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Ne znam...toliko sam razocaran zivotom i ljudima...cijeli svijet je normalan samo sam ja lud ....


The crime of distributed computing
Posted by Fish3669 on Saturday 22 December - 09:23 - Source: The Register

As everyone knows, I do the RC5 stats for CD Freaks and love helping out the team. I was even once going to install the client on the computers at my school a few years back, since they do nothing all day, but reboot constantly (Windows 98 ). Well it turns out, some one else had the same train of thought, though they were a PC specialist fixing some college computers.

David McOwen was working as a PC specialist at the state-run DeKalb Technical Institute in 1998, when he learned about a project by the non-profit organization distributed.net that allowed computer users to donate their unused processing power to test the RC5 encryption algorithm. Noticing that many of the machines he maintained on the seven DeKalb campuses sat idle for long periods, McOwen installed distributed.net clients at several of those locations while performing a Y2K upgrade on the machines in 1999.

According to McOwen, during the Christmas holidays in 1999 school administrators noticed that unused machines were sending and receiving the distributed.net data -- about the equivalent of one email a day. The school sent McOwen a letter of suspension in January of 2000, without specifying a grievance, and McOwen resigned shortly afterwards, believing that he had put the incident behind him.

Instead, in June of 2001 McOwen was contacted by an investigator from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who informed him that he was the subject of an 18-month computer crime investigation. In October, prosecutors from the Georgia state attorney general's office charged McOwen with eight violations of Georgia's tough computer crime law: one count of computer theft, and seven counts of computer trespass -- one for each of the school offices where McOwen downloaded the distributed.net client.

Each felony count carries a $50,000 fine and a 15-year possible prison term, for a 120 year maximum possible sentence. The indictment also calls for restitution equal to the amount of money paid to state workers to uninstall the programs from 500 PCs.

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Man am I happy now I decided against doing that for I probably would have got nailed with some fines and stuff...Its a sad world today, were you try to help out and get fined for it...


22 Dec Additional tax on cheap CD-R's in Europe
22 Dec MS trains legal guns at Lindows


Reaction by nuke001 on Saturday 22 December 2001
People nowadays are anal, whatever happen to common sense and handling matters in personal hands w/ no lawyers etc..


Reaction by mguindon10 on Saturday 22 December 2001
What kind of crap is this? A person can put something on a computer and be faced with life in prision yet a person can murder someone and get something like 5 to 15 years. Know I don't know about how you feel but putting something on computers is HARMLESS and not murder, I can't beleive that he could actually face the same terms as a murderer! What the hell is a matter with these people......HELLO welcome to reality. JJJJJJJJJJJJEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSS. They treat us like we are the same low life pieces of crap that murder people and sell drugs to kids. This is just retarded I think these people need to come off this power trip and get off this stereotype that is known as a "Hacker" and GROW UP!


Reaction by NickSTAR on Saturday 22 December 2001
Although I'm not sure, isn't this old news? I know www.overclockers.com.au sometimes refer to some news item like this when they encourage people to join their folding@home team. This might be the same story.


Reaction by SirDavidGuy on Saturday 22 December 2001
I actually live in this area. I'll try to get an address or e-mail of some government official that the CdFreaks community can complain to.


Reaction by wondog on Sunday 23 December 2001
Yes, this is OLD News! Doesn't make the case any less insane though


Reaction by Fish3669 on Sunday 23 December 2001
This news was just posted on The Register the day I found it so I displayed it, sorry if it was 'old' news, but I figured most people had never heard of this story.


Reaction by Hypnosis4U2NV on Monday 24 December 2001
Technically if your working for a company and you instal prgram without the permission of the ownwer (In this case it was the State of Georgia) then it is a valid crime.. Whether he gets any time is highly doubtful but he may be ordered to just pay the fine and whatever it cost them to take it off..