The difference is that when you sit in the street or chain yourself to a tree to stop a construction project or disrupt traffic the general public understands what you're doing. A prosecutor might be able to *try* to press terrorism charges, or some other trumped up nonsense, but at the end of the day enough of the public will understand the story to say "wait. He was just sitting in the street." So the crazy-ass charges won't fly for long.

When you engage in a little hacktivism, though, not enough of the public understands what you've done to protect you from overzealous prosecution. The prosecutor can throw around a few terms like "cyber criminal," "hacking," and "digital crowbar." All of a sudden in the eyes of the majority of the public you're some sort of criminal mastermind, wielding dark arts to bring society to its knees -- even if all your *really* did was essentially run wget on a website.

That's why we need to be more careful in how we craft "cyber crime" laws, and prosecutors and judges need to be more careful in how they interpret them.

Wrong. A crime is not a crime, regardless. Copyright and contractual violations (such as breaking JSTOR or MIT's EULA) require the wronged party to actually take the offender to court.

That's why the feds were charging him with ridiculous crap like wire fraud and damaging protected computer systems, because they couldn't press charges unilaterally on the crimes that he *actually* appears to have committed.

Remember that the feds were acting unilaterally. They had not been asked by the supposedly wronged parties to bring these charges. In fact, they had been asked by one of them -- JSTOR -- to *not* bring these charges against Swartz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_discretion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)

Thank you for that, though.

Swartz tried to plea bargain two days before he killed himself. The prosecutor adamantly refused to accept less than a guilty plea to every single charge (even the patently absurd ones), and was also adamant that prison time would be required.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262137/Aaron-Swartz-Reddit-founder-request-plea-deal-turned-Massachusetts-prosecutor.html

If you're just going to make stuff up, you should probably be quiet.

Well, you're not MIT or JSTOR. *They* didn't press charges, or even pursue civil suits, but the feds did it anyway?

What does it say about the merits of this case that it was "United States v Aaron Swartz?" I'm skeptical as hell -- as you should be -- of any federal criminal case in which the supposedly wronged parties aren't even the plaintiffs.

Yes, but I'd also like the ability to call off the fucking dogs if you and I work out a civil solution to your wrongdoing. Remember that JSTOR and MIT were both aware of Swartz' actions, and neither had asked the feds to charge him. In fact, JSTOR had asked the feds *not* to charge him.

The red flag of prosecutorial over-zealousness is obvious from the name of the case: "United States v. Aaron Swartz." Not MIT, not JSTOR, not the alleged "victims." United States. The prosecutor was *way* out of line.

You could also say "Metro App" vs "Real Software."

This row wasn't "legal" at all. Thanks to the fucking DMCA copyright infringement is now generally sorted out with the content "owners" functioning as judge and jury (because they're not at all biased or greedy). If the legal system isn't involved it's hardly a "legal" row, it's more like a shakedown.

Oh really?

They're "solid democrats" who just happen to also run a site at beastobama.com where they write -- and I quote -- "Barack Obama is the Antichrist, and is leading doomed america to her final destruction and the destruction of the world!"

"They are not an extreme version of what the people controlling this country believe ... I put them more in line with Anne Coulter and whatshisface on Fox"

So they're not an extreme version of what the people controlling this country believe, they're just in line with some of the more extreme media darlings of the cable news network that does an astonishing amount of tone-setting for the national dialogue? Oh wait.

Westboro Baptists can get away with it because they're white, and are simply the extreme version of what the dangerous people who control this country believe. I promise you if brown people who believe in a slightly different god did what they did they'd be hauled in for questioning and quite possibly extraordinary rendition-ed off to be tortured by the CIA.

On the Microsoft front they should specifically be going after Microsoft AND Intel together.

Do you want to do whatever the fuck you want, with no regard whatsoever for the wishes of your constituency? Do you want to then get reelected over and over again because only 200 old-ass white people show up at the election to vote straight down the party line?

Sound like paradise? Can't possibly be real?

But wait! It is real! It's local government! Getting in is easy, too! Just wait for an incumbent to die or retire, then take their place in whatever party they came from. Unless you get redistricted, you're now set for life. Congratulations!

I'm inclined to agree with you.

I'm as entrenched as anyone could possibly be in the Google ecosystem, and it's not because they're force-feeding me their products. I frequently try alternatives when comes to stuff like online calendars, documents, email, whatever.

The reason my attempts to use other services never stick is simple: they're just not as good as Google's offerings.

I can kind of see where they're coming from if Google is in fact promoting their own services in their search, but I suspect that their own algorithms are picking out their own services because the most people use and talk about them...again because they're just the best offering.

Personally it's tough to sell me on the idea of a provider of free web services getting into antitrust territory, because a different search engine is always one different URL away. The same goes for all their other services. It's tough to even call them out on vendor lock-in, because thanks to the data liberation front they're one of the best companies I've ever seen on the internet when it comes to avoiding lock-in.

I'm dubious.