rprasad

Nietzsche's justifications have no relevance here. Removing Ortiz wouldn't change anything because the next US Prosecutor would simply do the same thing given the same set of facts. Prosecutors overreach. They have to, given the way double jeopardy and the rest of the criminal justice system works.

We get that you and the other technerds are angry about what happened to Swartz, but if you don't redirect your misplaced anger where it properly belongs (i.e., the laws that gave rise to this situation in the first place), you won't accomplish anything, and then Swartz really will have died for nothing.

* The sad part, though, is that the one thing punishment will never achieve is to make Ortiz have a guilty conscience. She and people like you will never realize that she is a bad person and should feel bad.*

Lawyers have feelings, too. Ortiz almost certainly went into the prosecutor's office to do good, to see justice done and to protect the innocent. Do you really believe that Ortiz doesn't feel torn up that a young white collar defendant committed suicide because she pushed him too hard? Because if you really believe that, then you are the sociopath, not her. She will spend the rest of her career second guessing herself with every defendant--both the defendants like Swartz and the murderers and drug dealers that form the rest of her caseload.

The American justice system survived all of this, and you think that Mr. Swartz is a "transforming light"? I'm sorry, but compared to these other miscarriages of justice, the Swartz case isn't even a drop in a bucket.

It has not been upgraded since then, largely because Congress has not provided sufficient funds to the courts for them to do so (appropriations in the past two decades have largely been reserved for operations or for courtroom construction, but not technological upgrades. Much of the money from PACER access fees goes toward meeting the shortful in the operation budget, because Congress in its infinite wisdom has underfunded the federal courts for most of the last two decades.

(It's wierd that I have spent most of the last two days defending the American court system...)

Public interest lawyers are far more valuable contributors to HN, and especially to this discussion, then the histrionics and hyperbole of him and his ilk.

Lessig, Stamos, and Swartz are what is legally known as "biased" toward Aaron's case. Naturally, MIT, JSTOR, and various persons in the federal government have differing opinions.

Aaron wasn't the target of a witch hunt; that would imply that he wasn't guilty of anything. He was--he admits to what he did. His defense was an MLK/Ghandi defense (i.e., civil disobedience).

Lessig himself said that the government had effectively muzzled Swartz to prevent him from defending himself online or alerting others to the severity of his situation.

Which clearly isn't true, since HN, reddit, and the interweb in general has been discussing this case nearly non-stop since the charges were dropped.

that seeing a sitting US prosecutor forced to resign would not have the requisite "deterrent effect"

This is a fantasy, both in the likelihood of occuring and its desired effect. People outside of the tech world simply don't think that way.

Unfortunately, it's not. It's just a great side effect of the right to a trial by jury.

In the American legal system, the modification of laws is left to the legislature. A jury can express its displeasure with a law by nullifying, but this has no legal import, since a different jury could easily convict. Thus, the primary method of expressing displeasure in a law...is to express displeasure in a law (by calling your local legislator).

Fundraising for nonprofits is not like fundraising in SV. Nonprofits can easily spend 50% of their income on fundraising because it is damned expensive to convince people to donate.

JSTOR does not many billions in cash, nor any income sources other than access fees.

Ergo, JSTOR must continue to charge an access fee so that it can continue to perform its function of archiving articles and providing access to those articles.

Some contributors to JSTOR also make their articles freely available online. Many do not. Either way, it's not for JSTOR to decide.

Unfortunately, there have been a great many scams like this in the past 4 years and this guy may have just slipped through the cracks as a result of staff cutbacks.

The authorities will likely be grateful to you for any assistance you can provide them, i.e., by helping them locate other victims.

This is why the law is complicated: you cannot read a law in a vacuum; you must read it in conjunction with all other laws bearing upon the same issue.

Pvt. Manning should consider himself lucky that he's dealing with Obama rather than Bush/Cheney, or it is likely that he would be facing charges of treason and a death penalty rather than just life imprisonment.

That's revisionist history. Those people who voluntarily affiliated with Nazis were generally forgiven unless they benefited from the affiliation in ways beyond mere survival. The Nazis had a nasty tendecy to kill those who opposed them, so "affiliating" and even "accomodating" with Nazis was a valid survival technique so long as affiliation or accomodation did not turn into mutual cooperation. Many people in the French Resistance were officially "affiliated" with the Nazis in some way; this is part of what made them so effective. The same is true of those who helped Jews flee from Nazi-controlled areas.

