Slashdot Mirror
German Teen Charged with Creating Sasser
nomoreself writes "Sven Jaschan, only 18 years old, has been indicted by prosecutors in Verden, Germany for allegedly releasing the well known Sasser worm. The PC World article has the details, including the fact that Microsoft's $250,000 reward offer was responsible for informants' coming forth with Jaschan's name, and that Jaschan has actually already confessed to writing several versions of Netsky, as well as the worm in question. Surprisingly enough, the 143 victims that have filed charges are only claiming $158,000 worth of damages." You might remember when he was first arrested back in May.
Boohoo. You do the crime, you serve the time.
You'd think people smart enough to do something like this would be smart enough to shut their mouths. :)
Lucky, 143 plantiffs seeking only 158,000 in damages. Over here that kid would have been sued for 158,000,000!
Now if only we could figure out a bounty system to kill off those spyware and adware guys....
Or so /.ers will claim. His program caused people to lose money. I don't care if it was linus torvalds himself, anyone who writes a program with the intent to do damage to systems, even though they are unpatched, should still be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and be made to pay. It IS a crime.
(Not meant as flaimbait or a troll, just staving off posts in his defence)
Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
I thought there were more Windows machines than that.
Worms are a two-sided problem. In order for them to happen, it takes a software writer (far too often that software writer being named "Microsoft"...) to create software that has a ready-to-exploit flaw in it, and then it just takes one evil-minded programmer to kick a worm through that hole and make a mess that makes all of us wearing white hats have to do some serious cleanup and deal with downtimes.
While I'm glad the kid is going to get taken to justice, I'm still a little troubled by the fact that all Microsoft doing for their part of it is releasing a "you shoulda run Windows Update" patch and kicking in a quarter-million US dollar reward... both of which they're doing out of the kindness of Bill Gates' heart because there's no law requiring either of them.
I know small time programmers need liability protection from the abuse of their software... but shouldn't a large company like Microsoft be liable for the cleanup costs associated with their own security bugs?
That sound you hear is millions of script kiddies saying "Dude, Sven Jaschan is, like, uber 1337!!! I bet I can beat him, though."
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Sven Jachsen's parents have recently purchased a new home and car after a mysterious wire transfer from Redmond, WA. Deustche Bank declined an interview about this.
Fixed link to May story.
catch me if you can was a movie with tom hanks and leonardo di caprio that embellished mightily on the real life tale of a check forger and the fbi agent who pursued him.
what is true about the story though is that the check forger in question went on to become one of the fbi's most valuable anti-forgery experts and he eventually went on to make millions helping banks design anti-forgery checks. here is the man's website.
so whenever i see someone like this sasser/ netsky author get caught, or another virus or worm author in the news, i can't help but think: why doesn't microsoft just hire the guy?
seriously, a brilliant criminal is just someone who's skills are being expressed in the right forum, but in the wrong direction. all law enforcement has to do is flip the brilliant criminal into an asset as a condition of a smaller criminal sentence/ fine for them. eventually, they may find real respect and success in their field of expertise on the white hat side of things.
and this isn't fiction i'm inventing, this is exactly what happened with frank abagnale jr. (of catch me if you can fame above).
well, for all i know, this IS what microsoft is doing... anyone have any news anecdotes to indicate this? anyone know whatever happened to the melissa virus author or the i love you virus author that they caught years ago?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1. Write some evil worms
2. Get a friend to "inform" Microsoft
3. Pay $158,000 in damages.
4. Receive $250,000 from Microsoft.
5. Big party!?
Yes, I know - he'll probably have some other problems right now...
I'm glad damages here in Germany are a bit more realistic than in the US.
1) Write worm or virus
2) Frame idiot 5cript kiddy and collect bounty
3) Profit!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hah. What I want are that guys balls.
In a jar.
On my desk.
"The PC World article has the details, including the fact that Microsoft's $250,000 reward offer was responsible for informants' coming forth with Jaschan's name,"
I can't wait to see how this is twisted into "Microsoft is evil!"
"Derp de derp."
I realize these are two separate countries, but it's pretty fucked priorities when someone can lay in wait, then brutally decapitate two people, and then be sentenced to a life of freely wandering the nation's golf courses after snuffing out two lives.
The you get someone who rearranges some magnetic particles on a disk, and this person is thrown into jail like he was the anti-christ.
Moral of the story? Kill someone? Good for you, here's a nine iron. Write some code? Meet your new husband, Bubba.
a little math
5 years * 365 days in a year * 24 hours a day = 43800 hours in prison
$158,000 / 43800 hours = $3.60 an hour
or
5 years * 365 days in a year * work 8 hours a day = 14600 hours of work
$158,000 / 14600 hours = $10 an hour (if he works 8 hours a day)
The damages are so low because you have to prove in court that you actually lost the amount of money which you claim as damages. Over here, we don't have punitive damages.
It's good that they got this guy.
Now if someone will just offer a reward for catching whoever it was that lanched the years-long-now denial-of-service attack on Java applets.
