BrokenPipe

Well and besides, I often had faulty or stressed equipment go faulty on dhcp and lease and changing mac address fixed it.

You know, to make it easier for him to take a decision. Such a nice gesture.

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.

Besides the fact that my point was generic to depression and not his type of depression let me clarify and say that I don't think he had 'chemical' depression.

If you check when he started having depression and what he was reading at the time and how this depression developed you see it has to do with the way the system works, which eventually killed him.

I disagree. If I call your phone and one day you don't answer and I try from a different phone number and you do I think you are ok to have me call you.

Had they notified him with a web page that his mac address wasn't welcome it would have been a different matter altogether.

What Aaron did was the equivalent of trying a different laptop to see if things resumed working.

I'm not sure your rhetoric would stick much here on HN. I think this is trolling but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

The laws he may have broken are not necessarily the ones he has been charged with, this is partly why it has been called persecution overreach.

Breaking immoral laws is our moral obligation, there is no other way around it.

Would you expect anything less if I were to enact a law that made your children sexual slave ?

Would you expect anything less if someone were to take public funded research and locked it up behind huge and crazy paywall without any competition ? Huge costs for things that are in the public domain, from a copyright prospective, but that JSTOR tried to keep that as a profit center.

They are the one stealing from the public and akin to companies like the MAFIAA at that.

If you think healthcare should be socialized then go and tell your politician and fight back with the groups that share your convictions.

In my mind he broke very little laws and this is a crazy overreaction from the persecution.

Damn you may well be a troll with your trolling attitude and 11 minutes old account (mine is only a few days old).

More often than not I'm not that upset either way between malice and stupidity.

The issue I have is, mostly and particularly on important topics, with their arguments themselves.

Because with big topics, you can excuse errors with stupidity (or malice as you will) but truly can't excuse the rhetoric and central message they try to convey.

On big topics and high profile news you would suspect the message is not the journalist's independent bias but is instead the management's or dare I say administration's, not just some slipped piece of news that hasn't gone through central editing and review.

Do you this is 'because' of purer capitalism ? Isn't that north american [business] culture at large ? As opposed to mixed capitalism/socialism in other western countries.

I never said his depression was a consequence of the trial. What I did say is that is death is a consequence of the trial, i.e. without trial he would be alive (so far at least, but I don't think he was necessarily suicidal prior to the trial). What I did also say is that depression (when not an chemical imbalance problem at least) is a consequence of a series of events and therefore caused

I think you have a great way of expressing the point. In my view Aaron would be happy to know his sacrifices contributed into generating this sort of discussions and hopefully change.

It is not. There are more types of depression than you think. Do you want me to list them or you can use a search engine?

I follow RT sometimes, aljazeera and in fact any source of information on any topic that interests me. All in all, I think I agree with what you're saying. The best way to try to remove bias is merge the stories and take it from there.

Anyway, I think sometimes there is some truth in the daily mail, fox news, the sun and all that junk media and I wonder if the truth that gets published there is published there such that it can be discredited :P

In my view there is depression and depression. Some people have good reasons to be depressed and those can be very rational reasons.

>Aaron died not because of the trial but because of depression

Aaron died because he decided suicide was the best course of action. Given that the trial was what ultimately and unjustly squashed him, I would say he did die because of the harsh and unjust trial.

Depression is not a cause, is a consequence.

His dream was to improve and help this shitty world.

Aaron had depression regardless of the trial, granted. I think it's quite natural to be depressed given the state of things.

Suicide is another thing altogether, I'm depressed at times but I've never thought of suicide but as I said in other comments in the same situation I would probably be at risk.

And rightly so. In jail I'm not going to help anybody and with my (and perhaps my beloved ones) life financially ruined with a criminal record doesn't really allow anyone to continue any quest to improve things.

His death maybe helped more than him going to jail and everyone forgetting about him. I wonder if this was his plan.

I completely disagree. What Aaron did was fully moral but partially/potentially illegal (see trespassing maybe).

