I understand. And in all of my comments, I've never argued from the position that this was definitely not a paper crime. It may or may not be, depending on what actually happened. Only two people know for sure. And a judge, etc. But I was arguing from the position of whether this should be a crime. And whether this should be made public, and names named, at this point in the game. And my take on both of these points was no and no. Or at least "very probably not" and "definitely no," respectively.

I don't want to live in a society where we care more about whether something is literally legal or illegal, and not more about whether something is right or wrong, and in making subtle judgements and comparisons about how right or how wrong something is, in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, it should not matter whether something is technically legal or illegal because we can change the laws, and, laws are being changed all the time, and laws are getting bought by special interests all the time. They are literally just words on paper. What should matter is the purpose and intent of laws -- why do we have them? Why should we have them? When do they work well and when are they broken or could use improvement. I think all of these issues are at play in this particular case. And this is way more interesting to me, both as a geek and as a citizen, than whether what happened is literally a crime or not. That's for cops and DA's and judges to decide. But we can, in theory, ultimately decide what those laws should be.

thanks for sparring with me on this!