Of course, in the US, people get screwed both ways. If I use a cell to make a call to a friend's cell, we both get charged. Even if it's the same cell company (unless your plan has "free mobile-to-mobile" minutes). Free incoming calls only makes sense, but due to the current infrastructure, it's not feasible.
That was my first thought upon reading the blog. It's complete bullshit--if he wanted to fuck with fuddruckers, he should have put a pornographic image on his own site as the link rather than something on someone else's server, which is essentially doing the exact thing that Fuddruckers was doing.
I read that on cutusabreak.org and I really don't know what to make of it. They don't specify that the address was printed, but they say that a student "figured it out". Frankly, it's abhorrent spin to claim that the password was printed on the back if it was just an address label. And it's not that I think the media incapable of such spin, it's just that some small part of me would like to believe that they didn't do it.
Good point about trying as adults. That may have changed things with regard to expunging the records. And that is definitely something I strongly disagree with DAs doing, in general.
As for whether the charges were necessary... one thing I sadly left out of my original post was the allegation that some of the kids began monitoring the school administration. In other words, they were spying on the teachers. I personally think that, in-and-of-itself, is something I'd press charges for, disregarding anything else the kids did. I fight for my privacy.
Beyond that, I never saw anywhere that these kids were expelled. That's a plus and a minus in the administration's book. The plus is, they were allowed to continue their schoolwork relatively undisrupted--and if the administration never had any real plan to carry through with the prosecution, then their lives weren't disrupted too much (yes, they had to get attorneys and everything, but no permanent damage would have been done). The minus is that expulsion might have hit home just as well, and certainly would have gotten the parents involved in the whole affair before charges were formally filed.
Speaking of the parents.... I understand that the parents received cards explaining that the kids were given detention and ISS, but not explaining why. Why didn't the parents investigate? If I'd been given such punishments and my parents found out, they'd have been calling the school for more details the second they received the card.
They did more than tinker, they did more than enter a password taped to the computer, and they did it repeatedly and after other punishments had been tried out.
Escalation was necessary. To what point, I don't know, but even if pressing charges against them is unreasonable, hey, these administrators had 100 kids refusing to obey the rules after repeated offenses and punishments. I think they're allowed a little mistake in their desparation.
For the record, the disciplinarian at the school was new. Whether s/he was new to the school or had never worked in such a position is unclear, but that's what cutusabreak.org said (so of course, you have to be wary of bias).
Anyway, that's only a slight mark against the school, but it could potentially explain why it was escalated as quickly as it is portrayed to have been.
They didn't hand them back the same flawed laptop, they handed them back one with the password changed. The password was no longer clearly visible on the machine. They had to crack the password to get access.
*shrug* I think some leniency could have been applied because these were children, but at the same time, roughly 500 or so kids managed to not do anything wrong with their laptops (of custusabreak.org's numbers are to be believed) and of the hundred that did do something wrong, only a handful actually went out of their way to regain the access they never should have had in the first place. I have no idea if these 13 were among those that did this, but the majority of the kids didn't seem to have a problem following the rules.
Accessing parts of the computer to which you are not authorized falls under computer trespass laws, plain and simple.
(a) Offense defined.--A person commits the offense of unlawful use of a computer if he:
(1) accesses or exceeds authorization to access, alters, damages or destroys any computer, computer system, computer network, computer software, computer program, computer database, World Wide Web site or telecommunication device or any part thereof with the intent to interrupt the normal functioning of a person or to devise or execute any scheme or artifice to defraud or deceive or control property or services by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises;
The key word, of course, being "exceeds authorization"
3 is interesting, too:
(3) intentionally or knowingly and without authorization gives or publishes a password, identifying code, personal identification number or other confidential information about a computer, computer system, computer network or data base.
So any student who gave out the password would also have broken the law, whether it was before or after the passwords were changed.
So yes, they DID commit a crime. The school had no particular burden to make the computers ultra-secure. Whether the school was wrong for getting the law involved is a matter for debate.
You should be aware, however, that the students WERE given ISS and detention. The charges were pressed after the school had already tried to curb the problem internally.
I'm not trying to suggest that everything is about the law.
The post in question was replying to a post lamenting that he got more community service than these kids. The reply suggested that what the kids did wasn't even a hack. It was in direct reference to a post with content discussing "the law".
Yeah, these kids were playing at it. It's also, however, a lot more than most kids their age can do.
(insert a flood of posts talking about how 1337 various slashdotters were at 13.)
