HS Kid Charged With A Felony For Refreshing His School's Web Site

[DAGTA]

In related news, Ohio ranks among the lowest state in computer literacy rates. 😉

In other words, reason #32432432233 why Ohio sucks.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: mwtgg
Well, it is a DOS. Felony? No. But talk about a biased news article. He was only telling other students how to refresh a page............. in order to crash the server. Oh.

If a handful of students hitting F5 can take down a school server... lmao.

 

[bleeb]

hahah PWNED!!

 

[Indred]

OMFG what has this world come to

 

[SKORPI0]

Lake High School 1025 Lake Center Street Uniontown, Ohio
Office (330)877-4282
Attendance (330) 877-4762
Fax (330) 877-0853. :disgust:

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Bootprint
Good thing he didn't tell a teacher to press alt-F4 or he might have ended up on death row.

BWHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[DrPizza]

I enjoyed the /. coverage 🙂
I tried to view the school's web page, out of curiousity... it wouldn't load though 🙁

edit: and I'm afraid that if I try to refresh the page or open the page tomorrow, the prosecutor is going to charge me with an inter-state felony 😛

 

[MBrown]

dumb

 

[everman]

Looks like they should sue Slashdot now too...lmao
It's their fault it couldn't handle a slight increase in load. These people willingly refreshed the page, it wasn't something like a botnet controlled by one person.

 

[Mrvile]

Wow, that's not too far from where I live. Maybe bout an hour drive.

 

[Wuffsunie]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
So... Sony can install a rootkit on thousands or more PCs without consent from their owners, and not suffer any criminal liability, but this guy gets a felony?

Of course. Multimillion dollar company > some middle class kid.

That's the way things work in the real world.

 

[mwtgg]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: mwtgg
Well, it is a DOS. Felony? No. But talk about a biased news article. He was only telling other students how to refresh a page............. in order to crash the server. Oh.

If a handful of students hitting F5 can take down a school server... lmao.

Lots of schools don't have high-end servers. So what's your point?

 

[sswingle]

So the kid failed at bringing the server down, but when the school made a big deal out of it, all the publicity brought the server down instead.

Good Job! 😀

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: ScottSwingleComputers
So the kid failed at bringing the server down, but when the school made a big deal out of it, all the publicity brought the server down instead.

Good Job! 😀

 

[Goosemaster]

It's a very valuable page. No wonder the school and police were after this fellow. He wasn't just taking some lousy page that no one read in the last 3 months temporarily out of service, he was trying to stop students from "achiev[ing] their full potential for intellectual and personal growth". Clearly, he had to be stopped before he went on to more illustrious crimes like overwhelming the server that powers the site about sidetalking

:laugh:

 

[Pepsei]

it doesn't matter how he did it, he tried to take down the school server. it is the "intent" and actually going thru with the plan that got him in trouble. now, during the prosecution phase, perhaps they can look at his method and reduce the charge.

 

[The Batt?sai]

:shocked:truly pathethic. we prosecute kids for things like this, and in our wonderful 'use' of time its no wonder we haven't bee able to catch Osama.

Sweked sensibilities people

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: quasarsky
:shocked:truly pathethic. we prosecute kids for things like this, and in our wonderful 'use' of time its no wonder we haven't bee able to catch Osama.

Sweked sensibilities people

that's a really long sig

 

[FoBoT]

your title is misleading

 

[SupaDupaCheez]

I saw this on the local news (Cleveland) and they said that the kid wrote some kind of program (i'm thinking script) and then told others how to execute the 'script' to bring down the server.

If he did write some sort of script to make that happen then I agree that he should be charged with a felony (shows that he knew EXACTLY what he was doing).

If he didn't write a script, then he could argue that he 'heard about this' on the internet and just wanted to see what would happen (or some other equally lame excuse). In that case....no felony. As punishment, the school should allow the students to throw all of their food on the floor (instead of a garbage can) on day where mashed potatos are on the menu and make him clean it up. He would probably think twice before doing that type of thing again.

I may be wrong though. Local News in Cleveland hasn't proven itself reliable to any degree in the past few years.

 

[JujuFish]

So, if I tell people to go streaking in front of the police department, I'll get in trouble? The kid didn't force others to do it, they did it of their own volition.

 

[Cawchy87]

That school is stupid... and now it is slashdotted. Good.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: SupaDupaCheez
I saw this on the local news (Cleveland) and they said that the kid wrote some kind of program (i'm thinking script) and then told others how to execute the 'script' to bring down the server.

If he did write some sort of script to make that happen then I agree that he should be charged with a felony (shows that he knew EXACTLY what he was doing).

If he didn't write a script, then he could argue that he 'heard about this' on the internet and just wanted to see what would happen (or some other equally lame excuse). In that case....no felony. As punishment, the school should allow the students to throw all of their food on the floor (instead of a garbage can) on day where mashed potatos are on the menu and make him clean it up. He would probably think twice before doing that type of thing again.

I may be wrong though. Local News in Cleveland hasn't proven itself reliable to any degree in the past few years.

Oddly, people here have written similar scripts to continuously refresh web pages - (generally for contests that allow you to vote as often as you like) - is that a felony? Wow, I voted several thousand times for some stupid dog... I didn't know I was committing a felony because my voting would have slowed down their server. For what it's worth, you can download an extension for fiirefox that refreshes automatically at some interval.

 

[Juno]

his address is posted on the website.

blackmail him, perhaps? 😀

 

[oogabooga]

Originally posted by: Cawchy87
That school is stupid... and now it is slashdotted. Good.

yes, the ironing is delicious...

"you used up our bandwidth"
now we are on slashdot
omgwtfbbq.