Scott McClausland, ex-administrator of the Elite Torrents Bit Torrent tracker, is obviously feeling some loss with the recent judgment against him. It's not for the charges of ‘conspiracy to commit copyright infringement’ and ‘criminal copyright infringement’ to which he had pleaded guilty. Certainly the five months in jail and five months house arrest do hurt. But for a judge to take away his Linux box, it's a violation of near unimaginable proportions.

It all began with the uploaded copy of 'Star Wars: Episode III' he had beamed onto the Internet mere hours before the official theatrical release. The video in question was of production quality, but with the time stamp and edit makers still in place. Essentially, it was of DVD quality but with some edit fields showing. The video was good, the movie was bad and the penalty was worse.

As a part of his probation, a judge ordered that his Internet connection be monitored for any illicit file transfers of a copyright infringing nature. Only problem being that McClausland prefers Linux (no word what distro he favors though). Unfortunately, the US Government has no method what so ever to track penguin foot prints. All of their snooping software can only peek into Windows. 

McClausland has been in consultation with his lawyers as to this form of cruel and unusual punishment, indicating that the forced shift to Windows will require him to purchase expensive software that he cannot afford whilst being unemployed.

Perhaps his lawyers could get the 'No Linux for you' sentence lifted. If not, then shouldn't the state be financially responsible to see that he adheres to the terms of his probation. To do so he would probably need a Quad Core system (Windows is slow and extra power helps), 2 gigs of really fast memory (Windows is a memory hog), the latest (and most expensive) version of MS Office to replace OpenOffice, and a couple grand worth of games to.