The EFF webpage says that the big prize ($100,000) is to be awarded for a 10,000,000+ digit prime, so the $100,000 is probably still up for grabs (if you should feel so lucky).
Granted, "greater than 3,500,000" could mean 10,000,000+ digits, but I don't think so...
This isn't entirely new (but what is?). Virtually the same thing happened to a guy named Aaron Blosser a while back. He installed clients for the GIMPS Project (finds mersenne primes) on computers at the company he worked for (as an NT Admin I think), US West. US West found out and fired him, but not before contacting the FBI, who pretty much put him through hell.
This situation seems to be about the same, he basically did no harm (the GIMPS client is very well behaved, and I can't think that the Dnet would be much worse), but it basically boiled down to the fact that he didn't have permission. What seems to be different is that this guy is facing huge criminal charges, I don't recall that Aaron faced any jail time or fines, but was still slapped around by the FBI (mostly out of cluelessness) for a long time.
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The EFF webpage says that the big prize ($100,000) is to be awarded for a 10,000,000+ digit prime, so the $100,000 is probably still up for grabs (if you should feel so lucky).
Granted, "greater than 3,500,000" could mean 10,000,000+ digits, but I don't think so...
This situation seems to be about the same, he basically did no harm (the GIMPS client is very well behaved, and I can't think that the Dnet would be much worse), but it basically boiled down to the fact that he didn't have permission. What seems to be different is that this guy is facing huge criminal charges, I don't recall that Aaron faced any jail time or fines, but was still slapped around by the FBI (mostly out of cluelessness) for a long time.