

How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz — And Us - coloneltcb
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/everyone-interesting-is-a-felon.html

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imuakame
"In another time, a man with Swartz’s dark drive would have headed to the
frontier. Perhaps he would have ventured out into the wilderness, like T. E.
Lawrence or John Muir, or to the top of something death-defying, like Reinhold
Messner or Philippe Petit. Swartz possessed a self-destructive drive toward
actions that felt right to him, but that were also defiant and, potentially,
law-breaking. Like Henry David Thoreau, he chased his own dreams, and he was
willing to disobey laws he considered unjust."

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jerrya
Computers, communications, and various corrupting incentives have made it easy
and painless for government organizations to hammer the protruding nail.

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coloneltcb
"We can rightly judge a society by how it treats its eccentrics and deviant
geniuses—and by that measure, we have utterly failed"

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wanderingstan
What punishment would Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have faced for their
illegal phone activities, if today's laws were in place then? Seems that Ortiz
could have gone after them for more than even 35 years.

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rprasad
According to the WSJ, about 6-7 months, which is what the prosecutor actually
sought against Swartz. 35 years was the maximum potential prison sentence
allowed by the law; it was _not_ the prison sentence that the prosecutors were
seeking.

