Dorner won't surrender to anyone peacefully. He could walk into a newspaper office right now and have them call the local police if he wanted to surrender. He won't do that because is is a delusional psychopath. Remember he is the one who stated in his rant that two police officers who used the word nigger in his presence should have been killed.
On another point, "the LAPD" is not a monolithic entity. There are thousands of individuals working for the LAPD. Some are very good, some are very bad and most are in between. Referring to such a diverse group as one entity is invalid as each individual is different. Until you know the mind of every LAPD employee the statement " the LAPD wants Dorner to die just as badly" is just a generalization and not fact. In all probability most of the people in the LAPD want him dead but I bet there are at least a few who don't.
If you read the post I wrote a while ago you would see that I admitted that it got it a bit wrong. The missile that killed the kid was aimed at his uncle Ibrahim al-Banna. It was still aimed at a known al Qaeda leader I just named the wrong one.
Sorry I got the names wrong. The missile was targeted at Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian believed to be a senior operative in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So it was not Al Alwaki who was at fault but al-Banna. The missile was still targeted at a known and confessed terrorist and not the child. The kid went to see his uncle, also a known terrorist, and the uncle allowed him to stay thereby putting the child in danger.
By the way, insults and name calling are the weapons of someone with a weak argument. If you can write calmly you have much more chance of convincing people of your point if view.
In Al Alwaki's case it was known that the US was taking out al' Quada leaders using drones but Al Alwaki still allowed his son to be near him and thereby putting him at risk. In the Dorner case the "suspect" found and killed two innocent people. The person Dorner was mad at was nowhere near. In the Al Alwaki case the missile was targeted at Al Alwaki killing him and his son was close enough to the blast to be killed as well. In the Dorner case, Dorner directly targeted the family. There is a big difference.
Hope he takes out a couple of those murdering Fullerton PD cops before he gets killed or get put away forever though.
By that logic I guess you are for Iraqis coming over and killing "murdering Americans" in retaliation for civilian deaths in Iraq. There may be cops on the Fullerton PD that committed murder but that does not justify picking random Fullerton cops and killing them. There are probably some very good cops in Fullerton and a few bad ones.
Like ever slippery slope argument this one is invalid. The second anyone proposes arming drones in US airspace it the proposal will be shot down (pun intended). Having drones in US airspace is a good thing. Having armed drones in US airspace is a bad thing. Stopping a good thing from happening because it may lead to a bad thing happening is stupid. By protesting the good thing happening you are just sounding like the tinfoil brigade and any subsequent arguments you attempt are weakened. Unarmed drones do not inevitably lead to armed drones. We have had unarmed helicopters on partol for decades and they have yet to be armed even though there are plenty of armed helicopters.
But it's easy to 'legally' inflate those costs. You could for example buy your equipment from a subsidiary for 1000% of what it's worth. The parent company is now deep in red on R&D, but has a healthy profit from the dividends it's subsidiary pays back. So they can now scream about how much R&D costs and demand more protection for their patents.
And when the company sends those same tax returns to the IRS they get sent to jail for tax fraud. Or when the R&D costs are audited by the government those costs can be disallowed as the company is paying itself. It is not perfect but it is better than what is happening now.
As for patenting ideas, what about small inventors that don't have the funds to make the product they imagine. If they reveal their ideas to potential investors, those investors can simply steal their idea, build it and patent it
That is simply handled by a non disclosure, non compete contract. It happens all the time when anyone talks about unpatented ideas.
As for preventing companies from using patents to block development of new things, they can already do that. They can make an invention, patent it, then put it in a closet for the next 20 years.
That is exactly right unless they are forced to license the patent. With the patent licensed development can continue.
Here are a few issues with your rant; 1. They can't unceremoniously murder people in the US. The drone strike issue is on foreign soil not US soil. 2. Drones are not " autonomous aerial murder platforms". The key word there is "autonomous" as all armed drones have pilots. The whole "Terminator" comparison is invalid because drones are not autonomous. 3. I disagree that "darkness [has] already won", There are still courts, 5th amendment, etc. Yes , in the case of terrorism people can be arrested in the US but they still have the right to a lawyer. The government still has to justify the terrorist claim. 4. The US government still has to follow diplomatic immunity. Can you cite one instance of the US government arresting a frreign diplomat on US soil as a terrorist?
The main issue is that armed drones in US airspace will always be unpalatable no matter how many drones are in the air. Like all slippery slope arguments it is invalid to stop a good thing now because there is a possible bad thing in the future under different circumstances.
