McOwen's Case Has Been Settled

I remember there was a thread about this guy's case a while ago. For those who are interested, the case has been settled.

Here are some snipets for you. You can read the full EFF Media release on McOwen's site located: http://www.mcowen.com/

"Since February 2000, McOwen has been the target of a "computer trespass" investigation and then prosecution. His crime? In 1998, he installed a distributed-computing client (like the SETI@home screensaver) on the college's PCs in order to participate in a distributed decryption contest. In early 2000, the school administrators threatened McOwen with criminal charges and called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The threat of more than $400,000 in liability was based solely on the use of the school computers, valued at 59 cents per second."

"Under the terms of the deal, announced today, McOwen will receive one year of probation for each criminal count, to run concurrently, make restitution of $2100, and perform 80 hours of community service unrelated to computers or technology. McOwen will have no felony or misdemeanor record under Georgia's First Offender Act."

WHEW!!

Now I can sleep at night. Thanks for the info.

Damn that sucks ..I swear ..this type of stuff is getting out of hand
It does make me think twice however about making a distributed brute force cracker useing the ole DAMPP technology.
Details are here:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/j...1-dampp_p.html

Ya know! if you want to share your processor with the world, that is your choice, but he really had no right giving someone elses computing time and bandwidth away, hell, at a colledge that BW could have been used for napster.

ill think twice before i allow anyone to do this in the future. I've saved the article to show people who ask for things like that.