Criminal Law in Cyberspace Page 9 be configured to prevent repeated password entry attempts for sensitive websites or could be coded to prevent certain forms of encryption This Article suggests the presence of two other constraints, physical harm and monetary cost The risk of physical harm in committing a crime is a rather obvious constraint, and one that is generally lower with computer crime as compared to realspace crime. Monetary costs, by contrast, are not thought of by criminal scholars as a deterrent, and this is unfortunate. One reason why computer crime is so dangerous is because it is so cheap to perpetrate The legal system, I contend, should rely more on perpetration costs. After all, unlike the probabilistic specter of legal sanction, these costs are certain to be incurred by all who commit a crime In some ways, the legal systems current focus on legal sanction at the expense of monetary costs is ironic. Criminals tend to be gamblers- willing to speculate on the chance that they will not be caught and vet the conventional wisdom is to set up a parlor from which to conduct the wager instead of relying on a certain perpetration cost. Governments use the threat of jail time to deter offenses when they know that the bulk of offenders discount the threat of long jail sentences because they have many years to live due to their youth. The lack of high perpetration costs is one factor that explains the rise in cybercrime. Indeed, the fact that crime is cheap to commit weakens the power of social norms, the ease of, for example, copying a Cd leads many to think of it as not a serious crime Monetary costs in short may deter a different stratum of the population than might law enforcement-those with less money. Suppose, for example, that the majority of hackers are teenagers. Teenagers, with their small wallets and purses, might be particularly sensitive to strategies that increase the monetary costs of crime. If dangerous software programs such as hackers tools were expensive, or if sensitive websites charged low admissions fees, these forms of regulation may deterCriminal Law in Cyberspace Page 9 be configured to prevent repeated password entry attempts for sensitive websites or could be coded to prevent certain forms of encryption. This Article suggests the presence of two other constraints, physical harm and monetary cost. The risk of physical harm in committing a crime is a rather obvious constraint, and one that is generally lower with computer crime as compared to realspace crime. Monetary costs, by contrast, are not thought of by criminal scholars as a deterrent, and this is unfortunate. One reason why computer crime is so dangerous is because it is so cheap to perpetrate. The legal system, I contend, should rely more on perpetration costs. After all, unlike the probabilistic specter of legal sanction, these costs are certain to be incurred by all who commit a crime. In some ways, the legal system’s current focus on legal sanction at the expense of monetary costs is ironic. Criminals tend to be gamblers -- willing to speculate on the chance that they will not be caught – and yet the conventional wisdom is to set up a parlor from which to conduct the wager instead of relying on a certain perpetration cost. Governments use the threat of jail time to deter offenses when they know that the bulk of offenders discount the threat of long jail sentences because they have many years to live due to their youth. The lack of high perpetration costs is one factor that explains the rise in cybercrime. Indeed, the fact that crime is cheap to commit weakens the power of social norms; the ease of, for example, copying a CD leads many to think of it as not a serious crime. Monetary costs in short may deter a different stratum of the population than might law enforcement – those with less money. Suppose, for example, that the majority of hackers are teenagers. Teenagers, with their small wallets and purses, might be particularly sensitive to strategies that increase the monetary costs of crime. If dangerous software programs such as hackers’ tools were expensive, or if sensitive websites charged low admissions fees, these forms of regulation may deter