For the sake of discussion, let's turn to cutusabreak.org, a site which proposes to support the students (though I think some of the passages in there actually harm them).
Now all along the computer department was monitoring for these infractions and dozens of students were reprimanded and punished for their curiosity. Detentions and in-school suspensions were handed to kids by their homeroom teachers, often with no face-to-face with the disciplinarians. This was hardly a deterrent, though, as the kids were able to take their laptops and play video games during their "punishment."
They were handing out the sorts of punishments you suggested. Perhaps not for the length of time you suggest, but it's not like they just saw a problem and said, "FELONY!"
Some laptops were temporarily confiscated for long enough to have them cleansed and returned to their original configuration with a new password. Yet the laptops were still not secure. On several occasions the laptops were returned with the old password still intact. And then the kids learned how to turn off and or limit the administration's ability to spy on what they were doing on their laptops.
Here we see that the students must have known that what they were doing was not authorized. The notebooks were confiscated long enough to undo the damage and change the admin password. From this point on, the students who had their laptop's password changed had to actively seek out a way to get admin access again. There is no way they didn't know, at this point, that what they were doing was "wrong".
Now, you suggest that these children, if convicted of felonies, would have their lives totally destroyed. In many states (including Penn.) this is not the case. A person may request that their juvenile record be expunged, under certain situations: ahref=http://www.jlc.org/home/mediacenter/factshee ts/FAQPAJJ.html%23exprel=url2html-4701http://www.j lc.org/home/mediacenter/factsheets/FAQPAJJ.html#ex p>
Now, many people are going to come back and say that the school screwed up, too. They did. I'll even provide a few examples up front.
1) They only targetted 13 kids. I have no idea whether these 13 had cracked the password after it was changed. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume they did (if they did not, the school was definitely way out of line).
2) They failed to notify the parents, either of the offenses themselves or of the severity of the offenses.
3) They allowed the use of the laptops during detention, and had no contingency for removing a student from the program. I suspect that there is more to the story than "Some kids who had trouble resisting temptation tried to turn in their laptops and were forced by the administration to take them back." but for the sake of argument, we'll take that as accurate.
4) They monitored student activity in the first place. I do think that there is a reasonable level of monitoring that can occur when leasing or loaning out hardware, especially if notification of the monitoring is given up front (which it was, in this case, to the student but not the parent, apparently). But I still don't particularly like it, and there are distinct privacy implications considering these were minors.
5) They didn't secure the computers properly.
The only one of the above which reduces the culpability of the students is #3. If the student was actually trying to get rid of the temptation by getting rid of the program, they should have allowed that. Of course, we don't know if any of the 13 tried to give up the laptops, which would make the point moot.
And for the record, I agree with you on making an example of people. I think it's inappropriate and a mockery of the jusice^Wlegal system. But, rather than not prosecuting any of the kids, they should have prosecuted all of t
Not gonna happen. The deal doesn't even make them plead guilty to a lesser charge. It would take a ridiculous amount of moral conviction not to take it and to, instead, fight a potentially lengthy court battle which will cost a fair amount of money.
Some students did some minor hacking after the passwords were changed, but that still didn't amount to much more than executing "hacks" that were readily available on the internet, more akin to the work of a script kiddie than a hacker.
Does this somehow reduce the significance of the crime, or was it just an aside you were adding?
When I first read about this case, I thought the school was justified. When I found out that the passwords were taped to the machines, I changed my mind. When I found out that later, there was indeed "hacking", I changed my mind again. The students broke the law--the very same law that protects you from having to worry about unauthorized computer access.
I'll have to test that sometime, perhaps running Prime95 while burning to see if there is any degredation. Any other suggestions for a way to really test this theory?
I don't have this problem at all. What were the system specs?
Mine: Athlon 2800, 1gig of ram, all IDE DMA/100. I start a DVD burning (either from my fileserver or the local drive) and then go about my business. I rarely notice any slowdown that I can definitively attribute to the burning (i.e. any slowdown I see may just as easily occur during non-burning times, usually with particularly hard to render websites).
Most notably, not long ago I was burning a CD, printing out my resume, and reading my gMail. At the same time, Thunderbird was checking mail in the background. My resume was in PDF being printed from Adobe. Nero is my preferred burning software on Windows.
All those pieces of software are massive and bloated, but they managed to cooperate in WinXP. The burn completed correctly, the resume was fine, and there was no stuttering in the other apps.
