Saturday, January 19, 2013

Aaron's Law: Violating a Site's Terms of Service Should Not Land You in Jail

theatlantic

Excerpts:
  • A week ago, Aaron Swartz -- social activist, geek genius -- took his own life...Facing the choice between...accept the label "felon" and go to jail or fight a million-dollar lawsuit against 13 felony indictments...
  • Aaron's alleged "crime" was that he used MIT's network to access a database of academic journal articles (JSTOR) and download millions of those articles to his laptop computer.
  • Swartz was not a copyright anarchist
  • All the government had to show to launch its witch hunt...was that he had violated JSTOR's "terms of service" and taken (as in copied) something worth more than $5,000.
  • American law does not typically make the breach of a contract a felony.
  • A breach of contract is a breach of contract. It is not an act of treason. It is not a threat to the realm.
  • Aaron Swartz is dead -- in my view, in part because of this breach of its duty by the government.
Comment:

Swartz got SOPA stopped.  The government didn't like that, so they tried to make an example of him.  That's what I think.

Now they want your guns.  Swartz is one more reason why you don't give them your guns.


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