Thoughtcrime, fine, but Windows? The horror!

Another day, another ridiculous copyright-related story that is a testament to how our government and its Big Media puppeteers are ruining peoples lives. This one comes courtesy of the lovely Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005. It makes the innocuous act of turning on anything capable of recording multimedia (your phone or camcorder today, perhaps your cuff links tomorrow at the rate technology is getting more portable and powerful) punishable by three to six years in prison. Nice.

Today's unlucky soul is an ex-administrator of a BitTorrent tracker who pled guilty to counts of ‘conspiracy to commit copyright infringement’ (Thoughtcrime, anyone?) and ‘criminal copyright infringement.’ This meant some jail time for him, followed by some ankle-bracelet accompaniment following. Now the government wants to monitor him even more, tracking his internet and computer usage. But, wait! It gets worse:

"'I had a meeting with my probation officer today, and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me, that is part of my sentence. However, their software doesnt (sic) support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on.' ...
Sk0t is left with a tough choice. Give in to the evils of the monitoring software, format his hard drive and install Windows - or be barred from using a PC completely."