If you're "willing to take your chances" you should be willing to accept the consequences of your actions. Don't bitch just because the RIAA uses their legal rights and files suit (although it's ok to bitch about their bullying tactics, which could easily be considered immoral).
I'm kinda curious, though. Why do you think you have the right to this music?
Lastly, to the "voting with your dollars" bit, I agree with you, but for different reasons. If you refrain from buying music (which is a way of voting with your dollars) the RIAA will just use that to claim that piracy is costing them. It's kinda a lose/lose for the consumer in general.
See some of the other comments to understand how "profit" has been redefined by the movie studios. They're making money, they just don't want people to realize they are.
For the record, I did read your post. The lack of elaboration made the points almost useless, but your current elaboration helps.
The points are valid, but the question then becomes, will these uses allow for a sustainable business model? The Attribution aspect alone certainly doesn't--this does nothing for the publisher, production studio, etc. who helped arrange and mix the music. Preventing creation of derived works, likewise, doesn't, and in fact is more of a form of arbitrary control than I expected to hear.
That leaves publishing. Presumably, it would be illegal to make an analog copy of a work and sell it, so the diminishing group of people who buy the physical object would eventually turn this into an unacceptable business model. If no one's making money, no one's (or rather, very few people) will be willing to create.
I think it's imperative that commercial copying continue to be the exclusive right of the copyright holder. I just think that it's bad for society to continue claiming that non-commercial copying is a criminal act. It's not good for a society to make laws that everyone breaks... it teaches people that laws are stupid and unimportant.
First of all, as of right now, illegal copying is still a civil act. The only time it becomes crimimal is if it's on a massive scale. Secondly, laws are in place because otherwise, society as we know it would crumble. Everyone I know speeds occasionally when they drive. Should we remove speed limits? Most people who buy things online fail to report the purchases on their taxes--should we remove that requirement?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, in the US, people get screwed both ways. If I use a cell to make a call to a friend's cell, we both get charged. Even if it's the same cell company (unless your plan has "free mobile-to-mobile" minutes). Free incoming calls only makes sense, but due to the current infrastructure, it's not feasible.
So the egg glances over to the chicken and sighs, "I guess we finally answered that question."
What specific gripes do you have with Open Office? What does MS Office do for you that Open Office doesn't?
That was my first thought upon reading the blog. It's complete bullshit--if he wanted to fuck with fuddruckers, he should have put a pornographic image on his own site as the link rather than something on someone else's server, which is essentially doing the exact thing that Fuddruckers was doing.
I read that on cutusabreak.org and I really don't know what to make of it. They don't specify that the address was printed, but they say that a student "figured it out". Frankly, it's abhorrent spin to claim that the password was printed on the back if it was just an address label. And it's not that I think the media incapable of such spin, it's just that some small part of me would like to believe that they didn't do it.
Good point about trying as adults. That may have changed things with regard to expunging the records. And that is definitely something I strongly disagree with DAs doing, in general.
As for whether the charges were necessary... one thing I sadly left out of my original post was the allegation that some of the kids began monitoring the school administration. In other words, they were spying on the teachers. I personally think that, in-and-of-itself, is something I'd press charges for, disregarding anything else the kids did. I fight for my privacy.
Beyond that, I never saw anywhere that these kids were expelled. That's a plus and a minus in the administration's book. The plus is, they were allowed to continue their schoolwork relatively undisrupted--and if the administration never had any real plan to carry through with the prosecution, then their lives weren't disrupted too much (yes, they had to get attorneys and everything, but no permanent damage would have been done). The minus is that expulsion might have hit home just as well, and certainly would have gotten the parents involved in the whole affair before charges were formally filed.
Speaking of the parents.... I understand that the parents received cards explaining that the kids were given detention and ISS, but not explaining why. Why didn't the parents investigate? If I'd been given such punishments and my parents found out, they'd have been calling the school for more details the second they received the card.
Please read this post: ahref=http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160877&c id=13466563rel=url2html-1418http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=160877&cid=13466563>
and revisit your own.
They did more than tinker, they did more than enter a password taped to the computer, and they did it repeatedly and after other punishments had been tried out.
Escalation was necessary. To what point, I don't know, but even if pressing charges against them is unreasonable, hey, these administrators had 100 kids refusing to obey the rules after repeated offenses and punishments. I think they're allowed a little mistake in their desparation.
For the record, the disciplinarian at the school was new. Whether s/he was new to the school or had never worked in such a position is unclear, but that's what cutusabreak.org said (so of course, you have to be wary of bias).