The attackers posted something about "killing cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market." Apparently, their goal was to make it impossible to create trustworthy Java applets, by making it impossible for a website developer to predict whether the JVM client was compatible or not.
This DOS attack has been very successful in making people afraid to use Java applets. It has been one of the most costly DOS attacks in the history of the Internet. I really hope they can identify and charge the attackers.
In most of the (western) world, the damages awarded by courts are pretty down-to-earth.
It's the USA with its runaway legal system which is the sad exception to the rule.
As an american living in europe.. it's nice to see a court system work the way it's supposed to: As a last resort when you can't sort things out between yourselves, and where the damages you receive can only be expected to recover your losses, not make you a profit.
They're too busy hiring all the other brilliant software engineers who managed to find time in their days to *both* learn how to become brilliant software engineers, *and* develop even a minimal ethical framework for how to apply their skills.
Seems like an overwhelming task, but that's why they deserve a good job goddammit.
Jeesh.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
When I was 13-16 I had the ability to create viruses with the capabilities as any major virus. And I am sure many slashdotters also had/have these ability.
I actually thought about releasing some viruses, well trojans, would not of done anything on the massive scale as some of this virus, I was not that stupid. Hell, I could actually be in jail now and life screwed up over something like that.
Exploiting windows machines has never be challenging has not been for the past decade. The fact that some kid could wreck their life over a couple lines of VB code is kind of sad. I think it was genius on microsoft's part to get people to want hunt and track down those evil virus kiddies.
It would be easier to create a destructive virus then it would be to rob a couple bags of chips from a store for most kids that create viruses. One might get you a slap on the rist (I am not sure how much you get in trouple for stealing couple dollars worth of food), and the other could get landing in jail and millions of dollars worth of damages.
I honestly do not think for most of these kids the punshiments should be that extreme especially since most of those kids probably only copied and pasted some code, or changed a few lines of code. The punishment should fit the crime, if you can cause millions of dollars worth of damages in under and hours worth of work, then something is not right. I do not see any other way of doing something that bad on a massive scale other then blowing up a building or running around with a gun.
I just hope these kids still get a chance to have a life, and they are only held partially responsible. If someone built a bridge that could be destroyed by walking over and pulling out a nail, and the hole thing would come down. There would be two people to blame. The designer and the person that actually did it. Lets just hope its handled carefully in this case.
Stealing to feed your family?
Call me very kantian, but I have never understood why one person thinks that in any circumstance that because one person has more than another, it should be considered alright to take it away from them and give it to someone.
Would I steal to feed my family?
If I had no other choice, most likely. But I'd expect to face the same consequences as the guy that stole money just to support a crack habit. I'd expect no one looking into the circumstances surrounding what I did other than I did this or didn't do it. Wrong is wrong. There are no grey areas. Its a boolean function. its right, its wrong. Nothing else.
Actually, while "starving" is probably not accurate, several of the reports from back in May did make mention of Sven claiming his motivation was to drum up business for his mother's PC Help business.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"So is stealing bread to feed your starving family."
Nice use of the Fat Tony defense
Bart: "Are you guys crooks?"
Fat Tony: "Put it this way. It is wrong to steal a loaf of bread for a starving family?"
Bart: "No."
Fat Tony: "What if you steal a truckload of break."
Bart: "No."
Fat Tony: "What if your family doesn't like bread? What if they like cigarettes?"
Bart: "I guess not."
Yeah, like glaziers go around throwing bricks through people's windows.
7:53
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Unlike the powers that be at Slashdot, who continually slant stories like this in such a way as to try to make us feel sympathy for the little turds ("only 18", "only claiming $158,000 worth of damages"), I hope they staple his nuts to the wall with dull rusty 5-inch staples. Like I said the last time Slashdot tried to defend actions like these, lax security in Windows is not the issue, nor is Microsoft in *ANY* way to blame here. If I leave the front door of my house wide open and put up a billboard that says "my door is not locked" that does not give you the right to come inside and damage my property. Likewise, poor OS security does not give you permission to screw up my machine.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
The kid should have turned himself in to microsoft and made a tidy profit out of it!
"Call me very Kantian..."
Actually you're not very Kantian, and your misguided ethics might even stem from a gross misunderstanding of those ethics.
Remember that Kantian ethics does not support consequentialism in any way. The morality of an action is directly linked to that action's motivations, not to its consequences or indeed even its legality. Korsgaard has a lot to say about how many of Kant's conclusions as written (such as the famous one where he declares it immoral to lie to save a friend's life) can be "blocked by his own procedures."
If you think that you should be punished for stealing to feed your family the same way someone should be punished for stealing to feed a crack habit, you have a serious problem discerning between what is "legal" and what is "right." No matter the capitalistic filth that has been shoved down your throat by "the man," socialism was not founded on principles of lazy people leeching off of the community. It's about taking from those with an overabundance and giving to those who lack. It's about charity and love and most of all respect for humanity.
The law should serve humanity, not humanity the law.
