Jail time for blaster variant author?

Nickenamed BlasterMaster, a 19-year-old from Minnesota is responsible for creating and releasing a version of the infamous blaster worm. He now faces up to three years in jail and a fine. A sampling of p2pnet comment posts is avaibale here. People who commit violent crimes, or crimes under the threat of violence, drug deallers and drug addicts deserve the death penalty - I shouldn't even call them 'people'. Jails, in their current incarnation only make bad people worse. I don't think that those who commit crimes that don't hurt or threaten the physical wellbeing of another individual should be locked up in cages. Heavy fines and hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of community service are more than lesson enough and are a good deterrent for that kind of people. People like virus writers. This guy didn't even write blaster, he just slapped a backdoor on top of it.