Anyway, that's only a slight mark against the school, but it could potentially explain why it was escalated as quickly as it is portrayed to have been.
They didn't hand them back the same flawed laptop, they handed them back one with the password changed. The password was no longer clearly visible on the machine. They had to crack the password to get access.
*shrug* I think some leniency could have been applied because these were children, but at the same time, roughly 500 or so kids managed to not do anything wrong with their laptops (of custusabreak.org's numbers are to be believed) and of the hundred that did do something wrong, only a handful actually went out of their way to regain the access they never should have had in the first place. I have no idea if these 13 were among those that did this, but the majority of the kids didn't seem to have a problem following the rules.
Accessing parts of the computer to which you are not authorized falls under computer trespass laws, plain and simple.
(a) Offense defined.--A person commits the offense of unlawful use of a computer if he:
(1) accesses or exceeds authorization to access, alters, damages or destroys any computer, computer system, computer network, computer software, computer program, computer database, World Wide Web site or telecommunication device or any part thereof with the intent to interrupt the normal functioning of a person or to devise or execute any scheme or artifice to defraud or deceive or control property or services by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises;
The key word, of course, being "exceeds authorization"
3 is interesting, too:
(3) intentionally or knowingly and without authorization gives or publishes a password, identifying code, personal identification number or other confidential information about a computer, computer system, computer network or data base.
So any student who gave out the password would also have broken the law, whether it was before or after the passwords were changed.
So yes, they DID commit a crime. The school had no particular burden to make the computers ultra-secure. Whether the school was wrong for getting the law involved is a matter for debate.
You should be aware, however, that the students WERE given ISS and detention. The charges were pressed after the school had already tried to curb the problem internally.
Sorry, I managed to screw up that link:
Q PAJJ.html#exp
http://www.jlc.org/home/mediacenter/factsheets/FA
I'm not trying to suggest that everything is about the law.
The post in question was replying to a post lamenting that he got more community service than these kids. The reply suggested that what the kids did wasn't even a hack. It was in direct reference to a post with content discussing "the law".
Yeah, these kids were playing at it. It's also, however, a lot more than most kids their age can do.
(insert a flood of posts talking about how 1337 various slashdotters were at 13.)
For the sake of discussion, let's turn to cutusabreak.org, a site which proposes to support the students (though I think some of the passages in there actually harm them).
Now all along the computer department was monitoring for these infractions and dozens of students were reprimanded and punished for their curiosity. Detentions and in-school suspensions were handed to kids by their homeroom teachers, often with no face-to-face with the disciplinarians. This was hardly a deterrent, though, as the kids were able to take their laptops and play video games during their "punishment."
They were handing out the sorts of punishments you suggested. Perhaps not for the length of time you suggest, but it's not like they just saw a problem and said, "FELONY!"
Some laptops were temporarily confiscated for long enough to have them cleansed and returned to their original configuration with a new password. Yet the laptops were still not secure. On several occasions the laptops were returned with the old password still intact. And then the kids learned how to turn off and or limit the administration's ability to spy on what they were doing on their laptops.
Here we see that the students must have known that what they were doing was not authorized. The notebooks were confiscated long enough to undo the damage and change the admin password. From this point on, the students who had their laptop's password changed had to actively seek out a way to get admin access again. There is no way they didn't know, at this point, that what they were doing was "wrong".
Now, you suggest that these children, if convicted of felonies, would have their lives totally destroyed. In many states (including Penn.) this is not the case. A person may request that their juvenile record be expunged, under certain situations: ahref=http://www.jlc.org/home/mediacenter/factshee ts/FAQPAJJ.html%23exprel=url2html-4701http://www.j lc.org/home/mediacenter/factsheets/FAQPAJJ.html#ex p>
Now, many people are going to come back and say that the school screwed up, too. They did. I'll even provide a few examples up front.
1) They only targetted 13 kids. I have no idea whether these 13 had cracked the password after it was changed. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume they did (if they did not, the school was definitely way out of line).
2) They failed to notify the parents, either of the offenses themselves or of the severity of the offenses.
3) They allowed the use of the laptops during detention, and had no contingency for removing a student from the program. I suspect that there is more to the story than "Some kids who had trouble resisting temptation tried to turn in their laptops and were forced by the administration to take them back." but for the sake of argument, we'll take that as accurate.
