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Behold, The Great Worm of yore! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#Criminal_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#Crim

Behold, The Great Worm of yore! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#Criminal_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#Criminal_... (I thought of the first computer-aided fatality, but the sources don't seem to mention any prosecution w/r/t Therac-25)

ajross 9y ago
No, the Morris worm was criminal even if it didn't kill systems. The fact that it was accidentally killing systems surely changed the prosecutorial decisionmaking, but it wasn't relevant to the case itself. Morris was prosecuted for penetrating and abusing systems he didn't own, not for a bug in software that would have been non-criminal if it worked properly.