As I understand it, what under similar policies, they could arrest a mapping product programmer for some nefarious third parties who plan terrorist attacks.
What if the programmer distributed and supported the product on a terrorism planning site, and worked to ban anyone who mentioned using the mapping product for terrorism? And who knew of a plugin for his software designed to calculate bomb shrapnel distribution?
The guy sells his software through a hacking site, provides a plugin API, but states that it shouldn't be used for hacking. The situation seems similar to ROM sites that say "only download if you own the original game", smoking stores that sell bongs "for use with tobacco products only", etc. He'd have a better defense if he sold the software through a forum for Windows enthusiasts, or something.
The law handles this fairly well in theory. You are only responsible for aiding a crime if you acted to assist the crime with the required mental state. The required mental state for most crimes is recklessness.
So you can sell someone a gun but you can't sell someone a gun if they say "I'm going to murder my wife."
Doing something totally legal to assist a crime is a crime if you were acting intentionally to assist the crime. You can be charged for giving the Gettysburg Address if the point was to get people in one place to bomb it.
Here the FBI is wrong. As of now, there is no evidence he intended to assist in these crimes.
But if you created some software designed to hack a company you hated and then released it widely hoping that someone would use it? That is a crime.
The words are not robbery.
What if they were uttered in a play? What if you're joking around with your friends? There are valid, legal uses for them.
In the absence of criminal actions such as robbery or assault following those words, a court would need to prove criminal intent.
There are very few actions that are always criminal. Sex with a minor is the only major one. Things like speeding if you count small fines.
The total systemic paralysis is real.
I mean, take:
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2017/q1/675
"I am able to crash a RHEL7'ish system with the above PoC quickly."
So, someone takes down some critical system running RHEL7 with this (even if it is just a crash) - and the author is on the hook because the only use for the code was educational and "crashing a system"?
And there is an explanation that moves his advertisement there from intent to negligence.
If ford promoted the f150 as being able to drive though 50 people without slowing down, would they not be accountable?
The software isnt the problem, the software has legitimate use... however, it has nefarious use as well, and he promotes that side of it..
I'm all for holding people accountable for bad actions but I don't think that writing code is enough of to show intent to harm.
If you're talking about different bills then your analogy obviously doesn't apply.
> Owning prop money in itself is not a crime. But it's a crime if people try to pass the prop bills off as real money, said Capt. Jim Duering of the Grand Island Police Department.
Seems like the same principle would apply if you were selling it for the purpose of enabling fraud.
From the article: "Essentially what this law says is that bills must be either 75% smaller than or 150% larger than the size of a real bill and one color, one side."
So printing fake money could be a crime even if you don't attempt to pass it as real.
Congratulations. You've just publicly stated you should remove your game from Steam and anyone else who distributes DRM rootkits. Rootkits are re-purposable into malware too.
Will you? No?
Color me surprised. /s
Like... a HUGE gap.
wtf.
If you use it, you are just as "guilty" as the logic used in the OP.
ex. See people using cars or knives or guns as weapons to commit crimes, we don't throw in Toyota or H&K executives in jail. Just because an item was used by someone, the inanimate object by itself do not display intent, intent is something that can only be held in the minds of a person.
It's a very different thing to write code with good intentions, only to have it repurposed by others for nefarious intent.
It's obviously not a black and white matter, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. The important thing to remember, though, is intent. What was that code or feature originally intended to do? If it was intended to be malicious, then why write the code?
I actually do not believe this is really a legal issue, and is instead a moral and ethical issue on a personal level. It is only becoming a legal issue because we have no other way to deal with it, since not every person operates on the same moral code. If more software developers went out of their way to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard, maybe fraud wouldn't be as prevalent as it is today, and we wouldn't need to have this discussion in the first place.
a gun by itself doesn't show intent to commit assassinations. only when it's taken by a revolutionary and aimed at the heart of capitalist pigs will the intent be realized.
the gun maker cannot be held responsible for creating a device that intended to kill someone important.
Then I think Cisco, Microsoft, and all the other NSL, backdoor inserting, government roll-over companies count in this category too. Do you not see how slippery the slope is you are arguing for?
Not sure that happened here but I don't have a problem with that being illegal.
>Where exactly do you draw the line? You can kill with a hammer too, but noone will hold hammer maker complicit.
Gun manufacturing equipment is not prohibitive. Zip guns and 3-d printers facilitate it.
Drug production for cocaine, heroin, cannabis and others is as simple as a garden.
Not that I agree the kid should be arrested. I simply perceive the feasibility of software prohibition via government license to be as effective as it is for guns and drugs.
Do you mean sales of the software itself? There's no way that could work. Secretly transferring a bitstring is one of the easiest things to do. At best you could catch the money laundering.
> Drug production for cocaine, heroin, cannabis and others is as simple as a garden.
I was thinking of drugs in general. Including for example antibiotics and cancer drugs. AFAIK, practically no one knows how to make stuff like that.
Loaning a gun is even easier, but it seems regulated too. I've seen a friend verbally say in front of others that he was transferring full ownership a gun when a friend asked to borrow one for the range because that's what the laws of his state required (WA). He then informed his friend that he would certainly appreciate the gun being transferred back in a week but he had no recourse if not.
Really? You're going to make that claim?
Prove it: Just encrypt a gun with my public key and send it to me over email.
In other words, not effective at all against the people you're attempting to target (criminals) and only negatively affecting the people who don't deserve or need to be targeted (law abiding citizens)?
Yeah, that'll work great. /s
"As shipped, Ghost Gunner manufactures mil-spec AR-15 and AR-308 lower receivers to completion. With simple tools and point and click software, the machine automatically finds and aligns to your 80% lower to get to work. No prior CNC knowledge or experience is required to manufacture from design files. Legally manufacture unserialized AR rifles in the comfort and privacy of your home."
"I'm not selling guns, I'm selling machines that automatically make guns."
"I'm not selling malware. I'm selling random bitstrings. Here's the email of someone who sells a different kind of random bitstrings, and here's a URL where you can download an AES implementation."
You still need someone with the technical know-how to make that machinery, and the commercialization of such machinery is very easy to regulate because pretty much only industries use CNC machines.
Computers, on the other hand, are everywhere.