>I think the issue under discussion is whether or not this kind of law is applied gently and with consideration to seriousness, or whether it tends to be used as a club to make an example of people.

I'm not sure how you got that impression from the original exchange of:

>>[...] You get less jail time for committing 34 felonies.

>up to 20 years. Realistically some kid downloading a model would get probation [...]

I didn't get that impression from the original exchange, I got it from the thread I am responding to involving Aaron Swartz being given as a counter-example to the last point, and inferring why somebody would use Aaron Swartz as a counter-example.

Seems I was right in that inference, given other responses to the thread since.

I think it's not about examples. Every attorney graduating with a quarter million in student debt that gets a low pay government job is trying to punch a lot of notches in their belt so that they can be picked up by a major law firm with a pretty paycheck. They'd be stupid or magnanimous to look the other way on easy wins.