The Young Turks

Basically, this guy was trying to track down spammers and executed commands which tell a domain name server (the computers that take, for example, "www.theyoungturks.com" and turn them into IP addresses that computers understand) to dump all its records for turning names into numbers.  This command is A) part of the specification for DNS servers and B) entirely possible to turn off by a system administrator with half a brain in his or her head.  This is often a necessary operation to perform in the course of daily business anyway, for example if you run your own DNS server and need to populate your own DNS databases with information.

The judge decided that this backbone operation of the internet is now illegal.

http://www.circleid.com/pos ts/811611_david_ritz_court_ spam/

Imbecilic statements by The Right Honorable Idiot Queen in charge of this court:

To find all access "authorized" which is successful would essentially turn the computer crime laws of this country upside down.

Wrong.  This is true for private data, NOT for data which is considered (or in fact, in this case, MUST BE) public.

Something really needs to be done about people in government who have NO CLUE about what they are purportedly in charge of.