tptacekNov 4
I think the bigger thing was that the Internet just wasn't that big a deal at the time. I got serious access in '93, and into '94-95 there were still netsplits on it (UUNet/NSFNet is the one I remember most). It was a non-remunerative offense, with really unclear intent, that took out a research network. He had good counsel, as you can tell from the reporting about the trial, but the outcome made sense. I doubt his dad had much to do with it.
Show threadlysace

> I think the bigger thing was that the Internet just wasn't that big a deal at the time.

”Computer crime” definitely was though.

Nov 4 at 5:51pmWeb
Show threadmindcrimeNov 4

From what I can remember, while there was some public awareness of "computer crime" by 1988 (War Games helped with that), it wasn't exactly a "big deal" to most people yet. My subjective recollection is that things took a marked turn around 1990, with the advent of "Operation Sundevil"[1], the raid on Steve Jackson Games, etc.

And by the mid to late 90's (I'd say about 1997) it was finally becoming "received wisdom" to most hacker that "this is real now: getting caught doing this stuff could mean actual jail time, fines, not getting into college, losing jobs, etc." Now I grew up in a rural part of NC and so we probably lagged other parts of the country in terms of information dispersal, so I expect other people view the timeline differently, so YMMV.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sundevil

Operation Sundevil - Wikipedia

Show threadtptacekNov 4
Lots of chaos, but just three arrests. Did any of them proceed to full prosecutions? I'm reasonably sure Bruce Esquibel wasn't charged (at least, there's nothing in PACER to say so). I have no idea who "Tony The Trashman" was.
Show threadtptacekNov 4

Ehh? It had only recently been made explicitly criminal by federal statute. If you're thinking of "the Hacker Crackdown" that occurred a few years after the Morris Worm, or of Kevin Mitnick's exploits, it's worth keeping in mind that they were doing pretty crazy shit even relative to today; they were owning up phone switches across the country. And despite that, the penalties were not crazy high.

What you didn't have back then was financial fraud on the scale that happens today, where even nominal damages run into 8-9 figures.