Mr. McOwen is being sued for running RC5 by St. of Georgia for $415,000. Heres how you can help.

[micjordan]

This was first posted in the topic that the subject originated, http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?start=1&catid=39&threadid=490400, but I felt it needed some more attention because we need to help this guy out.

The basis of the case is that this guy administered some computers at a school he worked for and had installed the distributed.net rc5 program on the computers 2 years ago. The State of Georgia is now suing him for $415,000 including $0.59 per second of bandwidth by the clients.

In response to this I would like everyone to email a letter to my address at aschrader@tech-reviews.com addressed to state officials of Georgia as if you were writing them a letter directly. Since most of these officials do not have email addresses (surprise), I will print out each message and after a few hundred will send them off via postal mail to the each official (governor, attorney general, senators, representatives). I feel that this method will be more effective than email even if email were possible because these people tend to have a trained monkey, umm, I mean secretary that systematically deletes email messages but may pay more attention to a real letter.

Please send the email with the subject line of "Georgia RC5 Case". I hope to have a webpage setup soon where this can be done via form but email will work for now. Some things I would suggest in the email are the following. First of all do not swear as I will probably filter it out or just throw out your message. This only diminishes the cause by making us look like foolish whining children. Secondly please keep the letters at a somewhat professional level so that because of one obnoxious letter they are not all thrown out.

On another note I am also considering setting up a paypal account (or maybe just using mine because it is never used) to take donations to pay for this guys legal fees. Of course any money that did not end up going towards these fees would be returned to everyone in the proportion that they gave.

Perhaps someone else with some legal experience could follow this post up with some advice on how to write this letter to make it most effective. Also, if you have any advice/comments/questions please feel free to email them to me.

-Adam Schrader
aschrader@tech-reviews.com

 

[Thyme]

Original Thread

 

[Picard]

I hope he gets the maximum penalty under the law. Anybody that would take such liberties with other's equipment deserves a lesson.

 

[Mixxen]

<< I hope he gets the maximum penalty under the law. Anybody that would take such liberties with other's equipment deserves a lesson. >>


$0.59 per second...you got to be kidding me if you think that is a good maximum penalty.

 

[Budman]

<< I hope he gets the maximum penalty under the law. Anybody that would take such liberties with other's equipment deserves a lesson. >>



i agree with this statement.

 

[Diffusion]

They are coming down a bit harsh if you ask me, however, he had no right (from what I have read) to be running RC5 on those machines. Personally, I wonder what this has to do with hardware.

 

[Tominator]

Using a computer without permission is wrong!...But! It isn't $415,000 wrong!

If damage or personal gain by misuse was the intent, sure, prosecute by all means, but I see no malicious intent here and the charges are no doubt some kind of 'feeding frenzy' by the FBI and the State of Georgia trying to justify their total incompetence on the subject of 'hacking.'


A 'lesson' would be best served by probation and not the runiation of an otherwise decent person.

 

[drewski]

well, there are a couple of questions here.

1. should he have installed the clients without permission? Answer: no.

2. what was the actual damage done? Answer: very little. the dnet client is set for the lowest priority. any program running will supersede it so it's not going to slow down any processing done. it looks like, from this post, that they want to charge for their internet access time. at a cost of $2,124/hour!! ok let's be realistic here. even if that school system was paying ~$60,000/month for their internet access (which i highly doubt, but i'm not really qualified to talk to the actual costs) i'm sure the bandwidth taken by the clients was minimal.

i think some kinda penalty is justified, but the amount they are looking for seems excessive.

Picard &amp; Budman - have you ever made a personal phone call from work? if so, maybe you should turn yourselves in for unauthorized use of company property!!

 

[Budman]

<< Picard &amp; Budman - have you ever made a personal phone call from work? if so, maybe you should turn yourselves in for unauthorized use of company property!! >>



Yes i have but my phone call didnt add extra heat and shorten cpu life &amp; drive up the electricity bills.

Those high powered servers running at 100% 24/7 must have been sucking the juice up pretty hard.

 

[konichiwa]

Come on, it's not as if he was using these computers to host a warez FTP site, or in a distributed effort to hack into the CIA -- he was doing something educational and related to the advancement of computer sciences. Granted, he didn't have permission to do it and he should be penalized for that, but certainly not $.59/second. How the hell does one even come up with a figure like that? Does that mean that they pay this much for bandwidth:

$.59 /second
x 60 seconds /min
x 60 minutes /hour
x 24 hours /day
x 30 days /month
= $1,529,280/month

1.52 million dollars? Pffft.

 

[agnitrate]

I feel really stupid saying this but, what exactly does distributed.net do? I see most everybody knows what this is except for me. Can someobdy please shed some light on this?

 

[BigToque]

well, how many computers exactly were being used?

trying to keep a bunch of computer rooms at a consistant temp will cost a fair bit more if each computer is putting off about 5-10 degrees celcius more heat from the additional workload.

 

[Diffusion]

Last I read, at his peak, the equivalent of approximatly 400-600 P2 400s. This was 2 years ago, so they were probably a bit slower then that, so there were even more machines.

 

[LuNoTiCK]

But $415,000 is a little excessive. Actually it's rediculously excessive. Besides how long do the schools plan to keep everything, the schools cant keep em for 15 years, they have to keep everything up to specs as much as possible.

