The Miami Herald Technology Law Column.(Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News)

Oct. 9--COMPUTER CRIME: CHANGING THE PUBLIC'S PERCEPTION: You remember Jonathan James? He made national news a couple of weeks ago. You know, he's that nice 16-year-old young man convicted of hacking into computers at the Pentagon, NASA, BellSouth, the Miami-Dade school system and many other places. That's pretty funny. Right?

Can you imagine that some nasty judge put him in jail? Young Jonathan put it so well when he said, "I don't think they should be putting a kid in jail because he proved they don't have very good security."

Fortunately, poor misunderstood Jonathan didn't delete files or infect any computers with viruses while he was engaged in his youthful mischief. As his father put it, "All he did was go look …