This is myopic, naive and ultimately a dangerous attitude. As Adrian Veidt [amazon.com] put it, "What does fighting crime mean, exactly? Does it mean upholding the law when a woman shoplifts to feed her children, or does it mean struggling to uncover the ones who, quite legally, have brought about her poverty?" What he said wasn't really near-sighted - it's a viewpoint that's morally upright on a case-by-case basis. Dropping out of high school and spending all your money from your minimum wage job on drugs can put you in poverty too, and you wouldn't catch me dead trying to defend someone in that position who steals food to feed their family.
Sven was a young boy
He had a heart of stone
Lived 9 to 5 and worked his
Fingers to the bone
Just barely out of school
Came from the edge of town
Scripted like a switchblade
So no one could take him down
He had no money, ooh
No good at home
He walked the streets a soldier
And he hacked the world alone
And now it's...
Chorus:
Eighteen and life you got it
Eighteen and life you know
Your crime is time and it's
Eighteen and life to go
Eighteen and life you got it
Eighteen and life you know
Your crime is time and it's
Eighteen and life to go
Cheetos in his fat face
His ass burned with vaseline
It kept his motor runnin'
But he never kept it clean
They say he loved VB Script
Sven 's the wild on
He married trouble
Had cyber with a bum
Click, click! hack 'em up
the party never ends
You can't think of dying
When the butthole's your best friend
And now it's...
Chorus
"Accidents will happen"
They all heard Sven say
He fired his sasser to the wind
That child blew a child (hes gay!)
(solo)
Chorus
YEAH, I THINK GEEK THEMED SONG PARODIES ARE LAME TOO! MOD ME DOWN
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now this kid is gonna be someone bitch for ahwile.
Probably not. I don't believe he'll go to prison at all, and even if he did, I've never heard of in-prison rape here in Germany.
reminds me of Donnie Darko's speech when he told the teacher to shove the cards up her ass.
I disagree. The law is only able to be followed and enforced consistantly and fairly if it is derived from reason and logic. Attempting to judge based on circumstances lets in a certain amount of subjectivity that can easily and quickly become unmanageble. Having absolute law is the only kind of law possible in a system run by imperfect beings.
Score -1, Arrogant, ignorant and stupid troll.
Wrong is wrong. There are no grey areas. Its a boolean function. its right, its wrong. Nothing else.
Sure, it's easy for you to say that - sitting in the comforts of your home with an Internet connection and time to kill on a discussion site.
But I bet that the several people who watch their children die of hunger or poverty would bet to differ.
I can understand malevolent people exist, but a large chunk of them are driven to it by the *society* we live in. Rather, the lousy excuse for a society that we live in.
One of my friend works for an international aid agency. Maybe you should see some of the pictures of people worn by war, strife, poverty and diseases.
There is NO right and NO wrong. It is ALL a perspective. When you are on the street with nothing to call your own, stealing is NOT wrong or right - it becomes a necessity. You do not have the luxury of morals when it is a question of survival for you and your loved ones.
If water were made a commodity, and if people died of thirst because they could not buy it, would you consider STEALING water to live a crime? If air were made a commodity, and people died because they could not buy air, would you consider stealing air a crime? It's a survival instinct, you cannot cull millions of years of evolution because of some cock-and-bull morals that you conjured up for yourself.
Narrow-minded and prejudiced thoughts like this make me want to puke. Sheesh.
what now? flaimbait? /me scratches head.
Don't know why but I am always curious to see a picture of people in the news. There don't seem to be too many of this guy. Probably because he was not 18 and the regulations of the media or whatever. Anyway, I managed to find this one. enjoy...
http://www.sabah.com.tr/2004/08/05/dun112.html
TODO: come up with a clever sig
While I don't agree with the boolean function analogy, I do agree with you that stealing to feed one's family does not make it okay. This reminds me of something else than disturbs me - that there are people who think that it's okay to steal from someone with a fairly large amount of wealth (like music artists or CEOs of disliked companies). Just because a music artists' income is much higher than the average income, doesn't mean that they don't deserve every penny they earn. I've heard many people say, "So-and-so has so much money; he can go without that additional twenty dollars." as a basis for stealing.
If we just replace the act of "stealing" with "murdering", then it would put things in clearer perspective. Theoretically speaking, is it okay to murder someone to feed your family?
Give me a fucking break. The 18 year old writes a mediocre virus and you're all up in arms... how about this fucking company (a.k.a. Gator) that has been compromising millions of computers (trespassing, breaking and entering, whatever) for profit? Don't fool yourself, one's a kid being stupid, the other's a profitable company and they're both doing the same thing.
He was arrested on May 7 after confessing to German crime officials that he originally wanted to create a virus, Netsky, to remove two other viruses, MyDoom and Bagle, from infected computers. After developing several versions of Netsky, he created Sasser, according to the officials. It seems like his intentions were good. The virus didn't really do anything direct malicious, as far as I remember. It just spread so fast that it took up all the network bandwidth. I can see how people might want to be compensated for loss of revenue, but if they put him in jail it should be for negligently causing harm rather than a deliberate crime.
Oh, my goodness. Not that specious argument again. I left my door unlocked, so I'm guilty of allowing the criminal who enters my house to commit their crime. Even more so, I'm guilty of causing his injury when he falls from my second story window while trying to escape with his stolen goods.
