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DoJ Admits Aaron Swartz's Prosecution Was Political
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a blog post by Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, founder of corporate watchdog SumOfUs.org and partner of the late Aaron Swartz:
"The DOJ has told Congressional investigators that Aaron's prosecution was motivated by his political views on copyright. I was going to start that last paragraph with 'In a stunning turn of events,' but I realized that would be inaccurate — because it's really not that surprising. Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution, motivated by anything/everything from Aaron's effective campaigning against SOPA to his run-ins with the FBI over the PACER database. But Aaron actually didn't believe it was — he thought it was overreach by some local prosecutors who didn't really understand the internet and just saw him as a high-profile scalp they could claim, facilitated by a criminal justice system and computer crime laws specifically designed to give prosecutors, however incompetent or malicious, all the wrong incentives and all the power they could ever want. But this HuffPo article, and what I’m hearing from sources on the Hill, suggest that that’s not true. That Ortiz and Heymann knew exactly what they were doing: Shutting up, and hopefully locking up, an extremely effective activist whose political views, including those on copyright, threatened the Powers That Be."
I'm looking at the political manifesto being quoted, and the only bit of data was this quote:
> A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.
*OF COURSE IT DID*. It shows that *Swartz* was being political, and that messing with copyright apart was, *for Swartz*, a political act. That means he's going to do it again, and encourage other people to do it again, and it's a completely relevant part of criminal prosecution and sentencing. If someone doesn't believe what they did was wrong, or believe that it was a political action, it makes them more likely to do it *again*.
And make no mistake, Swartz had repeated opportunities to stop, and he was screwing with research worldwide, not just at MIT. He *deerved*( prosecution.
We're all adults here.
Evidently not. You are asserting that a young man's suicide was merely a political statement, and an ineffective one at that. Such a statement bears no relation to a modern understanding of depression and suicide.
Yeah the modern understanding is that when you fail at life, it is somehow not your fault.
Just like when you don't exercise and then you eat and eat, and you get fatter and fatter, and then you're morbidly obese, that's somehow not your fault. First you were 20lbs overweight, then 30, then 40, then 50, then hey I think I see a pattern here, hmm maybe I shoudln't keep doing the same thing or else I will keep getting the same result, hmm aw fuck it, that's crazy talk. Some space aliens force-fed you or something, I guess. Bad space aliens.
If I speed and get a ticket I was not ticketed because of my political views about the traffic laws!
Swartz went out of his way to break the law because he did not agree with it, that he disagreed with it does not make it political. It just make him a lawbreaker who did not respect the rights of the people who created the material.
You could make the case that he was targeted because his high profile, and based on the crimes he committed that was probably the case. However to say it was all politically generated is wrong and a disservice to those who are actually arrested for political reasons.
I just love it. You socialist morons who in such great numbers attack conservatives and support ultra liberal radicals like Obama your virtual king, what do you have to say?
Who runs the DOJ? Holder, stooge of Obama and the left, tyrants all of them.
Or am I missing something and it this all in reality the fault of the EVIL BUUUUUUSH!!!!!
You fucking drones.
Capthca: ENFORCER
Bwhaahahahahhahahahahahah
OMFG are you seriously putting this jerk who downloaded some files along with the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.?
You idiots just continue to amaze me with the depths your ignorance. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to let you morons vote.