College Confidential - View Single Post - Your child could be arrested at college! Life ruined.

calmom · 07-21-2005, 09:17 PM

I, too, am skeptical -- but I'd like to point out that no one's life is "ruined" because of an arrest. If the story is anything close to what you say it is, the charges would never stand up in court - at worst it would be a minor offense that probably would result in payment of a fine. At worst, he probably could be convicted of violation of S 156.05 of the NY State Penal law - Unauthorized Use of a Computer - which is a Class A Misdemeanor. See:
http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=82&a=35

So let's not get too excited over this. Either the case is going to be dropped or else the kid is going to end up with consequences which bear a reasonable relationship to the offense that he actually committed (as opposed to the one that you "heard" about) ... and presumeably he will learn from the experience.... but again, his life is not "ruined" because he got caught at whatever it is he really was doing. The issue probably is not the use of the file-sharing program, but rather what he was trying to share with it - he was probably trying to use it to access & distribute copyrighted material.

07-21-2005, 09:17 PM	#9
calmom Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 6,419	I, too, am skeptical -- but I'd like to point out that no one's life is "ruined" because of an arrest. If the story is anything close to what you say it is, the charges would never stand up in court - at worst it would be a minor offense that probably would result in payment of a fine. At worst, he probably could be convicted of violation of S 156.05 of the NY State Penal law - Unauthorized Use of a Computer - which is a Class A Misdemeanor. See: http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=82&a=35 So let's not get too excited over this. Either the case is going to be dropped or else the kid is going to end up with consequences which bear a reasonable relationship to the offense that he actually committed (as opposed to the one that you "heard" about) ... and presumeably he will learn from the experience.... but again, his life is not "ruined" because he got caught at whatever it is he really was doing. The issue probably is not the use of the file-sharing program, but rather what he was trying to share with it - he was probably trying to use it to access & distribute copyrighted material.
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