No, I'm sorry. I don't buy that argument. A crime can not be excused by circumstance. The punishment for the crime can, in some cases, be lessened based on circumstance, but I think that's overused. The psychopathic killer who was beaten as a child shouldn't be given a lessened sentence just because of their sad past. Likewise the virus writer shouldn't be excused because the software their virus infected "allowed" the infection
Nice try, though: and apparently some people agree with you that a crime is less of a crime when there are extenuating circumstances...like a hungry stomach, an unlocked door, or a piece of imperfect software. I agree that the world tends to target the "weak", but that's not a reason to feel sorry for the criminal.
While I can't point you to a specific post, I have made comments every bit as harsh, if not worse, about the scum sucking bottom feeders at the spyware capital of the world otherwise known as Gator. They should be squashed like the parasites they are.
If I had children and one of them came to me and said "daddy, I want to be a prostitute", I wouldn't be happy but I'd learn to live with it and they would still have my love. But if they came to me and said "Daddy, I want to work for Gator", I'd throw them out of the house.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Seems there may be a discrepacy between the damages you can plausibly put before a court and those you can tell the media.
What if I build your next house, leave the front door wide open (rather, the door cannot close even after you move in) and put up a billboard (that cannot be removed) that says "this door is not locked"?
Most humans know not to throw blame fully on one side all the time.
with 75 hours of work a week on Norton Anti-Virus programs.
I think you've watched "Fight Club" a few times too many, my friend.
Wrong is wrong. There are no grey areas. Its a boolean function. its right, its wrong. Nothing else.
I agree! I also think there is exactly one principle to determine whether something is right or wrong. That principle is: Does it cause more suffering than happiness? If so, it is wrong. If not, it is right. All valid ethics follow from this principle.
So quite plainly, if respecting property "rights" causes more suffering than it does happiness that would be unethical. The purpose of these mores that do not protect the happiness of the entire species is only to protect that of a limited subset. i.e. those in power.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If we just replace the act of "stealing" with "murdering", then it would put things in clearer perspective.
:)
It also totally changes the meaning. You can't just interchange the two to make a point. Obviously most people would answer your question with a no, but that really has no ramifications for the justification of stealing. BTW, this goes both ways, too: Is it okay to violate the speed limit to feed your starving family?
So maybe stealing to feed your family is not totally okay. I don't think anybody said it was, because the original point was that moral evaluation is not boolean. So it's not totally okay (whatever that means; perhabs nothing really is) but it's more okay than stealing for no good reason at all, and a lot more okay than killing to feed your family, which in turn would be more okay than killing for no good reason at all. Arguably.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Good point. I didn't see it that way. Thanks, moonbender.
1. Write some evil worms
2. Get a friend to "inform" Microsoft
3. Pay $158,000 in damages.
4. Receive $250,000 from Microsoft.
4.1 TV Appearances - receive big bucks
4.2 Book deal - receive more big bucks
4.3 Movie deal - receive even more bigger bucks.
4.4 Play UberConsultant to some Internet Security company - receive even more bucks
5. Big party!?
Have a great story to tell the grandkids.. priceless!
Hmm... makes me wonder how Mitnick's doing now-a-days...
Killing is not okay regardless. Neither is stealing.
Ewwwk, I responded to an AC. Sorry...
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
And neither is speeding. Think of why speeding laws exist in the first place: because it's considered dangerous to the other people on the road it exceed the speed limit. Show me a real situation where it's absolultely necessary to speed to feed your family. It doesn't exist. In short, you're putting other people needlessly at danger to feed your own family.
No, morality is, in its simplest possible state, a map to the reals. (Although I suspect the math gets even more complicated than that.) Every action has a certain degree of goodness to it. For example, stealing is bad, but it's better than murder. So if stealing can prevent a murder, you should do so.
Boolean rule-based morality is useful because it's very easy to understand and spread to others (memes) but I don't think it's the true nature of right and wrong.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Show me a real situation where it's absolultely necessary to speed to feed your family.
There probably is no such thing. I was aware that the example was constructed when I posted it, in fact that was part of the point. I critized the GP for constructing an example and created one that "proved" the opposite point.
While were at it though, people sure seem to speed a lot. Now, personally, I tend to think that there are a lot of worse things you can do - rape, murder, torture and a lot of other things. And that means to me it's more okay to speed than it is to commit a murder. I could also say it's even less okay to kill someone than it is to speed - that's the same thing with different words.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
"The purpose of these mores that do not protect the happiness of the entire species is only to protect that of a limited subset. i.e. those in power."
And what if this is thought recursively. Those that want will be far more spiritually fulfilled than the man that has everything. If I'm given something -- or just fucking take it -- I'm not as happy as if I earned it. For instance, I rarely pay for software anymore -- most of the time it is given to me by its author or publisher. I'll have to test it out, sometimes give them advice about the GUI, or write a review of it -- but when you are talking about a thousand $$$ package, a few hours worth of work isn't worth that much...I'll use this stuff and put it aside and never touch it except to impress my friends.