4) They monitored student activity in the first place. I do think that there is a reasonable level of monitoring that can occur when leasing or loaning out hardware, especially if notification of the monitoring is given up front (which it was, in this case, to the student but not the parent, apparently). But I still don't particularly like it, and there are distinct privacy implications considering these were minors.
5) They didn't secure the computers properly.
The only one of the above which reduces the culpability of the students is #3. If the student was actually trying to get rid of the temptation by getting rid of the program, they should have allowed that. Of course, we don't know if any of the 13 tried to give up the laptops, which would make the point moot.
And for the record, I agree with you on making an example of people. I think it's inappropriate and a mockery of the jusice^Wlegal system. But, rather than not prosecuting any of the kids, they should have prosecuted all of t
Oh, I get it you're a troll. Well, enjoy what food I gave you.
I think I may not understand where you're going with that. Do we no longer pursue alleged criminals?
Why would it only be civil? They probably could have sued for damages as well, but generally, unauthorized computer access is a criminal charge.
Actually, these kids allegedly hacked the machines after the passwords were changed.
Not gonna happen. The deal doesn't even make them plead guilty to a lesser charge. It would take a ridiculous amount of moral conviction not to take it and to, instead, fight a potentially lengthy court battle which will cost a fair amount of money.
Some students did some minor hacking after the passwords were changed, but that still didn't amount to much more than executing "hacks" that were readily available on the internet, more akin to the work of a script kiddie than a hacker.
Does this somehow reduce the significance of the crime, or was it just an aside you were adding?
When I first read about this case, I thought the school was justified. When I found out that the passwords were taped to the machines, I changed my mind. When I found out that later, there was indeed "hacking", I changed my mind again. The students broke the law--the very same law that protects you from having to worry about unauthorized computer access.
I'll have to test that sometime, perhaps running Prime95 while burning to see if there is any degredation. Any other suggestions for a way to really test this theory?
I don't have this problem at all. What were the system specs?
Mine: Athlon 2800, 1gig of ram, all IDE DMA/100. I start a DVD burning (either from my fileserver or the local drive) and then go about my business. I rarely notice any slowdown that I can definitively attribute to the burning (i.e. any slowdown I see may just as easily occur during non-burning times, usually with particularly hard to render websites).
Most notably, not long ago I was burning a CD, printing out my resume, and reading my gMail. At the same time, Thunderbird was checking mail in the background. My resume was in PDF being printed from Adobe. Nero is my preferred burning software on Windows.
All those pieces of software are massive and bloated, but they managed to cooperate in WinXP. The burn completed correctly, the resume was fine, and there was no stuttering in the other apps.
If you're "willing to take your chances" you should be willing to accept the consequences of your actions. Don't bitch just because the RIAA uses their legal rights and files suit (although it's ok to bitch about their bullying tactics, which could easily be considered immoral).
I'm kinda curious, though. Why do you think you have the right to this music?
Lastly, to the "voting with your dollars" bit, I agree with you, but for different reasons. If you refrain from buying music (which is a way of voting with your dollars) the RIAA will just use that to claim that piracy is costing them. It's kinda a lose/lose for the consumer in general.
See some of the other comments to understand how "profit" has been redefined by the movie studios. They're making money, they just don't want people to realize they are.
You left "profitable" out of your string of adjectives.
For the record, I did read your post. The lack of elaboration made the points almost useless, but your current elaboration helps.
The points are valid, but the question then becomes, will these uses allow for a sustainable business model? The Attribution aspect alone certainly doesn't--this does nothing for the publisher, production studio, etc. who helped arrange and mix the music. Preventing creation of derived works, likewise, doesn't, and in fact is more of a form of arbitrary control than I expected to hear.
That leaves publishing. Presumably, it would be illegal to make an analog copy of a work and sell it, so the diminishing group of people who buy the physical object would eventually turn this into an unacceptable business model. If no one's making money, no one's (or rather, very few people) will be willing to create.
I think it's imperative that commercial copying continue to be the exclusive right of the copyright holder. I just think that it's bad for society to continue claiming that non-commercial copying is a criminal act. It's not good for a society to make laws that everyone breaks... it teaches people that laws are stupid and unimportant.
First of all, as of right now, illegal copying is still a civil act. The only time it becomes crimimal is if it's on a massive scale. Secondly, laws are in place because otherwise, society as we know it would crumble. Everyone I know speeds occasionally when they drive. Should we remove speed limits? Most people who buy things online fail to report the purchases on their taxes--should we remove that requirement?