trojan horses, or work mischief of a less serious sort by changing user names or passwords. Network intrusions have been made illegal by the U.S. federal government, but detection and enforcement are difficult. Limitations with the law as it is currently written can be seen upon examining Kevin Mitnick's recent plea bargain, wherein there is little connection between his final plea and the crimes he allegedly committed.Industrial espionageCorporations, like governments, love to spy on the enemy. Networked systems provide new opportunities for this, as hackers-for-hire retrieve information about product development and marketing strategies, rarely leaving behind any evidence of the theft. Not only is tracing the criminal labor-intensive, convictions are hard to obtain when laws are not written with electronic theft in mind.Software piracyAccording to estimates by the U.S. Software Publisher's Association, as much as $7.5 billion of American software may be illegally copied and distributed annually worldwide. These copies work as well as the originals, and sell for significantly less money. Piracy is relatively easy, and only the largest rings of distributors are usually caught. Moreover, software pirates know that they are unlikely to serve hard jail time when prisons are overcrowded with people convicted of more serious crimes. From the legal perspective, prosecutors in the Dave LaMacchia case found that matching charges to an alleged crime was not an easy task. Child pornographyThis is one crime that is clearly illegal, both on and off the Internet. Crackdowns may catch some offenders, but there are still ways to acquire images of children in varying stages of dress and performing a variety of sexual acts. Legally speaking, people who use or provide access to child porn face the same charges whether the images are digital or on a piece of photographic paper. Trials of network users arrested in a recent FBI bust may challenge the valid...
