I never like it when people compare the digital world to the real world.

It's like the whole "would you download a pizza" statement.

The answer is always, yes, yes I would.

I hope our politicians and law enforcement officials do not treat the digital world like its the real world. Things are just not the same... We need separate rules and separate code of ethics for each.

I consider my email to be like a personal folder, where I have an expectation of privacy. If I accidentally left my briefcase at your office, I would hope you wouldn't look through it.

If you found the keys to a room full of filing cabinets with other people's papers, it wouldn't be right to go open them all. Similarly, if you find a list of credentials that grant you access to the electronic documents of others, it's not right to use those credentials. Of course 'downloading a car' is a terrible metaphor, but comparing electronic documents to printed documents seems very straightforward.

If we're forcing physical metaphors, I think it's more like finding a stack of 47000 briefcases in an alley somewhere. Unattended, no signs or anything. Opening a bunch of them to just see if people's stolen documents are inside seems reasonable in that case.

The Python script was a terrible idea. No matter what your opinion of the equivalence between real property and email accounts is, he essentially played russian roulette with many thousands of dollars of legal fees.

Just assume the passwords work and move from there.

The account probing might be unlawful, but I think the key analogy is a bit of a reach.

Right, in many jurisdictions unauthorized access to a home is a much more serious offence than standard trespass.

> If you found a bunch of house keys, each one labled with the address of the house, would you go to each house and open each door?

I'm so tired of these analogies. The Internet is not like the physical world. Why don't we talk about what actually happened, rather competing to come up with the worst analogies?

Isn't what he's done more like war-dialing than actual cracking in real terms though.

I'll agree that in legal terms he's almost certainly the wrong side of the tracks.

You might not have entered the house, but you did enter the land.