What Constitues a Computer Crime?

What constitutes a computer crime?

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has defined computer crime as "any violation of criminal law that involved the knowledge of computer technology for its perpetration, investigation, or prosecution." Others define computer crime as the deliberate action to steal, damage, or destroy computer data without any authorization, and which also includes accessing a computer system and/or account without authorization.

Based on my opion, a computer crime constitutes any of the following acts:

-The action is done to do harm to others
-The action results to personal/group/corporate damage
-The action is done without the victim's knowledge or consent
-The action is done for personal reasons
-The actor of the crime knows that he is not authorized to do so, but still knowingly accesses or causes any computer system to be accessed without authorization

Check out some example of real world computer crimes:

A former employee of Viewsonic was sentenced to one year for hacking into his company's computer, destroying data
A man previously employed at the Walnut office of the Viewsonic Corporation was sentenced last February 23, 2004 to one year in prison for hacking into the company's computer system and wiping out critical data. the lost files rendered the server inoperative, and Viewsonic's Taiwan office was unable to access important data for several days.

A Louisiana man got arrested for releasing the 911 worm to WebTV users
FBI agents arrested a Louisiana man last February 18, 2004 for sending an e-mail to certain users of a WebTV service that, once opened, reprogrammed their computers to dial "9-1-1" instead of a local Internet access telephone number. The 9-1-1 calls caused by the e-mail resulted in the dispatch of police in locations from New York to California.

Mr. Heckenkamp's pleads guilty to gaining unauthorized access and recklessly damaging computers of several high-technology companies including eBay and Qualcomm from his graduate school dorm room
The United States Attorney's Offices for the Northern and Southern Districts of California announced that Jerome T. Heckenkamp of Los Angeles, pled guilty last January 29, 2004 in federal court in San Jose to gaining unauthorized access and recklessly damaging computer systems of several high-technology companies, including eBay in San Jose and Qualcomm in San Diego.
Mr. Heckenkamp admitted that he gained unauthorized access to eBay computers during February and March 1999. Through this unauthorized access, he admitted that he defaced an eBay Web page using the name "MagicFX," and installed "trojan" computer programs on the eBay computers so that it secretly captures usernames and passwords that he later used to gain unauthorized access into other eBay computers.