Intent—Malice

Intent—Malice

Malice means to do harm or a wrongful act. Therefore, it would be a defense to a statute forbidding malicious access to a computer system to prove that the accused did not intend to do harm. South Carolina is the only state that still includes malice as part of its definition of computer crime. South Carolina's law provides it is unlawful for any person to willfully, knowingly, maliciously, and without authorization or for an unauthorized purpose to access a computer for fraudulent purposes or to alter or otherwise destroy a computer.FN44

To eliminate the requirement of malice, some statutes have been drafted that explicitly punish non-malicious access. New Jersey, for example, includes a provision defining as a "disorderly person" one who "purposely and without authorization accesses a computer and this action does not result in the altering, damage, or destruction of any property or services."FN45 California also eliminated the malice requirement. California's computer crime law prohibits knowingly accessing and without permission altering, damaging, deleting, destroying, or otherwise using any data, computer, computer system, or computer network in order to either devise or execute any scheme or artifice to defraud, deceive, or extort or to wrongfully control or obtain money, property, or data.FN46