 

[NesuD]

seems to me if he had an administrators access and authority that he had the discretion to do it. On the other hand if there was oversight and he did it on the sly then that was wrong but i definately don't see how it was nearly a half a million wrong. If the normal state of those pc's was to be on 24/7 then the power usage is basically a non issue. exactly what amount of bandwidth is really necessary to download and upload a few million blocks i am certain it can't be that much. a million stat units is only around 5.5 meg as i figure it please correct me if i am wrong. Bet there are a few school administrators that email each other pron videos in georgia using more bandwidth than that. Seems like a bunch of hick rednecks trying to make names for themselves in the mobile home parks. Hell 450 times the 5.5 meg of bandwidth only cost me 50 bucks from my internet provider. Bandwidth usage is measured in data transfered not number of hours of available access.

 

[Diffusion]

Looks to me like the University of Colorado still uses 10 year old Solbourne systems (list of sytems), now admitedly, these machines cost a few hundred thousand new, if not more, but many machines do stay in use for a long time. However, it does disprove your theory that systems are not in use for very long.

 

[Dufusyte]

I want to know what RC5 Team this guy was on.

Was he part of the ArtBell RC5 Team? Team LambChop? Is there a Team Anandtech for RC5?

Maybe Georgia can go after the Team Sponsor for some bizarre reason; after all, they inspired him. Shouldn't the Teams make sure that their members are using legal computing power?

I'm just trying to broaden the conspiracy.

 

[SocrPlyr]

whoops

 

[NesuD]

<< Maybe Georgia can go after the Team Sponsor for some bizarre reason; after all, they inspired him. Shouldn't the Teams make sure that their members are using legal computing power? >>





don't even think such a thing that would be a disaster if that happened

 

[MSNY]

I agree with some here that he did wrong and pay for it but $415,000 is not only excessive but will ruin his life forever. Rant on...

I do not justify his actions but...

We have politicians everyday who screw with our tax money and to them this amount is a drop in the bucket to waste. I don't see people taking them to court because of poor judgment ? They get away with it 99% of the time.

We have large businesses that make poor financial decisions and lose millions for investors and lay off people all over the place. But they do it for the &quot;good&quot; of the company. I don't see people taking them to court because of poor judgment ? They get away with it 99% of the time.


We have forgein countries everyday that take huge handouts of aid from the US and p*** it away for there own greedy purposes. I don't see people taking them to court because of poor judgment ? They get away with it 99% of the time.

The problem here is that he is an indivdual who can't pull any strings like the above crooks who make it legit to steal everyday. To them this is kid candy money.

What should the penalty be then ? About $415.00 is about right in my book. When the other above named crooks decide to pay retributions down to the last penny then let's consider doing it to this Jo...until then he should only pay pennies on the dollar if that.

Far after these computers are sitting in some junk yard this poor Jo is still gonna be paying ? Enought ! Unfair !

End rant...

 

[Pabster]

Budman wrote:

&quot;Yes i have but my phone call didnt add extra heat and shorten cpu life &amp; drive up the electricity bills.&quot;

Hmmm, can you say hypocrite?

If you really believe running rc5 low-priority on a couple machines at a school shortened CPU life and raised energy costs (significantly) you are pretty nieve, to say the least.

I certainly agree that he should have obtained permission before installing and running rc5 on those machines; nonetheless, the (attempted) punishment just doesn't fit the crime. I mean, $0.59 per second?

 

[bozo1]

If a firm or a school is going to bring charges against someone doing something unauthorized, they are going to start out sueing for the maximum amount they can justify knowing ahead of time that it will be pared down by the courts or by a plea arrangement. I'll bet they can justify every penny they are sueing for. Many businesses and many schools put a cost against the cost of a computer that they normally charge back to the department in question. This includes cost of the PC, maintenance, software licensing, depeciation, support staff, etc. on top of the simple CAL fee for being on an NT network, accessing a SQL database, Exchange server, Internet connectivity fees, SAP or Oracle licensing (or whatever other large database they are running), electricity, stupid laws saying they have to have this thing and pay taxes on it for 5 years even though we know they have to be replaced every 24-36 months etc., etc., etc. This can easily, in some environments, end up being > $5K-10K+/year based on 8-hours usage a day. Add on top of that the added cost of servers (not a cheap PC in most companies), server room, backup power, raised floors, adequate cooling...

I have a feeling we are not getting the entire story. People do things like this unauthorized all the time and they just get a slap on the wrist - this guy was up to something else I bet or didn't fess up when confronted or had left the school previously under 'suspicious' circumstances or something.

 

[theplanb]

really depends on the number of machines, doesn't it.
I wonder whether he can really pay for it.. if not, what happenes to him?

 

[Budman]

Pabster wrote:





<< Hmmm, can you say hypocrite?

If you really believe running rc5 low-priority on a couple machines at a school shortened CPU life and raised energy costs (significantly) you are pretty nieve, to say the least. >>



Now who's the hypocrite here,the prioroty level of the app has nothing to do with it.

It makes your cpu run 100% all the time STEALING cpu idle time,this way the cpu is never idle (low power mode) and takes up much more power than a idle cpu does.

Now who's being naive now?

 

[pyr]

the heat issue is a HUGE one. Ive noticed a difference in temp running rc5 on just ONE computer in my room from when im not running it. Youd be surprised at the extra air conditioning needed to cool off one room full of computers running RC5. i work in a lab and I know just how hot it can get without the AC running all the time. plus the energy bill for a lab can get HUGE! if he ran rc5 for 2 years, thats a LOT of extra heat, and a LOT of extra electricity. Still, while it is hard to see that they want him to pay that much, he really does deserve to have to pay something for it. Running RC5 on a computer that is not yours is NEVER a good idea. you might as well be siphoning gas out of someones gas tank!