A man convicted of illegally uploading movie files is being told by a court that he will have to ditch his Ubuntu Linux operating system and switch to Windows if he wants to use a computer.
Scott McCausland, the ex-admin of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker site that was shut down by the FBI in 2005, pleaded guilty in 2006 to two copyright-related charges and was sentenced to five months imprisonment and five months home confinement after he confessed to uploading copies of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith just before its theatrical release. McCausland has since been released from jail, but the probation service has ordered that his Internet connection is monitored by the US Government to make sure he doesn't do any more pirating.
"No big deal to me; that is part of my sentence," he wrote on his blog. "I am consenting to all of it, but it just so happens that the OS I use might not be supported by the software they use to monitor. So I do not feel (neither does my lawyer) that the government can force me to switch OS."
Unfortunately for him, he still has to serve the probation part of his sentence, which means these unusual measures could be forced upon him.