<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%">North Dakota Judge Gets it Wrong</span> Jan 16, 2008 12:17 PM PST | Comments: 11 By Al Iverson ...WAY wrong. This is just mind blowing. Ever been prosecuted for tracking spam? Running a traceroute? Doing a zone transfer? Asking a public internet server for public information that it is configured to provide upon demand? No? Well, David Ritz has. And amazingly, he lost the case. Here are just a few of the gems that the court has the audacity to call ”conclusions of law.” Read them while you go donate to David’s legal defense fund. He got screwed here, folks, and needs your help. “Ritz’s behavior in conducting a zone transfer was unauthorized within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crime Law.” You might not know what a zone transfer is, but I do. It’s asking a DNS server for all the particular public info it provides about a given domain. This is a common task performed by system administrators for many purposes. The judge is saying that DNS zone transfers are now illegal in North Dakota. ....</div> http://www.circleid.com/posts/811611_david_ritz_court_spam
Absolutely freaking ridiculous I guess no companies are now allowed to use the internet in North Dakota
I think you are jumping to conclusions. The rest of the article is important, as well: “Ritz has engaged in a variety of activities without authorization on the Internet. Those activities include port scanning, hijacking computers, and the compilation and publication of Whois lookups without authorization from Network Solutions.” In some cases, a law can be particularly harsh and those responsible for enforcing the laws only promulgate them when it's necessary.
Lacking authorization is a gray area as far as Cyber Crime legislation goes. Were it a case of malicious hacking, it would be clear. But a zone transfer? When you read the Opinion, it's fairly clear that the Judge isn't fully aware of the intricacies of the subject matter, to say the least. While I'm the last person to condone copyright infringement, I disagree with the Court's finding completely. I'll add that what upsets me most about the Opinion (rather than the article analyzing it) is that it takes a ridiculously narrow and one-sided view on a subject that is anything but.
