Apparently if found guilty on all counts this guy could face up to 40 years in prison.
I, for one, find this ludicrous. Nobody was killed, nobody was hurt, and as far as I know no data was even lost.
I think, on general principles, anybody who writes a macro virus should face half the legal penalty of someone who writes a true machine-language virus. Afterall, in order for his/her virus to do anything the person whose computer is involved has to effectively let them, by allowing the macros to run.
Maybe the way to divide up the blame is to say any malicious things the macro virus does to the host computer can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the virus writer. Any denial of service resulting from the virus spreading is shared between the company that has a macro-virus enabled platform, and the users who don't check for virii.
In that case, this guy would be liable for writing the Simpsons quote in thousands of documents, but that's it.
But unfortunately my views aren't the views of law enforcement.
So. How is a very successfully propagating but non-destructive macro virus different from some other action resulting in denial of service? For example: the people responsible for the net clog following the Pamela Anderson / Tommy Lee videos? Lucasfilm for the popularity of the Star Wars trailers? Even the/. effect! We take down servers just has harshly as Melissa did when there's something cool to see there.
Look out Cmdr Taco -- 40 years as some guy's bitch isn't worth the coolness of maintaining/.
There's no reason to assume that whoever created the 'virus' even had an ethernet card. Even if he/she did, there's no real relation between the Ethernet GUID and the word GUID here. And as far as I know, no non-network application software currently looks at ethernet IDs.
Ok, maybe I'm just tired or dumb... but in what way is that site any different from the true MS site?? The links all seem to eventually go to Microsoft or msn or something... the text appears identical...
maybe a byte per pixel, maybe more, but 1024 bytes per pixel? A 200 pixel image (that's less than 15 pixels by 15 pixels) would nearly fill up a typical 80's floppy disk!!
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently if found guilty on all counts this guy could face up to 40 years in prison.
I, for one, find this ludicrous. Nobody was killed, nobody was hurt, and as far as I know no data was even lost.
I think, on general principles, anybody who writes a macro virus should face half the legal penalty of someone who writes a true machine-language virus. Afterall, in order for his/her virus to do anything the person whose computer is involved has to effectively let them, by allowing the macros to run.
Maybe the way to divide up the blame is to say any malicious things the macro virus does to the host computer can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the virus writer. Any denial of service resulting from the virus spreading is shared between the company that has a macro-virus enabled platform, and the users who don't check for virii.
In that case, this guy would be liable for writing the Simpsons quote in thousands of documents, but that's it.
But unfortunately my views aren't the views of law enforcement.
So. How is a very successfully propagating but non-destructive macro virus different from some other action resulting in denial of service? For example: the people responsible for the net clog following the Pamela Anderson / Tommy Lee videos? Lucasfilm for the popularity of the Star Wars trailers? Even the /. effect! We take down servers just has harshly as Melissa did when there's something cool to see there.
Look out Cmdr Taco -- 40 years as some guy's bitch isn't worth the coolness of maintaining /.
"News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"
not
"Linux News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters relating to Linux"
An ethernet card created the file?
There's no reason to assume that whoever created the 'virus' even had an ethernet card. Even if he/she did, there's no real relation between the Ethernet GUID and the word GUID here. And as far as I know, no non-network application software currently looks at ethernet IDs.
Ok, maybe I'm just tired or dumb... but in what way is that site any different from the true MS site?? The links all seem to eventually go to Microsoft or msn or something... the text appears identical...
Bloody
Likely
maybe a byte per pixel, maybe more, but 1024 bytes per pixel? A 200 pixel image (that's less than 15 pixels by 15 pixels) would nearly fill up a typical 80's floppy disk!!