It sounds ridiculous but a court in California banned a teen from accessing specific sites on the Internet. A teen named “J.J” had received a stolen motorcycle and was given probation with a number of restrictions on computer usage. The restrictions are so precise that the teen might be left with doing nothing with a computer.
The court ordered that the teen can’t use a computer that contains encryption, hacking, cracking, scanning, stenography, Trojan or virus software. It is up to the teen to risk it using a vulnerable computer or he must first go through a scan of the computer which might take a considerable amount of time?
The bans extend beyond this and ban him from participating in chat rooms, using messengers like Myspace, Facebook etc. J.J. is forbidden to have a MySpace, Facebook or any other social account. The court ordered that J.J. is to only use the computer for school related purposes which has to be done under supervision.
It is amusing to know that J.J. was not charged in any computer crime nor was the computer connected to him recieving the stolen bike.
However the sentence was appealed and the judge removed some of the conditions such as not having Facebook account citing that it seemed as a restriction on free speech.