To all dist. comp peeps, and others too!

[NDD]

State of Georgia has all the rights to do whatever they want. If they don't want anybody to use their computers for their private needs, than the law is on their side. The man didn't want to harm, but my friend did same thing, in some College in Finland, and lost his job, without any charges, at least.
We (and he) can hope that the judge will eventually understand the situation, and his motive, the man didn't know that what's he's doing is a crime, but it still doesn't make him innocent.
Really sorry for him, I will look for updates on the case.
And I've signed the petition the moment I saw it (about week ago).

Best Regards ...

[bhess]

I posted it because there might be people here that do the same.
I do feel that he isn't innocent. I hope that the publicity that the case creates will stop it from happening.
I don't feel that ruining a guys life over it is good. Imagine being told that you owe $415,000. There is probably no way of the state acually getting it.
I also think that there is better ways to spend tax payers money.

[bhess]

http://www.freemcowen.com/index.htm

There is a petition that you can sign. It might help the poor guy.

The story began in 1999, when David McOwen worked on the computer systems at DeKalb Technical College in Georgia. Like many other geeks, David realized that most of the machines on campus sat idle most of the time - good computing power going to waste.



That very thought has led to the creation of several companies looking to tap into that power. The idea is to chop up large computer jobs into small portions, and shoot these bits of work to individual computers over the Internet. You could eventually pay computer owners for the spare time of their machines.



One such outfit, Distributed.net, has been testing the idea since 1997 by cracking encryption systems - products that scramble data so that unauthorized people can't read it. Interested techies go to the Distributed.net Web site and download software that runs when their machines aren't doing something else. This software toils away at cracking a code, a task that would take millions of years for a single computer. But when chopped up and spread across tens of thousands of machines, the work should be finished in just a few years. To draw in lots of participants, Distributed.net is offering $1,000 to the person whose computer actually cracks the code.



To improve their odds of winning, people with access to lots of computers have installed the software on many systems. That's what David did at his college.

The state of Georgia doesn't agree with this use of computers. Under state law, David's effort might be considered misuse of the state's computers - and in Georgia, that's a felony. In a cry for help published on the Web site Anandtech.com, David said the state wants $415,000 in compensation for lost computing and network capacity. And of course, there's always that possible prison sentence of 15 years to consider.

[Brangwen]

$415,000.00 makes for good print. I <u>seriously</u> doubt any such fine will actually be levied vs this fellow.

Brangwen http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[surrealchereal]

I am in agreement with ND, I have no issue with a guy loosing his job for doing something like this but the 400K plus fine is obscene.