If he had accidentally written sloppy code that happened to break periodically would that have been illegal? I don’t fully understand what law he broke and how such a law would not also apply to the seemingly infinite cases of built in obsolescence.
The damage was intentional (i.e., not an accident).
If he had intentionally created a spaghetti code mess that just happened to break from time to time would that be different? I assume intention is difficult to prove in court but I am not an attorney.
Clearly, yes. Here Siemens decided to go to court because it was obviously malicious code. With a spaghetti mess they would just have hired someone else to clean it.
18 USC 1030, or:
> > intentional damage to a protected computer
I think this might explain a few things I have seen or heard about in my life.