Now take the main software package I use -- I pay for. I run a user forum based on it. I got one upgrade free, and the upgrade sat for months -- because I didn't pay for it. If I had, you'd be damn skippy right that it'd have been on my machines immediately.
Allowing folks in power to have a set of rights that others don't have allows the masses to want. It allows them to dream. It allows them to try to be better than what they are now...being a member of the powerbase is not unattainable.
Thought about more simply, a lot of mores that are in place that help only a small group of people should be looked at recursively. By helping these folks, they may ultimately help others with their privilege. Oft times, privilege is not this at all -- I live in a largely poor community. I moved out there because the older houses were bigger, it was in the city center, and it held more for me than the burbs do. Folks here look at me with distain, as if I got everything I have because it was given -- privilege. I've had a job since I was 13 and have gone maybe two weeks in this time without a job. My parents were poor but pushed me and my sister. I never got anything monetarily out of either of them. But its not looked at this way...
In this community, it would be best to sack my house and claim that the happiness of the neighbors is greater than the suffering I would receive from my losses.
In other neighborhoods, my same neighbors transported there would be vermin to the yuppies I have to deal with on a daily basis. Some of them are. It would be in the global best interest to remove a few of these folks causing them a little suffering than the total off the suffering the masses from having them there.
In both cases it would be wrong.
Individual rights trump all suffering and happiness. I have the right to live my life without being fucked with. It might be a fairytale in this world to think this way, but it is a right. I have a right not to fuck with anyone else.
So, you are thinking far too simplistically. All rights feed upon other rights and one cannot look at one without weighing the other. The individual's rights are just as important as the rights of the masses. Without protecting the rights of the one, you can never protect the rights of the masses.
Does it cause more suffering than happiness?
:)
That's kind of interesting. I don't know how applicable it is though, especially if you try to communicate your own conclusions based on this to others. Which is kind of an important point when it comes to moral systems.
First off, are you basing this on actual consequences or intended consequences? I might have the best intentions and inadvertently hurt someone. Does that make me a bad person? And vice versa, someone engaged in what would typically be called a bad thing could in that process help someone else without actually intending it - does that make the action a good deed despite it's different motive? This is the motive of the classic tragedy. Sorry I can't come up with even a half-decent example, I tried and only came up with crap.
However, the thing I consider the most problematic is the definition of suffering and happiness. Both are really vague terms, and basically per definition subjective instead of objective. That leads to problems when trying to share a set of moral values with others, which is one of the reasons for moral philosophy to be discussed in the first place.
For instance, (to draw upon another topic I'm discussing in a different thread) you might think that the suffering caused by stealing from someone is less than the happiness created by having stolen something for your family to eat. However, the person you stole from might disagree. And, using only your principle, you two won't really come to any common stance, you both are equally correct.
For instance, non vegetarians tend to disregard the suffering they cause because it's not human suffering, so to them, according to your principle, eating meat is all right. If you do consider animal suffering as suffering in general, it's not so clear, of course, especially considering the difficulty of "measuring" any suffering and especially animal suffering. Nevertheless, not considering animal suffering as suffering in general is a fairly arbitrary choice.
(Note that I eat meat myself, but I imagine that if humanity truly increases it's moral values eating meat will one day be considered extremely distasteful and barbaric, akin to, say, the way we look at witch burnings now.)
Now if we accept that it's okay to arbitrarily ignore animal suffering, we must also accept it if other people arbitrarily ignore other suffering - say, based on race, religion and so on. To any sensible person, that seems horrible, but that's only true for todays culture and of course not all of todays cultures, either.
In a similar vein, a lot of smaller issues arise which kind of wreck havoc to the idea. I do still think it's a very nice way of looking at things and a good question to ask yourself.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Even if you built me a house under those circumstances, I am aware of no law or court ruling that would give a crook the right to enter my house and take things or damage my property without my permission.
A person blaming you for "allowing" a crook to enter my house and proclaiming your oversight makes the crook less guilty is using as big a copout as anyone who says this guy should get off easy because its Microsoft's fault for having bad security. Should you be required to build houses more securely, or at least offer an optional door? Of course. Should the crook be given a minimal sentence because you didn't? Hell no.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
There are a couple of problems with your argument (quoting non-existent characters in a serious argument aside):
1. Stealing bread to feed your family in no way compares to writing a virus and intentionally releasing it. One is a benevolent crime, the other is malevolent. Apples and oranges, dude. Apples and oranges.
2. While "legal" doesn't necessarily equate to "right" or "ethical", it's still legal and therefore not prosecutable in a court of criminal law. In order for laws to be "right", you have to change the laws. But then there is the question of subjective vs. objective, etc. and getting everyone to agree on what is "right".
3. Under the law, Microsoft did nothing wrong in this specific case. All blame lies with the writer of the virus. While the law does consider acts of negligence in some cases, whoever decides these things hasn't gotten around to crimes of omission in software coding (and you better pray they don't ever get around to it, either).
I think you would be hard pressed to find any law that applies in this case where Microsoft has any blame in this matter.
