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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that he committed suicide, but that is not a rational response to 6 months in a low security jail.

Conrad Black did 30+ months. Kevin Mitnick did several years. Even Martha Stewart managed 5 months.

Also, with his profile and past history, his felony conviction would not seriously impede any career he wanted to undertake.

Finally, the whole point of civil disobedience is to break a law, and get caught, punished and make (to a certain extent) a martyr of yourself to draw attention to your cause.

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Except defending himself would have cost on the order of a million dollars (Per Lessig) - does he go to his family for that? Even if he turns out to be found completely innocent, him, his family, and those who he can turn to would have been wiped out financially. That part of the story doesn't get enough attention.

If he accepted the plea bargain of six months, then the case wouldn't have gone to trial, avoiding the excessive legal fees. I don't understand the timeline, but had he accepted the plea bargain, is it not possible that he would have already served his sentence by now?

Maybe. The point is that you shouldn't submit to 6 months of federal prison without trial or appeal, all the money loss for the two years in the case and your life ruined by the felony counts records for using a script to download files you already have legal access to. At worst all there is to this is trespassing, on an open campus on an open network etc etc.

You're probably right, you shouldn't, but unless you offer up a better suggestion for a law system, it is it what it is.

How about the one the rest of the civilized world uses? Which is: not mixing politics and prosecution.

Check out the British version of government prosecutions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Prosecution_Service

Where "controversial" is "oooh, should we change the name?!?".

The american system is one of the worst in western society, granted, but the British one is not that much better at all. Some claim is worst. I never had the misfortune of having to try that on my skin but heard from friends and family.

How's the system in Iceland ? Or Norway ?

Yeah, no more crazy law and no bargaining on future lives.

> avoiding the excessive legal fees.

From all the information that I've seen so far it looks as if the legal fees were plenty excessive already.

Not sure - how do non-famous defendants without millionaire friends and that haven't sold a start-up fund their cases? He could try that.

They tend to accept a plea bargain even if innocent.

Sucks, but I suspect you're right. He's not alone in that though.

They get incompetent public defenders.

Not at the federal level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/us/14defenders.html?_r=2&#...;

This article brings up an interesting point in general that paying for a lawyer by the hour doesn't align the incentives of the lawyer with the client. If I were going to hire a lawyer I'd want to do it on a salaried + bonus if you win basis.

Being with a gun pointed to your head for a long time kills the free spirits. Imagine being a freedom fighter like no other, and the society reward for that being 35 years in jail and 1M fine kills any morale left.

The other side of the table are the banks, the military, dirty politicians, a propaganda machine, useless bureocrats and the science "industry"; all these have no morals, contribute to nothing and get the most rewards.

I can't even imagine how it would be like to live in Aaron shoes. Country with cowards in power.

>the whole point of civil disobedience is to break a law, and get caught, punished and make (to a certain extent) a martyr of yourself to draw attention to your cause.

This is assuming that his intent was actually civil disobedience -- what if he didn't think what he was doing was even illegal? His lawyers apparently didn't. And he wasn't even charged with copyright infringement, which is ostensibly the law he would have opposed.

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