In this case it seems like they're after him for creating and distributing something that was tailored for criminal use. Do we have any examples where the same laws were used to prosecute people who made multi-purpose tools like debuggers, packet sniffers, key loggers, etc?
Guns have plenty of legitimate uses. Self defense, hunting, and recreation. Guns aren't intended or even primarily purchased and used for criminal purposes. They will probably try to argue this tool was.
I am interested in the legalities of this. There are other areas where legality of a sale is dependent upon the seller's knowledge or beliefs about the buyer's intent. For example, drug paraphernalia… if you sell someone a pipe in Mississippi, and they don't say anything or they mention tobacco, that is fine. However if they said they wanted to use it to smoke cannabis, completing the sale would be distribution of drug paraphernalia, even though it's the same item.
The article says he was selling his software by advertising it as a tool to steal credit card and banking information from people infected by it. There is no legitimate purpose for that.
This is like a gun manufacturer advertising their gun as "Great for robbing liquor stores!"
Those used to be the connotations with the word 'nerd', but they really aren't anymore. Being a 'nerd' is cool these days, and nerd has become a term of endearment.
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This is like a gun manufacturer advertising their gun as "Great for robbing liquor stores!"
What I'm trying to say is, I don't like being called a nerd. Let's stop acting like we don't know it's unpleasant to call/be called a nerd.