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120 years in jail for a screensaver?

When screensavers are a crime

The next time you install software on your computer at work, you could be facing criminal charges. This is what happened to computer technician David McOwen, when he installed a program on the PCs at DeKalb Technical College in Atlanta, Georgia, US, without first asking permission. Mr McOwen loaded a distributed-computing program, similar to the Seti@home screensaver, on the college’s PCs so that spare computing capacity could help in a volunteer code-breaking challenge. For his actions, he was charged with computer theft and computer trespass, facing a fine of up to $415,000 and anything from eight to 120 years in jail.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2002 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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