We should continue to argue for rights but the arguments must be valid ones. Arguing about something that might happen in the future is not valid and diminishes the impact of the valid arguments. You may see the darkness as having won but I don't. We still have lots of freedom and to my mind moving the pilot from the aircraft to the ground does not diminish freedom.
This is one instance where the incompetence of the reviewers is so blatant that they should no longer be working for the USPTO. There is a point that people need to be held accountable for their decisions. The USPTO has become too much of a rubber stamp under the idea that the courts will sort out any issues. The system breaks down under that model as many people do not have the money to go to court. The USPTO is hardly a speed bump in the patent process any more.
. How would you define R&D costs? A company can easily inflate them to infinity using subsidiaries (Hollywood accounting).
Even Hollywood accounting has limits that being the revenue of the film. There are limits to R&D costs as they would be a line item on an audited balance sheet. If one is not provided then the flat $5M applies. There are already strict rules on what can and can not be considered R&D due to tax laws that give tax breaks for R&D. It would be simple to use these same laws and accounting procedures to apply to patents. It is not something new. There is a big difference between stealing money from a few actors and lying to the government.
The reason to not patent an idea is that it is too easy to have an idea patent it and then never do anything with it. That way a company can keep selling their present product without having to create a new product just because they hold the patent for the idea of the new product. This can happen when the profit margin on the new product is less than the present product and therefore stifles progress. Another company would develop the new product but now can't due to patent restrictions. In effect remove the ability to patent a product and all similar products to keep others out of the industry.
There is one major part that is left out in the summary;
The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on U.S. citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.'
The leaked memo outlines the legal case for drone strikes on U.S. citizen on foreign soil. By neglecting that very important point and linking it to an FAA plan to allow drones in US airspace is implies that there will be 30,000 armed drones in US airspace. That is so far from the truth as to be laughable.
You might want to read that section and clause again;
SECTION 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
...
To establish post offices and post roads;
Section 8 sets out what the Congress can "lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises" and not what it has a responsibility to do.The enumerated power is not to establish Post Offices but to collect money to establish Post Offices. Nowhere does it say they have to establish Post offices.
The wrench in the works is that only the owner of a patent can file a lawsuit. If the inventor retains ownership the NPE can not license or sue. If the NPE is acting on behalf of the inventor then the inventor must be involved in every transaction dealing with the invention; licenses, lawsuits, etc. Many inventors do not want to deal with that. They want to invent something, sell it and move on to the next invention.
Your ideas miss the point of the paper which is that the patent system is flooded by junk making it less than worthless. And it has gotten to the point where it is unfixable
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I admit there is a lot of bathwater but the baby is still important. Any process is fixable with enough thought and work. It will never be perfect but it could be much better.
If we are to have patents (and I think we will) the criteria for issuance needs to be limited to actual serious inventions that are the result of real work. Not baloney like UI features, business process, software etc. Secondly there needs to be a real review process where objections to issuance can be filed by persons outside the patent office
I agree completely.
Finally infringement suits by NPEs need to be banned.
I agree if the NPE is not forced to sell licenses. There is a place for NPEs. For example an inventor can spend years and thousands of dollars creating a new invention but not have the money or facilities to bring it to production. Because they do not use or manufacture the item they would be considered an NPE. I see them still needing patent protection. That inventor may even sell the patent to another company who specializes in marketing and licensing the new invention though they do not manufacture the item. They would be an NPE but still need patent protection. There are usually issues with blanket statements like "NPEs are bad". NPEs have their uses. The kind of NPE that needs to be banned are the ones who buy patents for the sole purpose of suing people for past infringement. One way around that would be to negate all infringement that occurred before the IP was transferred to the NPE and start the infringement bill only after the NPE has notified the infringer and offered a reasonable licensing agreement.
Two economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve published a paper arguing to abolish the American patent system, saying there's "no evidence" patents improve productivity and that they have a "negative" effect on "innovation."
The fact that there is "no evidence" does not mean that there is no effect. The only valid way of finding such evidence is to compare innovation in a country with strong patent laws with innovation in a country with no patent laws. That is not going to happen because most countries have strong patent laws. Any other test would not show a true picture of the issue. In effect the writers are speculating.
In recent years, however, several innovators in high-tech sectors have complained that the large volume of vague patents has become a major barrier to innovation.