In my mind, nothing more than a month of social work is the justified response to his act. I'm sure most people would agree.

However this is not what happened. He faced up to 35 years in prison, he faced being financially ruined by the case and he faced the option to unwillingly 'force' the people who love him (friends and family) to also face financial issues to help him fight this case.

This would cause problem in any reasonable person.

Why are you both you and the parent suggesting that it is crazy to kill yourself ? It is not crazy. Suicide sometimes is the best way out.

I would rather face death than 35 years in prison. I also understand why someone wouldn't plaid guilty when they are not guilty, in particular if that still means I have to do up to 6 months in jail.

I heard many times people saying I rather die free than live as a prisoner.

RT is seemingly biased yes, mostly on the Russian issues. I think ALL reports from ANY news source should be taken with a pinch of salt, but if anything, you want to read about your nation from non national and possibly independent news outlets.

But how can you blame them for criticizing US foreign policy ? Informed people usually see the US foreign policy as very bulling, strong armed and imperialist, and rightly so IMHO.

And don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of the US and many people from the US, unfortunately is very hard to be informed and as such the administration is influenced by the few for the benefits of the few.

Still, the US has more people in jail than any other country however you look at it. The fact that this is due to longer prison terms is relevant but doesn't change a thing does it ?

I wouldn't suppose that citizens of the US are more criminal than the avg citizen of the world.

It's just that you have the Prison Industry and legalized corruption (see lobbying)

either way it doesn't make a difference if the politician are not accountable and the public is not informed. What we have now, practically globally, is manipulated oligarchy dressed as democracy.

And other than the above I agree with flyingRyan below http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066292

Yep. They belong in the same group as the MAFIAA and are not needed anymore.

My argument is that knowledge can't be stolen from the people or resold to the people at a profit. Immoral and even illegal in my view even if not backed by law.

Nuclear weapons are physical and as such can't be shared with the population but ultimately, assuming for a second that democracy works, american nuclear weapons belong to the american people, even though it is not under direct control of any singular citizen or at least it shouldn't be.

The distinction is fundamental. You can't copy at marginal cost nuclear weapons, but you can copy information indefinitely.

The US does imprison more people than other nations according to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...

And whether the US keeps people in prison longer than other nations or not, doesn't really help you case IMHO.

It's quite disturbing that people expert in technology (such as HN visitors are) should not comment on the matter because they have no 'law' qualification.

Is this 'law' thinghy you are talking about something that only applies to people with 'law' qualifications?

Oh no you say? it applies to everyone ? OMG!

Here's my draft legislation: get rid of the laws used to incriminate Aaron as they are crazy, overreaching and unjust. No need to polish a turd and I'm sure real crimes are already covered by non computer laws.

Veto is non necessary, pressure and willingness to pursue and unwillingness to have any plaid without jail time is what the MIT is _rightly_ accused of.

Increase ? Why does that look to me like a spike ? And are you denying either of these claims ? Because if not it seems like you are just nitpicking to me, the point of the parent is still fully correct regardless of the graph.

A. "The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population." B. "imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid"

trespassing maybe. Not any serious bulling plus 13 counts. Are you not the troll from early today ? How many accounts is that ?

Well yeah, it's also in article here on HN. They wanted him to have jail time

Better than nothing. In the short term I would be ok if it only applied commercially and not for private use but in reality we always created regardless of I.P. copyright or patents and i don't think these are tools for betterment of society but just betterment of some.

Do you have a link to the evidence? My current understanding is that MIT didn't want Aaron to avoid jail. Is that correct ?

I really agree with you but boy I find it hard! The problem is that the legal framework as well as the general population knows it at I.P., even though this included far more than copyright and even though those different 'kinds' of I.P. are not similar at all (i.e. patents and copyright). I don't really believe in I.P. but how do I communicate with people without using terms such as Intellectual Property, Copyright, Patents, Trademarks and whatnot ? Information should be free, and as such so should be ideas.

Don't compare information with physical property :)