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Aaron Swartz Indicted in Attempted Piracy of Four Million Documents

Posted by Unknown on from the but-information-wants-to-be-free dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New York Times has reported that Internet activist Aaron Swartz has been indicted for stealing more than 4 million documents from JSTOR." The indictment contains an exciting tale featuring trespassing, MAC address forgery, a Python script or two, and even computers hidden under a cardboard box. El Reg has a decent summary. Demand Progress has released an official response claiming the charges are trumped up nonsense.

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. MIT already settled; the government is just mad by mykos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MIT doesn't care, but the fact that he's very critical of the government makes him a prime target for shoehorning accusations onto him to shut him and his site up.

  2. its vagueness and broadness only proves by decora · · Score: 4, Insightful

    how pointless it is.

    its like having a law that says 'its illegal to bad things on a computer'. what the hell does that even mean? its complete bullshit, which is proved by the wide variety of people that have been prosecuted under it.

    Drake was not acquitted, he plead guilty to one misdemeanor under the CFAA (instead of 5 felonies under the Espionage Act) - the point of his case is that the CFAA made it criminal to simply take unclassified information and have it in your house. UNCLASSIFIED.

    now the CFAA applies to women telling people to commit suicide? AND to a guy who downloads from JSTOR? And to a guy who jailbreaks his playstation? What the fuck kind of a law is that?

    1. Re:its vagueness and broadness only proves by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't understand why computer laws are so hard. My computer is my property, as is the data stored on it. Accessing that data without my permission is trespassing. Destroying data is destruction of private property. Running software on it without my permission is conversion. Using my computer to lie to me to get my money is fraud. Threatening to delete my files unless I buy your software is blackmail. Sending threatening messages to me is assault.

      Why is this so freaking hard!? We don't need laws specifically for computers or any other piece of technology, what we need is for politicians and justices to understand the fundamental concept that data is property and a computer is the just the physical (and arguably, least important) part of the system.

    2. Re:its vagueness and broadness only proves by chaboud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bingo!

      It can't be hacking if no hacking was necessary. Using a computer interface on a network, as intended, to do something that someone only slightly didn't want, but allowed, doesn't really feel like a computer crime to me.