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Thou shalt use Microsoft Windows

Scott McCausland, who was caught, tried and found guilty of distributing p2p access to Star Wars III, only 6 hours before it's opening shows at theatres worldwide, now faces a rather absurd consequence of his sentence. Having just spent 5 months in jail, he's now out on probation. As part of his sentence, he will now have to install monitoring software on his computer, to allow the police to catch any attempts at taking up the old habits of filesharing copyrighted material.

Now, here is the catch: The monitoring software will only run on Microsoft Windows XP. McCausland's preferred operating system thus far has been Linux. But in order to be allowed to use a computer, he will have to have the monitoring software running, as of the conditions of his sentence. As such, he cannot use a computer that does not run Windows XP. Says the law. So, effectively, Scott McCausland has been sentenced to use Windows XP.

How Microsoft responds to having their products used as part of a punishment is, as of yet, still unknown.

For more on this, one can head on over to Scott McCausland's blog.

Source: tech.co.uk