The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Thursday, August 02, 2001

Using a computer during school is now illegal

Dempsey is talking about the bill's sweeping language, which punishes activities that affect a computer rather than ones that damage it or successfully penetrate its security. Contrary to what the name of the bill implies, the measure covers any school computer system, not just websites, and could criminalize pranks such as sending mail from a friend's computer when they've left themselves logged in.

Senator Targets School Hackers

Good lord I'm glad I'm no longer in school. If this had been around when I was going to school I would have potentially been arrested in 7th grade when I wrote the following program: 


10 PRINT "some disrespectful remark about the teacher"
20 GOTO 10

RUN

Or perhaps I would have been arrested in college when I caused the computer screens to melt during class (fortunately, the Statutes of Limitation have run their course). Or when I snagged root access by exploiting X windows. Or even when I've sent email to a person who left themselves logged in (I did that one several times). Or caused … well, you get the idea.

I wonder what happened to the existing laws? I assume they're still around, right?

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