[ale] [OT] RIP Aaron Swartz

[Jim Kinney]

There is a Senator introducing a bill to return TOS violations back to the
realm of contract law and away criminal law. It's being call Aaron's Law.
On Jan 19, 2013 6:11 PM, "Jay Lozier" <jslozier at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 01/19/2013 04:57 PM, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
>
>> On 01/12/2013 10:54 PM, Tim Watts wrote:
>>
>>> I don't contend that the prosecutor could have / should have foreseen
>>> this outcome.  What sickens me is the enormous talent we've lost because
>>> of a prosecutor with no sense of proportion.  Even if Mr. Swartz hadn't
>>> killed himself would it really have been necessary to waste such a
>>> talent with a 35 year sentence for a single misguided prank?  Even
>>> JSTOR, the victim, declined to press charges for his crime and asked the
>>> feds to drop it.  The federal prosecutor's name is Carmen Ortiz if
>>> anyone's interested.
>>>
>> Since I learned of this it has been something that I have continued to
>> think about.
>>
>> Looking at the application of the CFAA-1986 over the years, there seems
>> to be a trend of lesser severity crimes being met with harsher and
>> harsher sentences.  It really is insane.  You often get less time for
>> the careless operation of a motor vehicle that leads to a loss of life
>> than you could for walking into an unlocked closet, hooking up a network
>> connection and sucking bits across a network?
>>
>> I mean, seriously, I don't care what the information is---how is it that
>> it could possibly warrant such harsh penalties?  How is that not "cruel
>> and unusual" punishment?
>>
>> What a damned shame.
>>
>>         --- Mike
>>
>>  From the various articles I have read many are questioning this exact
> point and also are criticizing Carmen Ortiz for over-zealous, abusive
> prosecution.
>
> According to the reports, Aaron was only really guilty of a misdemeanor (a
> state charge not federal) and his "felony" was violating the MIT TOS not
> any real hacking. If MIT and JSTOR suffered any "injury" part of the
> problem appears to be their own incompetence and not do to any malicious
> action on Aaron's part.
>
> --
> Jay Lozier
> jslozier at gmail.com
>
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