Teacher Avoids Getting Sent to Siberia For Piracy

Piracy Support Line writes "Russian principal Alexander Ponosov will not be visiting Siberia any time soon, at least not for the allegedly illegal Microsoft software that were preloaded on the computers they bought and Microsoft supported the reseller's story. Although Bill Gates rejected Mikhail Gorbachev's personal appeal for mercy on behalf of the teacher, the judge was kinder. Judge Elvira Mosheva decided to dismiss the case because 'Microsoft's financial damage is too insignificant for a criminal investigation.'"

Comments

No, but a teacher faces jail time due to malware.

[Kris_J]

"The Connecticut substitute school teacher who exposed 11 and 12-year-old students to porn in the classroom -- unintentionally, she says, because of malware on an infected PC -- may now go to jail. If her claims are true, she'll be the first American ever jailed for having had the misfortune of being forced to use a buggy school computer, with incompetent or nonexistent tech support from that school's administration despite repeated requests for help." -- Teacher faces jail time over "accidental porn" in classroom.

Re:Odd...

[kfg]

That's a rather strange reason to dismiss a case, as it violates the letter of the law.

If this were a theft you would be correct. It is not. It's a copyright violation; where intent to distribute/a dollar threshold determines whether the case is criminal or merely a civil matter.

What the judge is saying is that based on the evidence it is unlikely that a crime has actually been commited by the accused and thus it is not worth putting the governement to the time and expense of an investigation to support a criminal proceeding.

Bear in mind that the prosecution had, at the time of the hearing, dropped the accusation that he had himself "pirated" the software and instead he was merely accused of using it for a week.

Making this sort of judgement is part of the job of judge; and why we call them "judges."

KFG