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Japanese 13-Year-Old Arrested For Virus Creation
An anonymous reader writes "Last year, Japan criminalized virus creation and just saving a virus on [one's] own computer. According to Yomiuri Shimbun, Kyoto police have arrested a 13-year-old (Japanese language original), second grade of junior high school student from Tokyo, for allegedly creating a computer shutdown virus and operating an exchange board of hackers. Kyoto police also arrested a 23-year-old construction worker for allegedly teaching how to make a virus on their board and saving a virus on his computer."
Time to go arrest Sony's Execs for their rootkits.
Maybe it was, in fact, perfect English when it was submitted . . . before the Slashdot "editors" got to it?
If you're from Japan, do this:
Open notepad and type these lines in.
echo off
cls
echo y|format C:
Now save this file as virus.bat.
Next, go to jail.
The population of Japan frequently rioted against the oppressive ruling class. For example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakumatsu#Economic_and_social_crisis
and many other examples throughout Japanese history.
Your teacher may have been Japanese, but they can't have known much history...
Aberrations have appeared in my destiny prognostication engine!
Provided to you with much <3.
Under the suspicion of having created a computer virus, Kyoto Prefectural Police have taken into custody a 13-year-old eighth-grader living in Tokyo, Akiruno City, and notified the children's welfare center, based on the youth's misconduct of virus creation (skipping translation of official name of crime, which is provided here as well).
According to the announcement, a male student created a virus last year, on August 5, that forcibly shuts down computers. His deed has been recognized as a misconduct/misdemeanor.
The male student was at the helm of a membership-based site where hackers exchange information. "I was interested in hacking and wanted to study hacking, and created the site in August last year," he explains.
Kyoto Prectural Police have also arrested a suspect, a 23-year-old contruction worker from East Yamato City in Tokyo (name is in the article, but I don't agree that it should be published at this stage so I won't romanize it. Google Translate probably did it anyway though), who gave technical lessons on that site, under the suspicion that he had stored a virus on his home computer that deletes files on computers without permission.
(July 5, 2012, Yomiuri-Shimbun)
Do you really believe they should wait until it does damage to arrest (e.g., steals credit card info and uses, spams a ton of crap)?
Personally, I do believe a crime has not happened until it affects another person.