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Felony For Refreshing a Web Page?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 06, 2006 06:15 PM
from the dangerous-pixelantes dept.
from the dangerous-pixelantes dept.
therandomw writes "An 18 year-old boy was recently arrested in Ohio for telling fellow students to refresh the schools web page in order to slow down the server. He is being charged with a felony and is currently being held in jail. According to Canton City Prosecutor Frank Forchione 'This new technology has created a whole wave of crimes, and we're just trying to find ways to solve them.'"
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must be more zero tolerance (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK this barely even brushes up against being a felony, but let the school officials have their fun! Had they just ignored this and let it go (maybe take the kid aside and dress him down a bit), this would have slipped off the radar in half a day. As it is, they've loaded, locked, and are about to fire, aiming right at their own feet.
BTW, I'm just wondering who the first brave soul in slashdot is who will actually post the schools URL. (Also, BTW, it's pretty easily found in Google: Lake High School Uniontown Ohio, duh).
Re:must be more zero tolerance (Score:5, Informative)
this one?
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Re:must be more zero tolerance (Score:5, Funny)
Or
Witness the firepower of a fully armed and operational slashdotting!!
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Re:must be more zero tolerance (Score:5, Funny)
"Your honor, the defendant is accused of taking part in a Slashdotting of a high school web server in the United States, and faces felony charges."
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Canton Law Dept page (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:must be more zero tolerance (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the first time local officials have investigated situations where students are misusing computers. Forchione noted a 2005 case in which four Jackson High School students were charged with misdemeanors after being caught accessing the school computer system. Some grades were changed.
So, breaking in to the school's computer system, and changing grades is a misdemeanor, but encouraging people to visit the school's publicly posted website is a felony?
Yeah, I know the kid had malicious intentions, but why is this a felony when actually breaking into their system and causing damage is only a misdemeanor?
"Michael said it was a joke," Forchione said. "We showed him how we deal with this kind of joke."
This prosecutor needs to be smacked.
Parent
Oh Crap! (Score:5, Funny)
I just commited 7 felonies waiting for this story to appear.
Article slashdoted... (Score:5, Funny)
Low-tech DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Logically, the only thing that distinguishes a DoS from the Slashdot Effect is intent. If your intent is to spread awareness of the material that appears on a server, and the server can't handle it, well, that's tough for the server, but that's how the Internet works. If your intent is to take the server down, that's illegal.
Up until now, most deliberate attacks were automated, making it easy to separate overwhelming legit traffic from attacks -- but that's only really as accurate as trying to separate legitimate city traffic from criminals by assuming that anyone on foot is a burglar.
Of course, when you get down to the level of intent, you get to his contention that "Help me crash my school's server" was a joke, and that he wasn't actually trying to get people to follow through. And things get murky.
Re:Low-tech DDoS? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, they would have been better off letting him slide than making a few hundred thousand / million geeks curious all at once. That server probably unhooked its own ethernet cable, packed up its keyboard and mouse, and walked out the front door by now. Or it melted and dripped all over the carpet.
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Seems like a waste of time and money (Score:5, Interesting)
Even so, it seems crazy to me to waste taxpayer dollars chasing down this citizen and even more dollars prosecuting him. While the law is supposed to be around to protect property, I don't see how this is a felony. He didn't do the refreshing, did he? He used his right to speak freely.
I'm sure I'll hear the standard arguments about how speech can be regulated and I repudiate all of them. Crying fire in a theatre is private property -- the Constitution protects nothing on private property and the theatre owner is responsible for setting the standards of speech. Telling someone how to make a bomb is also free expression/speech -- you're not making the bomb. In this case, if clicking excessively is a crime (I can't believe it would be), the people who did the act should be indicted.
I'd love to see what real crimes are happening right now in Canton City -- murders, rapes, thefts. Speeding tickets and telling people to refresh a website repeatedly are nothing compared to real property crime. The last quote about trying to solve them reads more to me like they're "trying to find ways to exploit them."
For the school -- they can now expect this to happen more often. The publicity in charging this guy is going to be mostly negative in the minds of the students. All we need now is to get the link visible on slashdot, right?
Re:Seems like a waste of time and money (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging by this quote, it sounds like they don't even really have a grasp on what kind of "attack" it was.
"It's a crime and it is important we take this seriously
Causing a tremendous amount of damage? WTF? He's not DDoSing Air Traffic Control. What a total load. This kid should sue these jackasses for libel, false arrest, and harassment.
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Re:Seems like a waste of time and money (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure the kid didn't cause a tremendous amount of damage. Not so sure about what the slashdotting will do....
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Re:Seems like a waste of time and money (Score:5, Insightful)
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the media (Score:5, Funny)
Holy Crap (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean that it's also a felony (Score:5, Funny)
Video of Story (Score:5, Informative)
Number of hits (Score:5, Informative)
School (Score:5, Funny)
http://lake.stark.k12.oh.us/ [k12.oh.us]
The site is actually down, which is a shame; it would have been a nice oppurtunity to see if we could get Zonk thrown in jail for posting it on the Slashdot front page.
This doesn't make any sense (Score:5, Insightful)
- If a boy tells his friend to reload a webpage, he gets thrown into jail and gets felony charges.
- A lone spammer gets $11 billion in fines.
- If joe sixpack downloads a movie he gets huge fines.
Yet, if a medium to large corporation sell/delete customer records, infect consumers computers with spyware or the like, they only get a slap on the wrist?
When did corporations get more freedoms than individuals?
Canton, OH is not known for common sense (Score:5, Funny)
"School officials are not sure they [know] what has caused so many pregnancies..."
Someone needs to get these people a clue-bat.
intent matters (Score:5, Insightful)
if i break your arm by taking it, looking dead in your eye, and twisting it as hard as i can, then there should be severe repercussions
the whole issue is one of intent
intent matters in this world, and any opinion that ignores intent, about this kid, or a whole range of modern problems in this world, is not a useful or valid opinion
Vulnerability exists on Linux as well (Score:5, Funny)
I hope there will be a patch soon!
Re:Let the slashdotting begin (Score:5, Funny)
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