To paraphrase, there is nothing wrong with patents but there is an issue with " the large volume of vague patents". How about we deal with the issue instead of throwing away the whole system? How about creating a better patent system where vague patents are not awarded so often. The first step to that is to create a resource of experts in the various sectors and have them vet patents before they are awarded. These experts would probably best come from academia so as to hopefully not create bias toward industry.
The main thing patents protect is investment. It can take millions of dollars to invent things today. Do you really think someone would decide to invest $10M into something when $100k can be used to reverse engineer it? Do you think that $10M will ever be recouped? Would you make the $10M investment?
Here are a few ideas. 1. Instead of having a strict year limit one has a profit limit as well. The profit limit would be the greater of $5M or 3 time R&D costs. The limit on a patent would be 12 years or the profit limit which ever comes first. This may be difficult to administer but it may work. 2. Make ideas non patentable. If the object has not been created then it can not be patented. 3. Make it difficult to extend patents. Changing a couple of words to encompass new technology is not sufficiently innovative to be patentable. IE adding "over a network" or "on a mobile device" does not create a new patent. 4. Make licensing mandatory. Have a formula to force companies to license patents based on the value of the R&D going into the patent and the value of the patent within the end product. Force companies to sell licenses based on this formula. This way patents still make money but cease to be monopolies.
References? You seem to be drawing a correlation between plea bargaining and the number of people in jail without providing any numbers on the extent of plea bargaining in Europe vs the US.
I didn't hear a single person mention the eighth amendment. No one mentioned that, as a prison inmate, he would just be a further burden to society.
The eighth amendment has nothing to do with being a burden to society. To most people being sent to prison is not cruel and inhuman punishment . You are looking at the individual rather than the big picture. Prison sentences are not completely as punishment for the specific instance of breaking the law. The bigger picture is that sentences are there to deter future law breakers.
Again the 105 years is only if they multiply the maximum sentence and run them consecutively. That probably will not happen. Would you have them only charge him with one count even though he did it multiple times?
Community service would be great except that the convicted will not show up much of the time.
Your drinking and driving example is ludicrous. The drunk driver must be deterred from drinking and driving again. That he didn't kill someone was luck and in no way does it mean that the driver is not a danger to society. To me he is a danger to society every time he picks up a drink as it could lead to him drinking and driving and killing someone.
That doesn't benefit anyone except the corporations that run our prison system.
It benefits society in that the next person who thinks about doing that may understand the risk he is taking and may not do it.
It is reported this way because the media prefers to publicize consecutive terms rather than concurrent terms. Each count is separate and has a separate sentence. These separate sentences can be served concurrently or consecutively. So if one is sentenced to 2 years for each of 30 counts one could spend as much as 60 years in prison if the terms are consecutive or as little as 2 years if the terms are served concurrently. The decision is made during sentencing whether the terms are concurrent or consecutive.
Yet again a report of someone facing huge prison time by calculating a consecutive rather than a concurrent sentence. He was charged with 30 counts for two different offenses with a total of 105 years. That averages out to 3.5 years per count. Assuming one of the crimes has at least 1 year sentence the other must have at most a 6 year sentence. So if the sentences are served concurrently he would get at most 6 years in prison.
Stop reporting consecutive sentences that are unrealistic.
Read the counts and you will see they mention MIT computers as well as JSTOR computers. You seem to forget that Swartz played cat and mouse with MIT sys admins for days. All of MIT was blocked from JSROR for a period of time due to Swatrz's actions.
The other issue is that these are criminal charges and not civil charges. The reason for someone withdrawing a complaint is difficult is so that there are no back room deals to pay off the plaintiff. One of the main reasons for criminal sentences is to deter others from doing the same crimes. If they can get swept under the rug by a back room deal then the justice system falls apart. It is not OK to break the law if one of the injured parties says it is OK.
Swartz registered on the network using identifiers chosen to hide his identity as the computer’s owner and user. a. The computer was registered under the fictitious guest name “Gary Host.”
I couldn't help but notice that it also mentions intent. The intent to defraud or obtain money or property.
The property is the documents that he downloaded. I bet if you took the time to look up each charge you wuill find that the charge fits the crime.
MIT allows anyone access their network when the provide their real name and when they come in through their fire-walled ports. Swartz circumvented that by plugging into an unauthorized port and giving a fictitious name. That is where the wire fraud comes in.
