Sometimes, all the evidence is just wrong. In a bizarre case, a man was accused of downloading and storing child pornography. Not me, he cried, and $250,000 later he was exonerated.
What happened? His laptop had taken on a virus, and began to visit 40 porn sites a minute, something that even the most horny 13-year-old lad could not accomplish. The porn flowed in, and his boss began to wonder. Why was his machine sucking so much bandwidth?
A cursory poke around the machine found quite an amount of child pornography. Not good for any career, and punishable by up to 5 years in prison. A felony.
The man and his wife, facing endless social pressure, intimidation, even tire slashing, fought and fought the case. They sold things, took a second mortgage, and after eleven months, bucked the case.
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It turns out that having a virus is no cause for imprisonment. The family however is crushed, losing all their financial stability, and the job of the husband. They cannot find a lawyer to allow them to sue the state, given caps on possible settlements.
This is the darker side of the internet. Before we devolve into Mac/PC disputes (I do not want to see one “should have bought a Mac” comment), this is a serious issue that affects millions. Microsoft needs to move to make their new, great, and not-quite-popular-enough anti-virus software into something that all PC’s have, pronto.
Some major effort needs to made to deploy it across the PC using world. This sort of thing is avoidable, and cheaply. To make an unfair, poor comparison, we need a new Salk to step forward. Can’t we move past viruses?
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