Under US law, felons lose many rights afforded to normal citizens. In some states, felons may not vote, own a gun, apply for certain jobs and now, in the case of one Scott McCausland, might be banned from using any operating system but Microsoft Windows.
McCausland (aka sk0t of the EliteTorrents torrent tracking site) pleaded guilty a year ago to two charges related to illegally uploading ‘Star Wars Episode III’ onto the internet prior to its official release. He was jailed for five months and upon release was given an ankle tag which monitors whether his behaviour is within the terms of his parole.
Another condition of his five months ‘home confinement’ is that he must have his computer use monitored to ensure that he’s not up to his old tricks again. Unfortunately for Scott, who normally uses Ubuntu Linux, the software which is used for this monitoring is only compatible with Microsoft Windows. So effectively, the terms of his parole force him either to stop using computers all together, or to spend around $200 on a new operating system – in addition to all the other GNU and free software he’d have to replace. Speaking to the website TorrentFreak, Scott said:
I think that this whole situation is just one more way that they can impose their will onto me. I have contacted my attorney, and we are going to fight this. It isn’t the fact that I have to be monitored that bothers me, it is the fact that I have restructure my life (different OS, different software on that OS) and that they would require (force) me to purchase software while I a currently unemployed and relatively unemployable with the 2 felonies that they gave me. It is just a ridiculous situation. Why should I conform to them when I am consenting to the software… they should have software that conforms to me.
So is this fair on the man? Obviously it seems unusual that the government should effectively oblige someone to buy a commercial product as one of the terms of his parole. But at the same time (and this does not imply my agreement with the law in the first place), he is a convicted felon. It’s tough on him, obviously, but once convicted under the law he has to pay the price. In many ways, he’s lucky that he’s even allowed to use a computer. I remember plenty of stories about hackers and crackers being banned from the Internet or computers all together. At the same time, there are those who say that the real criminal behind this story is George Lucas… but that’s a debate for another day.