Slashdot Mirror
Dorner won't surrender to anyone peacefully. He could walk into a newspaper office right now and have them call the local police if he wanted to surrender. He won't do that because is is a delusional psychopath. Remember he is the one who stated in his rant that two police officers who used the word nigger in his presence should have been killed.
On another point, "the LAPD" is not a monolithic entity. There are thousands of individuals working for the LAPD. Some are very good, some are very bad and most are in between. Referring to such a diverse group as one entity is invalid as each individual is different. Until you know the mind of every LAPD employee the statement " the LAPD wants Dorner to die just as badly" is just a generalization and not fact. In all probability most of the people in the LAPD want him dead but I bet there are at least a few who don't.
If you read the post I wrote a while ago you would see that I admitted that it got it a bit wrong. The missile that killed the kid was aimed at his uncle Ibrahim al-Banna. It was still aimed at a known al Qaeda leader I just named the wrong one.
Sorry I got the names wrong. The missile was targeted at Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian believed to be a senior operative in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So it was not Al Alwaki who was at fault but al-Banna. The missile was still targeted at a known and confessed terrorist and not the child. The kid went to see his uncle, also a known terrorist, and the uncle allowed him to stay thereby putting the child in danger.
By the way, insults and name calling are the weapons of someone with a weak argument. If you can write calmly you have much more chance of convincing people of your point if view.
He will in all probability be killed as there is near zero chance he will surrender peacefully.
In Al Alwaki's case it was known that the US was taking out al' Quada leaders using drones but Al Alwaki still allowed his son to be near him and thereby putting him at risk. In the Dorner case the "suspect" found and killed two innocent people. The person Dorner was mad at was nowhere near. In the Al Alwaki case the missile was targeted at Al Alwaki killing him and his son was close enough to the blast to be killed as well. In the Dorner case, Dorner directly targeted the family. There is a big difference.
Hope he takes out a couple of those murdering Fullerton PD cops before he gets killed or get put away forever though.
By that logic I guess you are for Iraqis coming over and killing "murdering Americans" in retaliation for civilian deaths in Iraq. There may be cops on the Fullerton PD that committed murder but that does not justify picking random Fullerton cops and killing them. There are probably some very good cops in Fullerton and a few bad ones.
Like ever slippery slope argument this one is invalid. The second anyone proposes arming drones in US airspace it the proposal will be shot down (pun intended). Having drones in US airspace is a good thing. Having armed drones in US airspace is a bad thing. Stopping a good thing from happening because it may lead to a bad thing happening is stupid. By protesting the good thing happening you are just sounding like the tinfoil brigade and any subsequent arguments you attempt are weakened. Unarmed drones do not inevitably lead to armed drones. We have had unarmed helicopters on partol for decades and they have yet to be armed even though there are plenty of armed helicopters.
But it's easy to 'legally' inflate those costs. You could for example buy your equipment from a subsidiary for 1000% of what it's worth.
The parent company is now deep in red on R&D, but has a healthy profit from the dividends it's subsidiary pays back. So they can now scream about how much R&D costs and demand more protection for their patents.
And when the company sends those same tax returns to the IRS they get sent to jail for tax fraud. Or when the R&D costs are audited by the government those costs can be disallowed as the company is paying itself. It is not perfect but it is better than what is happening now.
As for patenting ideas, what about small inventors that don't have the funds to make the product they imagine. If they reveal their ideas to potential investors, those investors can simply steal their idea, build it and patent it
That is simply handled by a non disclosure, non compete contract. It happens all the time when anyone talks about unpatented ideas.
As for preventing companies from using patents to block development of new things, they can already do that. They can make an invention, patent it, then put it in a closet for the next 20 years.
That is exactly right unless they are forced to license the patent. With the patent licensed development can continue.
Here are a few issues with your rant;
1. They can't unceremoniously murder people in the US. The drone strike issue is on foreign soil not US soil.
2. Drones are not " autonomous aerial murder platforms". The key word there is "autonomous" as all armed drones have pilots. The whole "Terminator" comparison is invalid because drones are not autonomous.
3. I disagree that "darkness [has] already won", There are still courts, 5th amendment, etc. Yes , in the case of terrorism people can be arrested in the US but they still have the right to a lawyer. The government still has to justify the terrorist claim.
4. The US government still has to follow diplomatic immunity. Can you cite one instance of the US government arresting a frreign diplomat on US soil as a terrorist?
The main issue is that armed drones in US airspace will always be unpalatable no matter how many drones are in the air. Like all slippery slope arguments it is invalid to stop a good thing now because there is a possible bad thing in the future under different circumstances.
