High School Student Michael Stone Arrested for Encouraging People to Hit F5   1/10/2006 - 1,300 views, 5 Comments

Yes, that’s right. Michael Stone has been arrested, just months before he was to graduate from Lake High School, for encouraging people to press the F5 key on their computer. :gasp:

Now, of course, there is a bit more to the story than that, but depending on how you look at it, perhaps not much. You see, on many computer systems, and certainly Windows computer systems, F5 is the ‘refresh’ key.

Yes, it’s true. Michael Stone was arrested for encouraging people to refresh their screens.

When viewing his school’s - Lake High School - website.

Now, it’s also true that he encouraged a lot of people to do it, sharing his encouragement on blogs and in chat rooms. It’s said that he wanted to see if a computer system could be crashed merely by people doing screen refreshes.

Stone will never get the chance to find out, because the school noticed when the computer system started slowing down, and their IT person figured out what was going on. Whew, good thing!

Still, the school was not amused. And neither was Frank Forchione, the prosecutor who filed charges against Michael this past week.

Said Forchione, “Michael said it was a joke. We showed him how we deal with this kind of joke.”

Wow, aren’t you a big tough guy, Frank?

Added Ferocious Forchione, “This new technology has created a whole wave of crimes, and we’re just trying to find ways to solve them.”

Oh c’mon, you know that the word he actually used was “new-fangled”, but some kind editor decided to take pity on him.

On the other hand, I’m thinking of moving to Lake Township. It’s obviously a very safe place to live and raise a family, if the worst crime they have to worry about and focus on is some kid having people refresh their computer screens.

Anyways, back to Michael Stone, who has been charged with a felony for slowing down his school’s computer system. (As one observer commented, “This school must have a pretty bad webserver if simply clicking on refresh brings the server to its knees.”)

So what will happen to Michael? Nobody really knows. Because he’s being charged with a felony count of “disrupting public services”, and because he is 18, he could actually be facing jail time, although insiders believe that he will likely get away with doing public service and probation.

And I’m guessing that this ordeal will be the most education he’s ever received from Lake High School.