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World's Toughest Cyber Law on Trial in Romania
Tue Mar 23, 2004 11:00 AM ET
The repeated outbreak of Internet viruses has triggered a call for swift and unflinching justice from business officials, law enforcement officers and the public alike.
Romanian authorities say tough justice is required.
"I don't think he realized he could be tracked down," said Mihai Radu, a spokesman for Romanian anti-virus firm BitDefender. "He played with fire and got burned."
With public thirst for cybercrime justice growing, experts wonder what impact a potential stiff sentence on Ciobanu will have on deterring a growing underground of virus writers.
"It would be odd to set these laws and then be lenient with them," said Dan Williamson, Ireland and United Kingdom sales director for security out-sourcing firm Ubizen (UBIZ.BR: Quote, Profile, Research) . "That would send the wrong message."
Elsewhere in the world though, courts have been lenient on virus writers on the rare occasions when they get caught.
"There is still a sympathetic view of the hacker and virus writer," said Jonathan Sellors, head of the intellectual property practice at London law firm Lawrence Graham. "Generally, that view has carried into the judicial system." (Additional reporting by Gabriela Dobos in Iasi)
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