PS. I am a skeptic when it comes to the issue of natural law or natural rights. Those are human creations and subject to interpretation depending on who you ask.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Don't believe me? Check where the US is headed. Hell, Western Europe can't even hold socialism together
Where is the US headed again? A future of terrorist attacks and increasingly ineffective police state? Where internal terrorism causes more trouble than external (McVeigh, Anthrax, abortion clinic bombings, Olympics bombing, LA riots)? Where politicians are bought and paid for by the new feudal^H corporate overlords? Have fun!
Having absolute law is the only kind of law possible in a system run by imperfect beings.
:-)
C'mon, that's ridiculous. Following your path of argumentation, you'd need perfect laws first.
They do not exist. Can imperfect beings invent these perfect laws at all? I doubt so. Humans can invent/discover mathematical equations, but you're not a living equation.
IANAL and I don't want to be one (because being a lawyer/judge IS messy and I'd like to stick with physics, which is hardly deterministic nowadays, too!). If YAAL, you should have spotted such fuzzy words as "inadequate", "clear" etc. in law texts many, many times already. I'm sure the appropiate laws contain them. Not only in germany (where I live and where the whole spectacle takes place), but also in the US. Can you give me an exact definition for them?
Or, if you can't, post at least a mathematically sound definition of what constitutes "computer sabotage" here. Good luck
And stealing, let's not forget stealing. "It's about taking from those with an overabundance."
Oh, and charity generally involves voluntary contributions. There is a difference between me giving a homeless guy 20 bucks and him pulling a knife and taking it from me. Would it be fair to say "you have a serious problem discerning between what is "legal" and what is "right."?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
You do realize that in calling this system "horribly inhuman" you are using a moral judgment based on your own ethical determinations to argue against a different system of ethical determinations?
The only way that you can rationalize that is if you claim to have some knowledge of a "true" morality; one that is deductive. Otherwise how can you use one morality to judge another except if that one morality is the correct one? Of course, then you go on to say "There's too much to the human experience to treat "right" and "wrong" like some mechanical switch for which the equation must simply be solved."
I leave it to you to determine what you really believe here. I'm just trying to be of what service I may in making a few observations about the logical consistency of what you've said.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Reminds me of the Speluncean Explorers. I think you guys just covered most of the judges on this fictional case.
Where did the grandparent say anything about overabundance? If you steal from rich people that's alright, is it, but stealing from the poor is not on? While from a moral viewpoint that may seem defensible, it implies that those who are rich deserve what they have less than others would. While it may increase the social good to redistribute income, you cannot do this on an arbitrary, ad hoc basic (i.e. theft). Such behaviour destroys the capitalistic system and benefits no-one in the long run.
Even if you believe socialism is a better system (and that's a different argument), the way to achieve it is not by sabotaging the fundaments of the current system.
In the case of stealing to live / to feed addiction, the courts have the power to show leniency. But justifying the former outright, with no regard for the moral foundation behind it (stealing is bad, mmkay) weakens any arguements against the second.
This ties in perfectly with what the original poster said: what this kid has done is a crime. Yes, it may not be as bad as other crimes, but it is still against the rules of his society. If you don't like the rules, go somewhere else. Breaking rules because you believe they are bad is no excuse - who are you to decide whether they are just or not? Once you have broken a bad rule, of course, I'm all in favour of the courts recognising it as such and showing leniency (this is where I differ from the original poster), but we differ on the *amount* of punishment, not its occurence.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
http://somethingelse.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0 4/05/08/1043234&tid=109&tid=172&tid=20 1
I saw this story on the front page and thought, "I wonder how many comments before someone makes a reference to prison rape." It was 14, and modded +4 Funny. Forgive the generalization, but what is the deal with Americans and prison rape? Every single time prison is mentioned (and most of the time criminals are mentioned), someone pipes up about men raping other men. I can understand the occasional reference, but this is obsessive. It's creepy.
This is semi-related, but my company seems to have been infected with a new virus that I haven't heard about. It spreads through port 445 to random IP addresses like Sasser, but when it's infected, it kills the task manager and the registry editor whenever they're started. It also has a random file name in c:\windows\system32 and removes all the default network shares (C$, D$, ADMIN$, etc). It seems to put keys all over the registry, I had to just search the registry for the filename and delete all keys it found. I copied the executables to a non-infected machine with the absolute latest Symantec virus definitions and it didn't detect anything, so I quarentened the file and sent it to Symantec.
Has anyone else seen this? I figured out how to remove it by killing the process, deleting all the registry keys with the filename and deleting the file. The Sasser and Korgo removal tools didn't detect anything so it doesn't seem to be one of those. I found some information on google about a similar virus, but it always used the filename msclock.exe and this one is a random filename.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Too bad the real world implementations of socialism produce little but famines, death camps, and gulags. I think I prefer capitalist filth to that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The problem is that your archetypical virus author is (from what I've seen anywayz) at least borderline sociopathic. They generally have no regard whatsoever for the consequences of their actions or the potential damage, and likewise are most likely not capable of even being affected by punishment...they can genuinely be *that* fucked up.