We should continue to argue for rights but the arguments must be valid ones. Arguing about something that might happen in the future is not valid and diminishes the impact of the valid arguments. You may see the darkness as having won but I don't. We still have lots of freedom and to my mind moving the pilot from the aircraft to the ground does not diminish freedom.
This is one instance where the incompetence of the reviewers is so blatant that they should no longer be working for the USPTO. There is a point that people need to be held accountable for their decisions. The USPTO has become too much of a rubber stamp under the idea that the courts will sort out any issues. The system breaks down under that model as many people do not have the money to go to court. The USPTO is hardly a speed bump in the patent process any more.
. How would you define R&D costs? A company can easily inflate them to infinity using subsidiaries (Hollywood accounting).
Even Hollywood accounting has limits that being the revenue of the film. There are limits to R&D costs as they would be a line item on an audited balance sheet. If one is not provided then the flat $5M applies. There are already strict rules on what can and can not be considered R&D due to tax laws that give tax breaks for R&D. It would be simple to use these same laws and accounting procedures to apply to patents. It is not something new. There is a big difference between stealing money from a few actors and lying to the government.
The reason to not patent an idea is that it is too easy to have an idea patent it and then never do anything with it. That way a company can keep selling their present product without having to create a new product just because they hold the patent for the idea of the new product. This can happen when the profit margin on the new product is less than the present product and therefore stifles progress. Another company would develop the new product but now can't due to patent restrictions. In effect remove the ability to patent a product and all similar products to keep others out of the industry.
There is one major part that is left out in the summary;
The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on U.S. citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.'
The leaked memo outlines the legal case for drone strikes on U.S. citizen on foreign soil. By neglecting that very important point and linking it to an FAA plan to allow drones in US airspace is implies that there will be 30,000 armed drones in US airspace. That is so far from the truth as to be laughable.
Authorized is not the same as required.
You might want to read that section and clause again;
SECTION 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
...
To establish post offices and post roads;
Section 8 sets out what the Congress can "lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises" and not what it has a responsibility to do.The enumerated power is not to establish Post Offices but to collect money to establish Post Offices. Nowhere does it say they have to establish Post offices.
The wrench in the works is that only the owner of a patent can file a lawsuit. If the inventor retains ownership the NPE can not license or sue. If the NPE is acting on behalf of the inventor then the inventor must be involved in every transaction dealing with the invention; licenses, lawsuits, etc. Many inventors do not want to deal with that. They want to invent something, sell it and move on to the next invention.
Your ideas miss the point of the paper which is that the patent system is flooded by junk making it less than worthless. And it has gotten to the point where it is unfixable
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I admit there is a lot of bathwater but the baby is still important. Any process is fixable with enough thought and work. It will never be perfect but it could be much better.
If we are to have patents (and I think we will) the criteria for issuance needs to be limited to actual serious inventions that are the result of real work. Not baloney like UI features, business process, software etc.
Secondly there needs to be a real review process where objections to issuance can be filed by persons outside the patent office
I agree completely.
Finally infringement suits by NPEs need to be banned.
I agree if the NPE is not forced to sell licenses. There is a place for NPEs. For example an inventor can spend years and thousands of dollars creating a new invention but not have the money or facilities to bring it to production. Because they do not use or manufacture the item they would be considered an NPE. I see them still needing patent protection. That inventor may even sell the patent to another company who specializes in marketing and licensing the new invention though they do not manufacture the item. They would be an NPE but still need patent protection. There are usually issues with blanket statements like "NPEs are bad". NPEs have their uses.
The kind of NPE that needs to be banned are the ones who buy patents for the sole purpose of suing people for past infringement. One way around that would be to negate all infringement that occurred before the IP was transferred to the NPE and start the infringement bill only after the NPE has notified the infringer and offered a reasonable licensing agreement.
Two economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve published a paper arguing to abolish the American patent system, saying there's "no evidence" patents improve productivity and that they have a "negative" effect on "innovation."
The fact that there is "no evidence" does not mean that there is no effect. The only valid way of finding such evidence is to compare innovation in a country with strong patent laws with innovation in a country with no patent laws. That is not going to happen because most countries have strong patent laws. Any other test would not show a true picture of the issue. In effect the writers are speculating.
In recent years, however, several innovators in high-tech sectors have complained that the large volume of vague patents has become a major barrier to innovation.
