Yes, but walking uninvited into a house that's not your own is a crime in most places, and taking things out of that house that don't belong to you is a crime everywhere.
The point is that you have to separate the carlessness that allowed the crime to happen from the act itself, which remains both illegal and immoral.
If you see someone walking down a crowded street with a $20 bill hanging halfway out of your pocket, do you take it? Even if you know you won't get caught? What if the person is blind, or infirm?
Some version of the same fallacious argument is made every day on Slashdot. It goes something to the effect of 'lay off computer criminals, all they're doing is exploiting dumb weaknesses in the system.'
Well if you take the $20 from the blind guy, all you're doing is exploiting a dumb weakness in his cash management system, but it dosen't make you any less of a scumbag.
Just to be clear... On the day that you forget to lock your front door and a "polite" burglar walks into your house and starts ransacking it, you'll decline to press charges, because you should have known better, right?
The fact that lazy/undertrained/poorly informed users make a Internet crimes easy can't be a justification for criminal behavior. That's like telling your 80-year-old grandmother who gets her credit card stolen after going online for the first time 'look how you're dressed. You were asking for it.'
I'm not advocating the death penalty for virus writers, but those malignant little buggers should be punished in accordance with the pain, loss and discomfort they cause, which in the case of the Sasser kid, would translate to a loonnngggg stay behind bars.
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Yes, but walking uninvited into a house that's not your own is a crime in most places, and taking things out of that house that don't belong to you is a crime everywhere. The point is that you have to separate the carlessness that allowed the crime to happen from the act itself, which remains both illegal and immoral. If you see someone walking down a crowded street with a $20 bill hanging halfway out of your pocket, do you take it? Even if you know you won't get caught? What if the person is blind, or infirm? Some version of the same fallacious argument is made every day on Slashdot. It goes something to the effect of 'lay off computer criminals, all they're doing is exploiting dumb weaknesses in the system.' Well if you take the $20 from the blind guy, all you're doing is exploiting a dumb weakness in his cash management system, but it dosen't make you any less of a scumbag.
Just to be clear... On the day that you forget to lock your front door and a "polite" burglar walks into your house and starts ransacking it, you'll decline to press charges, because you should have known better, right? The fact that lazy/undertrained/poorly informed users make a Internet crimes easy can't be a justification for criminal behavior. That's like telling your 80-year-old grandmother who gets her credit card stolen after going online for the first time 'look how you're dressed. You were asking for it.' I'm not advocating the death penalty for virus writers, but those malignant little buggers should be punished in accordance with the pain, loss and discomfort they cause, which in the case of the Sasser kid, would translate to a loonnngggg stay behind bars.