they should have sentenced him to 25000 kicks in the ass...

There could be additional law suits following. He has obviously broken the copyright laws as that is Microsoft's registered modus operandi.

"The messages claimed there were errors in the Windows registry that could result in data loss or corruption unless fixed immediately."

They should have known Windows would never warn you about this spoils the fun.

Doesn't every windows system have some errors in the registry. I guess calling them critical was deceiving but an alert that said you have errors in your registry would, I assume, be legal.

However in relation to the fine while it is lower than I would like at least it isn't like spammers where you get fined an d still make a profit

fleeced "hundreds" (eg. 300) x $30 = $9,000

$9,000 - $25,000 = -$16,000

But I guess it depends on what 100s mean and also if that was the total number 'fleeced'

I think that would be pronounced "WinPhuck". no?

Woman downloads a few songs and does not remove the seeds from the shared directory, may or may not have actually provided downloads 220,000.00 USD, this scumbag fleeces many out of real money and 25,000.00. Good that AmeriKa has the old priorities .....

IANAL, but isn't it an option for each and every one of the sods "customers" to launch their own trial? I hear "fraud" is a good way in, since it's obvious (in retrospect, or for someone who knows windows), that fraud is what this is.

IIRC, fraud is an offence you get jailtime for. Given that US uses accumulative penalties, that ought to land him quite a vacation.

//Svein

Here's your coat...

Seriously tho.... In this, the age of Spyware and all kinds of nasty shit lurking around every virtual corner just waiting to dupe you into clicking something or just installing it's self on your system... It's a wonder anyone clicked the thing let alone downloaded it!

"Your system is insecure and may crash or destroy your data without warning."

Small print: Not because of a specific fault, just because your OS is pish...

This person has committed a crime that any sensible person would judge to be many many thousands of times worse than the person who merely angered the RIAA, yet was fined 10 times more because the RIAA improperly has more clout through friends in high places than the "real" law enforcement people.

Justice not only has to be seen to be done, it has to be ACTUALLY done and that means wasting less time making an example of very minor offences and spending far more time ensuring that people who commit very very serious crimes such as this are totally deprived of every cent that they have.

Where there's no sense, there's no cents should be the motto of the courts for these serious criminals.

We had to ban this kind of protocol entering our network years ago when we started getting spam net send messages offering us all the chance of getting cheap degrees. Was a bit funny because the spam was being sent to a university network :)

I knew this would bring out the anti-Windows trolls though, have you chumps any idea how tiresome you all are?

"This person has committed a crime that any sensible person would judge to be many many thousands of times worse than the person who merely angered the RIAA"

Spot on!

Rip-off ordinary computer users and make a fortune doing so = slap-on-wrist.

Share a few crap tunes and make no money from it = massive fine.

I note that Orlowski is STILL not permitting comments on his pro-RIAA rants.

sounds like something Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons would use. In fact, wasn't he once "Lionel Hutz aka Miguel Sanchez aka Dr Nguyen van Phuoc"?

I couldn't agree more, especially with the last line.

At least your comment complaining about it got published. Mine got censored.

It's amazing that 70 years after the "war of the worlds" radio show, specifically designed to point out to people that they can't always believe what the electronic box in the corner of the room says, people still believe anything electronics tells them.

Also, I wonder how he was using 'net send', not a windows only command, it started off life in OS/2 I seem to remember. (I might of made that up too...)