's whole life is toasted bad, but I feel sorry for him about like I feel sorry for the guy who tried pissin' on a 100,000 volt line knocked down in a storm.