A MAN convicted and fined after hacking the City of Ballarat and Golden Plains Shire data networks abandoned an appeal yesterday after being told he risked a jail sentence.In the County Court Judge Sue Pullen said a message needed to be sent to the community that people who used the internet to illegally access organisations were creating a serious risk.In April, Bradley David Ward, 22, of Ballarat pleaded guilty and was fined $6000 on two charges of intentionally causing unauthorised access to restricted data.He was appealing the size of the fine and the conviction.Hamish Locke, for Ward, said his client had suffered a “naive excitement” in accessing the networks via a laptop in his bedroom, and had gone directly to one of the victims over the matter.He said Ward had accessed the sites on August 20 last year, then approached Ballarat councillor Craig Fletcher on August 21 during a post-election party.Ward was later telephoned by council officer Annie de Jong and invited to meet with council staff.The court was told a forensic examination of Ward’s laptop revealed he was connected to the networks for more than three hours, and several confidential council documents were downloaded.Mr Locke said the documents were not confidential but freely available on the councils’ publicly-accessed websites.“His ultimate motives were altruistic accompanied by some unbelievable sticky-beaking,” Mr Locke said.“Mr Ward was excited by what he was doing but coupled with that, he has gone to council and told them what he was doing.“The thing that is missing is malicious intent.”But Judge Pullen said she was “very surprised” a term of imprisonment had not been imposed.“At first blush, you might think $6000, gosh, that’s a lot,” she said.“But when you hear about the facts of the matter, which are not in dispute, it’s a whole different ball game.“Frankly, I think your client had a good day.”Judge Pullen said the offending involved two different organisations, repeated access, knowledge that Ward knew he shouldn’t be doing it and “bragging” about it to a councillor.“The fact that the community is so concerned about it doesn’t surprise me,” Judge Pullen said.“The need for general deterrance is enormous in this case.”