Even those who wanted Morris prosecuted say he ended up with too steep a punishment, especially given how mild his worm was compared to the attacks the Internet now faces daily. "Considering what others have done since then, I think the penalty he got was too harsh. It might have been better off prosecuted as a misdemeanor," Spafford says. "I think he should even be considered for a pardon because since then he's done nothing in his career to take advantage or to gain stature from the incident. He was contrite. . . . He has gone on to have a productive career."

Internet security experts say the reason for their lack of lingering anger with Morris is that he didn't mean to cause the Internet so much harm. "Morris' motive was to show there were security problems on the Internet that needed to be taken seriously, but he didn't do the arithmetic right on the exponential growth" of the worm he developed, Bellovin says.

"I don't think anyone believed that Robert was trying to destroy the Internet," Allman says. "He was young, he was a student, and he screwed up. Most of us screw up when we are young, but our screw-ups didn't make the front page of The New York Times."