Sat Aug 25, 2007 2:28 am
"nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you t
Court orders movie pirate to switch to Windows
By Jeremy Reimer / Published: August 24, 2007 - 12:32PM CT
Chalk up another new-found power to the Motion Picture Association of America: the ability to force someone to change operating systems. Scott McCausland, who pleaded guilty last September in 2006 to the crime of uploading Star Wars: Episode III to the site Elitetorrents.com, was charged with "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement" and "criminal copyright infringement" by the FBI.
"I had a meeting with my probation officer today and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me; that is part of my sentence," he wrote on his Lost and Alone blog. "However, their software doesn't support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on." The monitoring software in question is only available for Microsoft Windows. Neither Linux nor a Macintosh running OS X would be an acceptable platform.
McCausland says that he is neither a coder nor a Linux guru, and that he does not want to go back to jail. He also reiterated that he does not want to circumvent the terms of his probation. He just isn't sure why the government is allowed to force him to switch operating systems. He also says that his lawyer agrees with his point of view. In the mean time, he has added a donation link to his blog to help pay for the cost of a Windows license.
The full article on Ars Technica can be found here
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... ndows.html
By Jeremy Reimer / Published: August 24, 2007 - 12:32PM CT
Chalk up another new-found power to the Motion Picture Association of America: the ability to force someone to change operating systems. Scott McCausland, who pleaded guilty last September in 2006 to the crime of uploading Star Wars: Episode III to the site Elitetorrents.com, was charged with "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement" and "criminal copyright infringement" by the FBI.
"I had a meeting with my probation officer today and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me; that is part of my sentence," he wrote on his Lost and Alone blog. "However, their software doesn't support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on." The monitoring software in question is only available for Microsoft Windows. Neither Linux nor a Macintosh running OS X would be an acceptable platform.
McCausland says that he is neither a coder nor a Linux guru, and that he does not want to go back to jail. He also reiterated that he does not want to circumvent the terms of his probation. He just isn't sure why the government is allowed to force him to switch operating systems. He also says that his lawyer agrees with his point of view. In the mean time, he has added a donation link to his blog to help pay for the cost of a Windows license.
The full article on Ars Technica can be found here
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... ndows.html
