Caution Smallpox Researchers Seek Help From Millions of Computer Users

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From:
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 13:26:10 -0800
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Smallpox Researchers Seek Help From Millions of Computer
Users

Dave, please remove my email address if you distribute this to the list.

This article from the NYTimes may be doing a serious disservice to a lot
of people, not to mention the entire program.  There has been at least
one recent high-profile case of litigation over using distributed
processing clients like this (the 2001 Georgia case where David McOwen
was charged by the state with theft of computing resources for
installing the distributed.net client program on a number of lab
machines -- see e.g. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1782050.stm>
or <http://www.freemcowen.com/> for more on this case).  I'd hate to see
lots of office-type people sign up with grid.org only to run afoul of
their employers' usage policies.  And I'm very disappointed that the
NYTimes didn't feel this issue important enough to comment on.  (I bet
they ran some articles on it at the time though.)

Folks, if you want to participate in this program, *make sure* it's
allowed first.




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