[Southack]

"Nobody should ever have the right to enter your computer without a court order. If there's a malicious process on your box, it should be shut down by legal means only."

Who says that it is legal or illegal?

Machines themselves have no rights. IF the owner of the machine claims a malicious process, then that owner would have the right for her machine to not be trespassed (and also would be a likely target for jail), but if the owner of the machine makes no such claim (the odds on favorite since making such a claim would send you to jail), then the rogue process in question has no legal owner.

Without a legal owner, and since machines themselves have no legal rights, who is to say whether or not someone being attacked by that rogue process can shut it down or not?

[TechJunkYard]

Without a legal owner, and since machines themselves have no legal rights, who is to say whether or not someone being attacked by that rogue process can shut it down or not?

Someone owns that box. Someone paid for it to be hooked to the net and someone is paying for the bandwidth. There are ways to get these folks' attention; if a process on the box is messing with other boxes, that alone violates the TOS of just about every ISP or colo that I know of... the box can be disconnected and remain so until it gets cleaned up.

OTOH, if you prefer to take the bull by the horns and invade another box and kill some processes, that action just puts you in legal hot water.

Fence it off and complain to the hostmaster and the ISP.

[Bush2000]

Who says that it is legal or illegal? Machines themselves have no rights.

If you own a machines, it's your property. And like a physical piece of property -- land, a house, etc -- you have the right to enjoy that property without having someone trespass upon it.

IF the owner of the machine claims a malicious process, then that owner would have the right for her machine to not be trespassed (and also would be a likely target for jail), but if the owner of the machine makes no such claim (the odds on favorite since making such a claim would send you to jail), then the rogue process in question has no legal owner.

If someone is trespassing on your property, you have the right to repel them from your property through legal means. You can't go into their house and shoot them simply because they trespass upon you.