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Robert Tappan Morris conviction upheld According to today's N.Y. Times, a federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of Robert Tappan Morris. The original conviction was for violating federal computer crime statutes that restrict unauthorized entry into federal computers. In his appeal, Morris argued that because he had had legitimate accounts on Cornell University computers, he had been authorized to use special mailing programs that transfer documents within networks. In denying that appeal on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in New York, said he had exceeded his authorization in using the nationwide computer network. Copying an encrypted password file in most vanilla Unix systems requires no authorization.