To paraphrase, there is nothing wrong with patents but there is an issue with " the large volume of vague patents". How about we deal with the issue instead of throwing away the whole system? How about creating a better patent system where vague patents are not awarded so often. The first step to that is to create a resource of experts in the various sectors and have them vet patents before they are awarded. These experts would probably best come from academia so as to hopefully not create bias toward industry.
The main thing patents protect is investment. It can take millions of dollars to invent things today. Do you really think someone would decide to invest $10M into something when $100k can be used to reverse engineer it? Do you think that $10M will ever be recouped? Would you make the $10M investment?
Here are a few ideas.
1. Instead of having a strict year limit one has a profit limit as well. The profit limit would be the greater of $5M or 3 time R&D costs. The limit on a patent would be 12 years or the profit limit which ever comes first. This may be difficult to administer but it may work.
2. Make ideas non patentable. If the object has not been created then it can not be patented.
3. Make it difficult to extend patents. Changing a couple of words to encompass new technology is not sufficiently innovative to be patentable. IE adding "over a network" or "on a mobile device" does not create a new patent.
4. Make licensing mandatory. Have a formula to force companies to license patents based on the value of the R&D going into the patent and the value of the patent within the end product. Force companies to sell licenses based on this formula. This way patents still make money but cease to be monopolies.
References? You seem to be drawing a correlation between plea bargaining and the number of people in jail without providing any numbers on the extent of plea bargaining in Europe vs the US.
I didn't hear a single person mention the eighth amendment. No one mentioned that, as a prison inmate, he would just be a further burden to society.
The eighth amendment has nothing to do with being a burden to society. To most people being sent to prison is not cruel and inhuman punishment
.
You are looking at the individual rather than the big picture. Prison sentences are not completely as punishment for the specific instance of breaking the law. The bigger picture is that sentences are there to deter future law breakers.
Again the 105 years is only if they multiply the maximum sentence and run them consecutively. That probably will not happen. Would you have them only charge him with one count even though he did it multiple times?
Community service would be great except that the convicted will not show up much of the time.
Your drinking and driving example is ludicrous. The drunk driver must be deterred from drinking and driving again. That he didn't kill someone was luck and in no way does it mean that the driver is not a danger to society. To me he is a danger to society every time he picks up a drink as it could lead to him drinking and driving and killing someone.
That doesn't benefit anyone except the corporations that run our prison system.
It benefits society in that the next person who thinks about doing that may understand the risk he is taking and may not do it.
It is reported this way because the media prefers to publicize consecutive terms rather than concurrent terms. Each count is separate and has a separate sentence. These separate sentences can be served concurrently or consecutively. So if one is sentenced to 2 years for each of 30 counts one could spend as much as 60 years in prison if the terms are consecutive or as little as 2 years if the terms are served concurrently. The decision is made during sentencing whether the terms are concurrent or consecutive.
Yet again a report of someone facing huge prison time by calculating a consecutive rather than a concurrent sentence. He was charged with 30 counts for two different offenses with a total of 105 years. That averages out to 3.5 years per count. Assuming one of the crimes has at least 1 year sentence the other must have at most a 6 year sentence. So if the sentences are served concurrently he would get at most 6 years in prison.
Stop reporting consecutive sentences that are unrealistic.
Sorry but two wrongs ton't make a right.
Read the counts and you will see they mention MIT computers as well as JSTOR computers. You seem to forget that Swartz played cat and mouse with MIT sys admins for days. All of MIT was blocked from JSROR for a period of time due to Swatrz's actions.
The other issue is that these are criminal charges and not civil charges. The reason for someone withdrawing a complaint is difficult is so that there are no back room deals to pay off the plaintiff. One of the main reasons for criminal sentences is to deter others from doing the same crimes. If they can get swept under the rug by a back room deal then the justice system falls apart. It is not OK to break the law if one of the injured parties says it is OK.
You might want to at least check the original indictment:
Swartz registered on the network using identifiers chosen to hide his identity as
the computer’s owner and user.
a. The computer was registered under the fictitious guest name “Gary Host.”
I couldn't help but notice that it also mentions intent. The intent to defraud or obtain money or property.
The property is the documents that he downloaded.
I bet if you took the time to look up each charge you wuill find that the charge fits the crime.
MIT allows anyone access their network when the provide their real name and when they come in through their fire-walled ports. Swartz circumvented that by plugging into an unauthorized port and giving a fictitious name. That is where the wire fraud comes in.