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Prosecutor as bully

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Re: Prosecutor as bully

#61

Post by lisper »

brianobush wrote: post #22
miles wrote: post #3

if what the government alleged was true — and I say “if” because I am not revealing what Aaron said to me then — then what he did was wrong. And if not legally wrong, then at least morally wrong. Morally wrong to download taxpayer-funded research? I'm sorry Larry, you lost me. More on the academic publishing "industry": http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-pu...

Taxpayers fund my research, so can they just break in and steal "information" (code, plots, draft of papers, etc)? They paid for it, right? The academic publishing industry is not one of my favorites, but they do provide a service to the communities they represent. Circumventing them will eventually destroy the community unless another "open" organization is willing to step in. Many fields (mine included) are so arca…

> Many fields (mine included) are so arcane that very few would be interested in making an open publishing venue with the editorial quality we have now.

What is your field? And why don't the members of this field just create their own on-line publishing venue?

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#62

Post by downandout »

agwa wrote: post #60
downandout wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately 97% of indicted federal defendants plead guilty before trial because of three aspects of our system: 1) US Attorneys routinely routinely overcharge defendants to an almost absurd degree; 2) The most commonly used federal statutes, such as the Wire Fraud statute, are so broadly written that people with no criminal intent could reasonably be found guilty; and 3) The maximum sentences for convictions under…

It's actually 97%, at least as of 2010: http://www.ussc.gov/Data_and_Statistics/Annual_Reports_and_S... Unfortunately that's down at the moment but you can use the Google Cache: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:WCmq1ybmBqAJ:...

Corrected, thanks. The 94% figure was from 2001 I believe. Apparently it's gone up.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#63

Post by ghshephard »

rprasad wrote: post #24
miles wrote: post #3

if what the government alleged was true — and I say “if” because I am not revealing what Aaron said to me then — then what he did was wrong. And if not legally wrong, then at least morally wrong. Morally wrong to download taxpayer-funded research? I'm sorry Larry, you lost me. More on the academic publishing "industry": http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-pu...

The problem is not that Aaron accessed the information; it is that he abused the public resources used to maintain the store of information, and further that he did so in such an egregious matter. He would not have been prosecuted if he had just downloaded a dozen articles, but he downloaded 4 million .

4 million, 40 million - it's just bytes on a wire. I web scraped 35,000 articles from the AJCN recently, about 11 Gigabytes worth. I didn't ask permission - I just checked to see if my $10 temporary AJCN account could do it and set up an awk script generate the appropriate curl requests, so I have a lot of empathy for Aaron here.

Understand that Aaron's entire purpose was to Liberate Information that should have been free in the first place, so what he was doing was the exact opposite of abuse.

To the best of my knowledge, and from what I can recall in the case, the real issue was the Physical Break and Enter - which should have resulted in all of 40 hours of community service and an apology to MIT.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#65

Post by wissler »

agwa wrote: post #18

From the article: For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. Remember, this was on HN just a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?…

None of these sorts of problems will ever get fixed unless society decides to get back to basics and back to reason and principles. I don't see any evidence of that happening.

The problem isn't with government per se, it's with the typical intellectual.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#66

Post by josh_fyi »

We need a website to coordinate open sharing of all research papers and books.

If Napster and Bittorrent could do it for music and movies, we can do it for research.

Various technologies are possible, but the key point is to spread these publications as easily as possible.

And regardless of what you think of "piracy," justice is all the more on our side with these government-funded, unremunerated publications which are part of humanity's drive to push forward the frontiers of knowledge.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#67

Post by MaysonL »

temphn wrote: post #46
agwa wrote: post #18

From the article: For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. Remember, this was on HN just a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?…

Naming and shaming Carmen M. Ortiz for destroying the life of a young man is exactly what is necessary. She brought 13 felony counts against him for downloading articles that should be freely available, after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges. Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, in the same way that she surely thought her prosecution of S…

The trouble is, if Obama hasn't shut down Guantanomo, let Bradley Manning be held in conditions amounting to torture, et bloody cetera, what in hell makes you think he's going to fire and shame one of his best US Attorneys over a tragic death that she contributed to? It's probably more likely (though not very) that she will resign of her own volition.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#68

Post by andrewtbham »

dmix wrote: post #54
temphn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naming and shaming Carmen M. Ortiz for destroying the life of a young man is exactly what is necessary. She brought 13 felony counts against him for downloading articles that should be freely available, after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges. Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, in the same way that she surely thought her prosecution of S…

How do we go about getting this message across to her and other key people (legally)? I'm interested in helping.

I think we need to start lobbying for a bill that decriminalizes copyright infringement and makes it purely a civil matter.

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#69

Post by agwa »

downandout wrote: post #62
agwa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually 97%, at least as of 2010: http://www.ussc.gov/Data_and_Statistics/Annual_Reports_and_S... Unfortunately that's down at the moment but you can use the Google Cache: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:WCmq1ybmBqAJ:...

Corrected, thanks. The 94% figure was from 2001 I believe. Apparently it's gone up.

Up indeed. It was "only" 84% in 1990.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_S... and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044358930457763...

Re: Prosecutor as bully

#70

Post by rprasad »

temphn wrote: post #46
agwa wrote: post #18

From the article: For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. Remember, this was on HN just a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?…

Naming and shaming Carmen M. Ortiz for destroying the life of a young man is exactly what is necessary. She brought 13 felony counts against him for downloading articles that should be freely available, after JSTOR itself had dropped the charges. Destroying her career and seeing her fired in disgrace will send a message to all other overzealous prosecutors, in the same way that she surely thought her prosecution of S…

Or, you know, you could just call your local Congressperson and complain. This is far more likely to have a direct impact on her job (performance of, or continued employment) than some random internet "naming and shaming." It is also far more likely to bring about the structural changes necessary to prevent this from happening again.

...as they have disabled the voice of the people by routing around jury trials.

Aaron had the option of going to trial. It was his constitutional right. He chose to kill himself instead.

...and they are appointed rather than subject to elections

The history of the South should provide enough justification for why federal prosecutors are never elected. You do not want enforcement of federal crimes subject to popular whims or to political pressures. Too often, political pressure leads to overzealous enforcement of criminal statutes, not reasoned enforcement (see, e.g., Maricopa County).

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