Teen Sentenced for Releasing Variant of Blaster Worm

ScentCone writes "Minnesota teen Jeffrey Lee Parsons got a year and half for releasing a Blaster variant. The lightweight sentence was due, said the judge, to the parents' neglect. Quoting the judge: 'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.' Which means most slashdotters basically have a get out of jail free card."

Comments

Goin Up Da River

[ackthpt]

Ha! A year and a half, by the time he's out of the jug it'll all be different (except luddites who are still using the same version of Windows they bought over 18 months back) and he won't even be able to recognize the world anymore.

Maybe Their Charity, the Lord Protector, will assign him to tranlate old MS-DOS textbooks.

18 months in a Minnesota prison may only seem like 2000 years. Maybe his cellmate will be like that guy from Fargo...

Community Chest?

[MorboNixon]

'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.' Which means most slashdotters basically have a get out of jail free card."

Don't you mean a "locked yourself into jail already" card?

18 months in jail != out of jail

[realdpk]

When did Slashdot math change it so 18 months in jail is like getting no jail at all?

"He will still have to pay restitution to Microsoft and to people whose commuters were affected in an amount to be determined at a hearing set for Feb. 10."

"The judge imposed three years of supervised release following his prison term, during which Parson can only use computers for business and education - not video games or file-sharing or hacking."

Come on. He's not getting off easy. He didn't do anything irrepairable, why would more jail time change things?

"Light Weight?!?!?"

[barfy]

18 months, a lifetime felony label, and having to recompense Microsoft.

You really think this is worth wasting a productive life over?!?

I guess the reason that I got rejected for this story is that I thought the sentance was oppressive, and this submitter felt it was lightweight. Get out of jail free card?? How about felony speech?!

Surely, there was some ground that both got the point home to him well before prison. Were they worried about Anarchy breaking out all over?

Re:Parents need more legal liability

[loucura!]

I doubt his parents would realize he was making a virus even if they were looking.

He used a hex editor to change the name of the virus and put his "handle" in. That's it. He didn't write a variant of the blaster worm, he changed a couple strings in a binary.