[ale] [OT] RIP Aaron Swartz

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Sun, 2013-01-20 at 10:40 -0500, Jay Lozier wrote:
> On 01/20/2013 03:02 AM, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> > On 01/19/2013 07:27 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> >> 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.
> >>
> > Haven't yet read the proposed bill, but I support the idea wholeheartedly.
> >
> > 	--- Mike
> >
> The reports indicate that one reading of the CFAA, the act used to 
> charge Aaron, allows prosecutors to charge someone for serious computer 
> crimes if one violates the TOS agreement. Apparently Aaron only violated 
> the MIT and JSTOR TOS when he did the downloads and did not actually 
> break into the system from the outside.

According to this article, they were threatening him with 13 felon
counts over what they believed amounted to a "prank".  While Ortez NOW
claims they were not seeking the maximum, they, none the less,
threatened him with the maximum of 35 years in jail for this "prank"
using a theory that has already been rejected on the Federal Appellate
Court level and they would not take a reduced sentence plea unless he
plead guilty to all 13 felony counts...

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/01/carmen-ortiz-strikes-out/

> The complaint with Ortiz is that she does not or refuses to acknowledge 
> the difference between violating a TOS and hacking. She used a mid 
> 1980's law intended to protect against hacking for a TOS violation. 
> Unfortunately the law was never amended to exclude TOS and related 
> violations. According to Ortiz most computer users are felons waiting to 
> be charged because they violated their TOS at some - hopefully the 
> statute of limitations has run out.
> 
> Another issue Aaron's death raises is that some slimey prosecutors abuse 
> the system to coerce a guilty plea by abusing plea bargaining and 
> prosecutorial discretion. Aaron was charged under an outdated law so 
> that Ortiz could get a felony conviction against the "notorious hacker".
> 
> -- 
> Jay Lozier
> jslozier at gmail.com
> 
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-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
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