31–40 of 67 posts
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The laws are obviously not worth the paper they're printed on--they are neither wholly reformative nor punitive in nature, and their administration could best be described as whimsical if not outright malicious. So, no, why should we assume our kids should follow that bollocks?
Because if they don't they'll go to jail.
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>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 agg…
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.
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.
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> MIT did the opposite in the Aaron Shwartz case, their conduct was in large part responsible for Ortiz & Heyman getting Aaron over a barrel of 30 years in the pokey Swartz was, if he rejected the plea bargain that would have given him a few months at most and went to trial and lost on all charges, looking at around 7 years at the extreme outside, tops, not 30. If you would like the detail on why this is so, take a l…
Uh huh, but the prosecutor threatened him with 30 to try and scare him into bargaining, and Swartz apparently believed him, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Swartz had competent legal representation from the jump. His counsel at the time of his suicide wrote in a postmortem on the case that he believed Swartz stood little chance of any custodial sentence, even were he to be convicted. It's not hard to see why: the sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders of non-remunerative CFAA offenses aren't very demanding.
Swartz was likely to be ruined by the cost of defending a complex federal charge, faced the prospect of potentially spending months in federal prison, and an overall likelihood of the whole incident concluding with a felony conviction on his record, which may have been problematic for his future endeavors. He was oppressed by his prosecution in a variety of ways. It's unnecessary to manufacture new ways.
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Uh huh, but the prosecutor threatened him with 30 to try and scare him into bargaining, and Swartz apparently believed him, so I'm not sure what your point is.
This is also totally false. Any competent attorney understands how charges group under federal sentencing law; not only was he not facing a 30 year sentence, he could not face a 30 year sentence. Swartz had competent legal representation from the jump. His counsel at the time of his suicide wrote in a postmortem on the case that he believed Swartz stood little chance of any custodial sentence, even were he to be conv…
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You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property. Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other people…
" Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. " Tinkering is exactly what got us Linux, what got us Unix, and what got us radio communication and x-rays. So, no, I do believe you are mistaken.
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Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property. Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other people…
The problem here stems from young being people more in touch with actual reality, as they haven't been beaten down by society to respect arbitrary social mores. So they take risks doing things that seemingly should have no consequence - like smoking marijuana or sending nonstandard signals over communication networks. And so a few unlucky ones get caught, and the best they can currently hope for is to have an institution that will go to bat and isolate them from the "real world" of public persecutors' scoreboards.
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Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property. Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other people…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property. Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other people…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 w…
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.