Regardless of the purpose of the scan, no inherent damage was caused. The suit should have never even been brought to trial.

Making port scanning illegal based on the assumption that the person doing it may or may not have ill gotten intentions is ludicrous. Purpose should not be guessed at, or punished based on belief on intentions. That is equivalent to suing a person for intent to break into a car because they have a coat hanger with them. Until the actual event occurs, nothing illegal has taken place.

If someone is serious about hacking into a system, they will do a lot more than just a simple port scan. They should be punished for an actual breech, not something so basic as a ping.

Port Scanning itself does have a viable business use. Data Security Analyst use that among many other methods of integrity testing. Making it illegal would make their jobs harder, and hackers will ill gotten intentions jobs a lot easier. As the saying goes: "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns".

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