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.