🚀 go-pugleaf

Ian Farquhar (munnari!mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au!ifarqhar@uunet.UU.NET)
has posted two notes here recently claiming that the AIDS trojan was a
copy protection scheme.  This has not been a popular idea among
respondents, but they have mostly been addressing themselves to the
immorality of trashing someone's hard disk and the lack of the
promised remedy after "registration".

I think that a more damning feature of the AIDS program is that it
would give the victim some "free" reboots if he would carry it to
another computer and infect it.  While this could be construed by some
(like Mr. Farquhar, no doubt) as being analogous to the incentives
offered by book clubs for enrolling new members (sign up a friend, get
a free book), this to me seems clear evidence that the intent was
malign (as if more evidence is really necessary).  In particular, the
new victims were not necessarily given the benefit of reading the
"license agreement" as the original recipient was.

In any case, Mr. Farquhar is either being intentionally dense to
provoke arguments, or he has some bone to pick with commercial
software vendors that use copy protection and hopes to cast them in a
negative light by associating them with this scam.  I personally don't
see any reason why someone who is clearly responsible for this trojan
wouldn't get convicted, as the overwhelming evidence is that this was
extortion.

					jrbd