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Comment by tsotha | Hacker News Reader

>This has been long time coming. These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.

Jobs didn't avoid jail because times were more permissive. He stayed out of jail because he didn't get caught. People went to jail for phone phreaking.

>It is up to Universities like MIT to aggressively intervene in these cases and ensure that young people are free to (some extent) break systems and exploit system weaknesses in the interest of learning.

I don't understand how anyone could come to this conclusion. Students breaking the law should be expelled, not coddled.

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So by your reasoning, students caught smoking marijuana should be expelled? What about people like Edward Snowden? Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.

>So by your reasoning, students caught smoking marijuana should be expelled?

Depends. If it's a felony where you are, then yes.

>What about people like Edward Snowden?

What about him? If the feds ever catch up with Snowden he'll go to jail, and that's where he belongs.

>Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.

Justice is a subjective thing, and that's why legislatures write the laws. If you're going to have the rule of law you have the rule of law. The upside is people in power have to obey the laws just like everyone else. The downside is everyone else has to obey the laws too.

You shouldn't put so much faith into our system.

Your theoretical model for how the system works falls short of reality. If you truly think the law is applied equally among all, you need to do some serious research. The powerful among us don't have to obey the laws like everyone else. Finally, it isn't the powerless among us writing or influencing those who do write the laws.

>Your theoretical model for how the system works falls short of reality. If you truly think the law is applied equally among all, you need to do some serious research.

Actually, the laws in the US are pretty evenly enforced. It's as close as you're going to get in the real world.

>Finally, it isn't the powerless among us writing or influencing those who do write the laws.

Everyone gets to vote. Granted, we can't all make large campaign contributions, but ultimately the vote is what actually matters.

>Everyone gets to vote. Granted, we can't all make large campaign contributions, but ultimately the vote is what actually matters.

Wrong, on the most basic level. [1]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_State...

Also wrong because in many states convicted felons are disenfranchised. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement#Unite... . "As of 2010, all the various state felony disenfranchisement laws added together block an estimated 5.9 million Americans from voting."

Well, thank God for that. Let me rephrase then: Everyone who isn't a complete and total loser gets to vote.

I find it very odd that a convicted felon in Kentucky is unable to vote, and considered a "total loser" by you, while someone who did the same crime in Maine has not lost the vote, and so is not a loser.

You can of course define "total loser" to include someone who has been disenfranchised, but that would be an unusual definition that seems deliberately constructed to misinform.

Refocus on the third sentence...

Instead, they are elected by "electors" who are chosen by popular vote on a state-by-state basis.[3]

It's not wrong at all. The vote is still what matters, even with the electoral college.

>Depends. If it's a felony where you are, then yes.

Lawrence Kohlburg classifies this kind of reasoning at the fourth of six stages of moral development. [1] Laws are created by people - no, even worse: by committee. Do you think people who have committed no violence on others ought to be stripped of their education and opportunities?

>The upside is people in power have to obey the laws just like everyone else.

This principle is violated time and time again by people in power. Consider the recent fines imposed on HSBC for facilitating money laundering in latin america. A pittance. A slap on the wrist. The consequences for them didn't even come close to the profits they made.

1. http://brianwilliamson.id.au/cit/level1/psych1/kohlberg.pdf

>Lawrence Kohlburg classifies this kind of reasoning at the fourth of six stages of moral development.

Great. When I want Lawrence Kohlburg's opinion I'll seek it out.

>This principle is violated time and time again by people in power.

If by "time and time again" you mean "rarely, in the great scheme of things".

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