My own feeling with such people is that they should definitely be detained/locked up, but only so that they do not have the ability to reoffend. I would also advocate sending them to a psychiatric inpatient unit, rather than jail par se...because at least there they have some chance of treatment/rehabilitation. Putting them in the prison system would probably in actuality be less humane than killing them, at least as far as the American prison system is concerned.
Virus authors are generally sick people, and need to be viewed as such. We need to determine what sociological factors are producing such tendencies, as well as treating individual offenders. If we can isolate the causes, we can erradicate the effect.
> Surprisingly enough, the 143 victims that have filed charges are only claiming $158,000 worth of damages.
Huh? You mean "surprisingly, unlike in this nutted country, in Germany they file claims for actual damages, not pie-in-the-sky imaginary figures" ?
surprise yourself, the world is not the US nor it works like it. And that goes both for the good and the bad you an find in it.
Hey lets one up that,
"Is it ok to kill yourself to feed your children?"
or
"Is it ok to kill your family to feed yourself?"
or
"Is it ok to starve your family because your morals won't allow you to steal?"
wheeee, ethics sure is fun!
It's like saying that a criminal that breaks into a car with a SlimJim is some kind of genius. Most people don't know how to break into a car, but any idiot can get one of these learn how pretty easily.
This kid is just a criminal, and a stupid one at that.
It's late in this thread, so I'm sure this will really go nowhere, but just in case, I'm donning the asbestos...
/.land, makes him second only to the RIAA. But is there *anyone* who wonders why it's taken 4 MONTHS after he was arrested to be CHARGED with the crime?
Ok, he's being charged with propogating a worm. Which, in
Notice, the trial hasn't begun. This 18 y.o. kid (I know, legally adult, yadda yadda - 18y is but a kid) has been in the clink for 4 MONTHS before he's even charged?!!??!
Even a dirtbag should have a right to a reasonably speedy trial! It's better for him, and cheaper for the rest of us. (Jails aren't cheap, you know)
WTF?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Would I steal to feed my family? (...) Wrong is wrong.
If a man has to steal to feed his family, he and his family have been let down by the state. Any state in which you have to steal to survive is wrongly administered. You have no moral responsability in regards to the state and therefore you may and should do what ever necessary to keep your family alive. Maybe the police will put that man in jail but administration cannot have higher moral ground in that case. There cannot be higher moral ground than saving someones life.
Likewise, I feel slightly confused when you say that you would steal if you have no other choice, and then imply it's wrong. Lets observe this:
Stealing to survive in State X is wrong.
Then you follow up with stealing is wrong.
Therefore if that family has to act morally, there is no other choice than death from hunger. But, in my opinion there is a problem in the state and their "moral" rules.
If that man ends up in jail I know who did the right thing.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
maybe you should just rip off justicias blind folds. you don't seem to see any use in it anyways. I'm not usually of the religios type, but in this case I'll say 'deity, if thou exist, please prevent this ass and the ones like him from ever ever coming to power anywhere'. How can you legally bring about someones poverty. Last time I checked, property rights were pretty well protected against private assailants. And what the fuck has microsoft done in this case? Just because you are a little more affluent in IT than anywhere else doesn't give you the right to determine abitrary standards of security, below which it suddently becomes a matter of negligence. You should inform yourself about the other insecurities in life, like for example, any type of lock. A normal door can be kicked down in an instant, mostly because the law requires it so that law enforcement can enter hassle free. There is no car that can't be stolen, the amount of time required to do it just ranges from 10 to 60 seconds. Smaller locks, for bicycles and such can usually be opened by hitting it with a hammer on the right spot. No one ever claims that the manufactures are at fault when a crook steals your stuff that way, but suddenly, with computers its all different.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
I do prefer being governed by impersonal law to being governed by whim of persons and circumstances. Kant has never been outmoded, he is as important today as he ever was. He is the frontline against collectivists and there perversion of morals that teach that only unselfish acts (an impossibility!) are 'good'. He puts up the best fight for indiviual freedom and laws that derive from the morals of freedom.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Your logic is flawed. Not preventing someones death is not equal to causing someones death.
The simplest reason is that property ownership is premised on the assumption that people have certain needs, and to deprive them of what they need is wrong. A secondary, and perhaps accidental, effect of property ownership is the ability for people to have all that they need as well as things they do not need; in essence, luxuries. It is not unrealistic to assign a higher moral value to basic needs than to luxuries. Under such a system it would indeed be right, and indeed a duty, to take from one's luxury for another's need.
The justification of property ownership rest on three moral pillars and one ulitarian:
Self ownership: my body and my mind belong to me and serve, foremost, any use I want to put them to. As such, the fruit of my labour (results of using my body) or my thought (results of using my mind) also belong to me and serve the purpose I intend for them. If others where to command the result of my labour or the result of my thinking, I would not own either my labour or my mind and so I wouldn't own my body or my mind: slavery.
As a note: Working for a wage can never count as slavery as long as the contract was entered free from coercion. Whereas coercion is considered an action that violates my right of self ownership. Coercion by circumstance, as socialist will use the word, is meaningless according to the principle of self ownership.
