Aaron Swartz Case: Deja Vu All Over Again For MIT

theodp writes "On Saturday, questions for MIT's Aaron Swartz investigation were posted on Slashdot with the hope that MIT'ers might repost some to the MIT Swartz Review site. So it's good to see that MIT's Hal Abelson, who is leading the analysis of MIT's involvement in the matter, is apparently open to this workaround to the ban on questions from outsiders. In fact, on Sunday Abelson himself reposted an interesting question posed by Boston College Law School Prof. Sharon Beckman: 'What, if anything, did MIT learn from its involvement in the federal prosecution of its student David LaMacchia back in 1994?' Not much, it would appear. LaMacchia, an apparent student of Abelson's whose defense team included Beckman, was indicted in 1994 and charged with the 'piracy of an estimated million dollars' in business and entertainment computer software after MIT gave LaMacchia up to the FBI. LaMacchia eventually walked from the charges, thanks to what became known as the LaMacchia Loophole, which lawmakers took pains to close. 'MIT collaborated with the FBI to wreck LaMacchia's life,' defense attorney Harvey Silverglate charged in 1995 after a judge dismissed the case. 'I hope that this case causes a lot of introspection on the part of MIT's administration. Unfortunately, I doubt it will.'"

Comments

LaMacchia Loophole

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a loophole?

Surely a copyright violation SHOULD be charged under copyright acts, not interstate wire fraud.

WIRE FRAUD?? Really? Intentional deception of others to personally gain from them? Where? How? Who? did that happen.

Wallstreet junk assets, dressed as prime sold to banks under deception = criminal fraud, yes I can see that. And I was happy to see the heavy criminal sentences handed down to the Wallstreet bankers who lied about assets to sell them onto to their clients. Hold on, I've got confused, I meant the heavy wads of cash handed down to Wallstreet bankers who lied about assets....

At least could you charge those bankers with copyright infringement? Maybe a parking fine?

Legal and you know it, Ortiz doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

"install a laptop, script file downloads,"
You know those two things are legal don't you?

"evade security, hide my identity"
Yep, this too, completely legal. You as Anonymous Coward should know it's legal to hide your identity! Even Ortiz can come here and spout random garbage hiding her identity.

"lie to campus police and be let go free of charge"
This too, completely legal, campus police are just security guards with no special right to be told the truth.

What he was charged with, was copyright infringement (possibly trespass), written up as hacking and wire fraud. The investigation is to whether the prosecutor was inflated the charges for her political gain. She has a history of it, the prosecutors office wasn't planning on big charges, then she took it off him.

MIT are concerned that they may be a conspirator to this inflation-for-political-gain. See they can see the charges were inflated and they want to make sure their hands are clean of it. Prosecuting a crime based on the law of the crime is one thing, prosecuting on random inflated implausible charges in order to force a plea bargain to score a nice prosecution on your CV, is something quite quite different.

The question now is if Ortiz can remain in office when her view of the law is so departed from the actual laws themselves.

At best she's malicious, at worst she's incompetent*. Either way, that's not someone who should be a prosecutor, let along a head prosecutor.

* I don't think she was incompetent, when she described copyright infringement as 'theft if theft' it showed a disregard for the law she was completely aware of.

Re:Outward Appearances

[alexgieg]

To the dispassionate and disinterested outside observer, a mentally disturbed man committed suicide.

No. To a dispassionate and disinterested outside observer, someone was being punished much more harshly than whatever he deserved.

It's simply really. Murder should carry the harshest punishment, whatever "harshest" means in a given culture. Anything that caused less severe damage should be punished less severly, in roughly this decreasing order: a) murder; b) physical damage to another person, c) physical damage to another's property, d) no physical damage to anyone.

Moral issues arise when one does something at 'd' level, but the law (and those enforcing it) are so sick they want to punish him at 'c+' level. Swartz case is a prime example, and clear symptom, of this very sickness.

Re:Outward Appearances

[Harodotus]

I might add the Swartz was charged with 13 felonies, with a maximum sentence of 65 years in felony lockup, effectively life in prison. Murder, even multiple murders, has no more harsh a punishment (except in death penalty states).

You're point is valid, but it's, at best,a Type D "crime" being punished as a type A "the most harsh society can inflict" and might not even be a good civil suit for mild contract violation.