http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...anguage=printer

What should be done with him? I am in favor of corporal punishment


Edited to fix spelling and grammar in order to clarify debate question -J

If their is evidence he did it, and if he did, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. if he caused monetary damage over 500 dollars, he should be charged with felonies. and he should be sent to prison. as should all virus and worm writers.

If he killed anyone with his worm, then he should go to jail. But if he's so young to be smart enough to try to cripple the interent, then the CIA will probably hire him as a hacker to get into foriegn gov't files or to cripple a nation's computer system.

Some guy from Queens steals a $50 VCR and he goes to jail. Some punk kid caused thousands of dollars in damage and he gets a job? We should get the guy from Queens to steal Bin Laden's VCR! He should go to real jail, not Club Fed, for a long time.

He should be charged with terrorism and have the book thrown at him.

There are a few skilled virus writers out there who actually create the underlying technology, but the majority of viruses you and I would see or hear about are created by unskilled "script kiddies" who just point-and-click their way through a kit created by someone else. There's every reason to believe that the 18-year-old in question is in the second group, and not worth hiring for much of anything.

It doesn't take a lot of skill to create a virus like this, based off another one that already existed. It also doesn't take a lot of skill to throw rocks through windows. In both cases - and there's really very little difference - the perpetrator should be prosecuted and jailed for the damage they do.