Physical exclusivness: Where I stand, no one else can stand, where I farm, no one else can farm, where I live, no one else can live (appartment).
Original appropriation: A natural ressource or property must be found, recognized and made fit for consumption. All these involve the activities of body and mind, in one word labour. The first person to ever farm anywhere ownes the plot of land because he has mixed his labour with nature and thus principle 1 applies. This is the rational for the Lockean homesteading rule.
The tragity of the commons: As pratchett put it: 'What belongs to all always appears as if it belongs to no one'.
Redistribution of wealth violates the principle of self ownership and can, under no circumstances, be reconciled with a humain society. The extend of redistrubtion in a society is the extend of which it degenerates from civilisation to a gang of brutes trying to grap ever so much more; with no one producing but everyone consuming. Obviously this can not last long. In the end, they will all be equally miserable, but equal non the less.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Yeah. I mean, Sweden's just hell on earth.
So you say a man that kills a girl because she has a blonde hair (not only a sick fuck but illegal as well) and a woman that shoots and kills a man trying to strangle her (self defence and legal in many places) should both get a life sentance?
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Shooting someone that is trying to kill you is legal in most states in the US.
However, a good friend of mine and my sister's ex is currently in jail in Kentucky right now -- someone tried robbing him, it was clear that he was being robbed and he shot the guy. He had an unregistered weapon that was stolen. The claim was that a cousin gave him the handgun...the courts bought that as legitimate. They also said that since he had a past record of doing something equally stupid and was not supposed to have a weapon, and even if he were, he would have needed to have it registered in his name -- which would have brought up the fact that it was stolen.
He is now serving a few years because he was in possession of a stolen weapon that was used in a criminal situation -- yes, he was being robbed -- that is the crime that the situation was referring to. I don't know the *EXACT* statute, but it was something near this...
The man is a good guy but has done some mighty stupid things in his life. This was one of them. I spent $12 talking to him on the phone for 4 minutes the other day (f'n correctional phone services)...and honestly, I think he deserves to be in jail for breaking the law.
Using a legitimate gun as someone is attacking you -- yes, you will be investigated, but it more than likely that you will be proven that you used it in a legal sense.
I don't know how so many folks can see grey areas on this stuff. its either right or its wrong.
I don't know, I guess I'm just from the camp where wrong means wrong, and there are no "degrees" of wrongness. In my way of thinking, you can't substitute something that's more harmless for something else to rationalize that it's right, since it's wrong also, anyway
I'm still waiting for the part where you explain the need that prompted this upstanding citizen to write a malicious worm, or the evils that society committed against him that forced his hand.
The boundaries of 'right' and 'wrong can blur when necessity comes into play, but can you apply your moral relativism to cases such as this where there is no good served or need met?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
You just saw the grey area... The black and white version is: Situation 1. Man kills girl, life sentance. Situation 2. Girl kills man, life sentance. The grey area comes from the circumstances surrounding the situation. Fortunately, laws are adapting for this. Judgements cannot be made in a vaccum. Once, granted... in this case its legal to kill (situation 2) but it wasn't always... and that was the grey area.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Thats not a fucking grey area.
It is legal to paint your house.
It is not legal to spray paint graphiti on someone elses house unless of course you have their unlikely permission.
It is illegal to attack someone with no provocation.
It is legal to protect yourself from attack.
What part of this is grey? It is articulated as to what is wrong and in this case, the law is articulated as to what is right. There are no in betweens.
What? No.
However it is that I came to acquire this bread, I fucking earned it. That's the way it is in a capitalistic society; did you grow your own couch? No. You exchanged a good or service for it (with currency as the intermediary). So apparently, I must have done something that society deemed worthy enough to give me an abundance of bread. You have no claim to it just because you are part of the same society that gave it to me of their own volition, and because you feel entitled to it.
As a side note, I have no bread, but if I did, I'm the kind of person who would give it away to those who didn't have any bread.
Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff tha-- MICRO$OFT IS THE DEVIL!!1
I was talking about the rights and wrongs of doing things for survival - such as stealing food to live, not about the malevolent acts at all.
My justification was merely to point out that for some things, rights and wrongs don't matter, and don't work.
His idea of stealing food was one of those cases - the case of a German teen writing a worm is not.
Here in Germany you can file for personal bankruptcy. You have to state your financial affairs/possssiohs etc. under oath, and then you have to basically pay about every little bit above a certain amount of basic income to your debtors.
:-)
Actually, as it turns out, this is probably the best time in this guy's life to be caught for something as bad as he did (at least in my opinion, virus and worm writers belong to the scum of the net). He's likely going to attend university, and during that time most people over here have very little money anyway, so it won't concern him at all
Not quite, the registry key it puts in HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/Run, etc is "Windows Media Player"=.exe. And there is no ssvchost.exe on the system. But it may be a variant since this is the closest I've seen. I also had virus definitions dated 20040909 and they didn't detect that virus in the files I copied off the system.
BTW, would you like a gmail account? Reply to this with the address (or just send me an e-mail) and I'll send you an invite, I have a few to get rid of.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.