State and local prosecutors do not have the resources to pursue violations of federal law; they also do not have the jurisdiction to do so.

Federal prosecutors have several billions in resources to pursue violations of federal law, and are effectively not capped in their pursuit of "justice".

Doubly so given that multiple states currently have extremely uneven enforcement of federal law around the sale of marijuana.

Federal prosecution of drug laws regarding marijuana are fairly even. The difference is that states which have legalized marijuana make it far easier for federal prosecutors to find defendants than states where it is illegal (because defendants in those states do not distribute their marijuana in the public eye).

This is part of what makes them so "good"--by objectifying the target, they are better able to think purely strategically about how to secure a conviction.

In the U.S., that same crime would have resulted in a minimum of life in prison, and possibly would have resulted in the death penalty.

If it did, then it definitely deserves as long a sentence as murder. Indeed, an (attempted) financial crime of this magnitude is frequently worse than murder since it (potentially) has similarly devasting effects on a much wider set of victims.

Families usually say things like this the same day a loved one dies, so their statements today are proof of nothing. It is their statements next week or next month that indicate how they feel about MIT and the USDOJ's role in Aaron's death.

"depressed about the case and the upcoming trial" (indicating perhaps that his depression and the pressure brought by the indictment are inseparable),

Of course they are inseparable--most defendants do get at least a little depressed when they are facing criminal charges. But the one thing that 99.9999% of defendants have in common is that they don't kill themselves, especially not before they are convicted, unless they have a serious mental illness. The number of white collar federal defendants who have committed suicide prior to trial in the past decade can be counted on a single hand.

Let's get this straight: I do think that the criminal case pushed Aaron over the edge and if you go far enough back in my posts I am usually blaming prosecutors for the overzealous and unethical behavior. If this case had gone to trial, I would probably be railing against the egregious prosecutorial misconduct of the case. But I place the blame for Aaron's death solely on his shoulders, because he is the one who made the decision to kill himself.

From my point of view, she is no different from Jack Dorsey, or Steve Jobs, or all those other techheads who are revered for their overzealous and overbearing behavior. The difference is that most people on HN don't, can't, or refuse to understand what her job is and the legal and ethical obligations that come with it.

To put things in perspective: you probably feel the same way about this prosecutor as I feel about the guys running AirBnB.

2) They may have prioritized murders and rapes over crimes, such as bad-check-passing, that can be remedied in a civil courtroom. That's generally what happens when state and local budgets get cut. For example, in 2009 and 2010, San Bernardino and Riverside counties simply did not enforce drug possession charges for meth or marijuana for quantities below the dealer amount because they didn't have the prosecutorial resources to handle those cases after prioritizing violent crimes.

3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes.

It is irrelevant whether Aaron is bad or good; the law addresses only guilt and leaves morality to others. Legally, what matters is (1) whether he committed the alleged acts and (2) whether those acts (which are currently crimes) should be crimes.

It doesn't matter what they say he did,

You're right, because now he's dead and we do not allow the prosecution of dead men.

* it matters what we say he did. And we say he did good. Which we can get people to believe, because we're right, and there are millions of us.*

You have people on HN, on reddit, and 4chan who agree with you, and the bloggers who work for the NY Times. As I already discussed, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that you will convince other people (i.e., the tecnically illerate supermajority of America) that what he did was "good" once they understand that what he did is considered hacking.

There are a lot of us. We're generally pretty smart. We control a lot of important stuff. We can fix serious problems if we collectively set out to do it.

People in SV keep saying that, and then they churn out yet another social network or photo sharing app. At this point, I'll believe statements like that, even if made on HN, once they are backed by actual action and not just words.

You can say "politics doesn't work that way" a hundred times, but politics works the way that people make it work. And we're people.

Yes, you are people. But you're a small minority of America that generally avoids politics and interacting with the rest of America. Until that changes, and you involve yourself in America beyond just relatively unimportant stuff, like unpaid access to academic journals, you won't have much success changing anything.