Several other countries have very similiar laws. However, I had heard a somewhat unproven rumor that a U.S. state had actually made the writing of programs with malicious purposes illegal. Basically meaning that if you write a virus you have committed a crime. Like I said though, this was just a statement in a message so I can't vouch for the accuracy.
Hmm... "malicious purposes".... How would they determine that? Some viruses are clearly designed to be destructive, but some do nothing but replicate. Then there are viruses and worms (like RTM's) that crash systems, but may or may not have been designed to do that. Then there are trojan horses, which look useful, but are designed to crash your machine... Then there are programs that are designed to be useful, but have bugs that will cause your machine to crash. Things are only black and white in lawmaker's dreams. :-/ ===================================================================== | Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/) | | Email: steve@edmweb.com Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ | | PGP Fingerprint: 11 C8 9D 1C D6 72 87 E6 8C 09 EC 52 44 3F 88 30 | | -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, IANAL. -- | ===================================================================:)