Don't be purposefully disingenuous. There is nothing wrong with wearing a hoodie in public, but if you wear a hoodie to hide your face from security cameras while you walk, without permission, onto a commercial building at night, then the fact of your wearing the hoodie can be used to show that you knew you were trespassing and trying to hide the fact. The same exact reasoning can be applied to changing your MAC address while trespassing onto a private network without permission. There is nothing wrong with doing it by itself, but if you do it to get onto someone's network when they don't want you on, that's something totally different.

As for "threats of 35 year sentences"--the statutory maximum is not a "threat." If I punch you in a bar fight, causing no injury, and you press charges, I'm theoretically facing the maximum sentence for assault in New York, which is 25 years. But at no point does anybody think anyone will actually get a 25 year sentence for a little bar fight. If I went apoplectic about the grave injustices of "facing" 25 years in prison for a bruised chin, people would point out the obvious: the statutory maximum is for people who try to kill people, not people who get in bar fights. Similar common sense should prevail in this discussion--the fact that it doesn't is because of nothing more than grandstanding.

> As for "threats of 35 year sentences"--the statutory maximum is not a "threat."

That's simply incorrect. It is absolutely a threat. As I recently argued:

> The prosecutor used the threat of 35-50 years in prison to get Aaron to accept a guilty plea. If he chose to plead not guilty and attempt to defend himself, it would cost well over a million dollars in legal fees, and if he were found guilty anyway, the judge would be strongly predisposed to make an example of him by giving him a very long, punitive sentence.

> A prosecutor forcing someone to admit guilt by threatening a life-destroying cruel and unusual punishment if they do not admit it - why, that is the very essence of using torture to extract a confession!

http://quandyfactory.com/blog/103/on_crimes_and_punishments_...

The trick is in the word "faces." If I went to trial for punching someone at a bar, a jury could decide that I was really trying to kill them and my ninja hands were deadly weapons, etc, and a judge could decide I'm a menace to society and need to be put away and so in that sense I "face" 25 years in prison. But that doesn't happen.

Yes, prosecutors offer lower sentences in exchange for guilty pleas, but the lower sentence is relative to the sentencing guidelines, not the statutory maximums. See: http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

Statutory maximums are not the same as mandatory minimums.

> A prosecutor forcing someone to admit guilt by threatening a life-destroying cruel and unusual punishment if they do not admit it - why, that is the very essence of using torture to extract a confession!

I count at least 7 fallacies in that single sentence. Impressive.

> does anybody think anyone will actually get a 25 year sentence for a little bar fight.

Let's switch it up and say that the guy you decked was the son of the prosecutors best buddy from high school. And that you are a minority, high school dropout. In todays america, you very well might be facing the maximum sentence; if not much worse.

Except you just made all that up, and also the sentences minorities get and the sentences white kids like Swartz get are (regrettably) two different conversations.

The point I was making is that we have a two tiered system of justice in this country; and while it used to be the case that the tiers were divided exclusively by race; they are now divided along the lines of class, and political opinion.

The meta-point I am attempting to make is that despite the pieties and the nice heritage architecture of the buildings it lives in; our system of justice has become unutterably and unsustainably corrupt; almost as corrupt as our political system.

>purposefully disingenuous

Can we have a civilized conversation please? Criticizing my arguments is one thing, accusing me of dishonesty completely different. Thanks.

I agree with your comparison of Aaron's deeds to trespassing. What is the statutory maximum for trespassing with a hoodie? Why does trespassing onto a network fit into a category of crimes for which prosecution can (and does) seek worse punishment than for actual physical assault? Pretty much for the reasons I've outlined in my comment: entrenched interests, desire to hit novel kinds of possible crimes with excessive punishment rather than reform the system to deal with them.

> Can we have a civilized conversation please? Criticizing my arguments is one thing, accusing me of dishonesty completely different.

Saying "there is nothing wrong with changing your MAC address" in this context is disingenuous, because it implies that Swartz was being charged for changing his MAC address. That is a false implication. He was being charged for the other things he was doing--the things that necessitated his changing his MAC address.

Trespassing onto a network under the CFAA is a misdemeanor, just like criminal trespass in a building. Trespassing with intent to commit some other crime therein is a felony under the CFAA, and is basically burglary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burglary) in meat-space.

The problem here is that mass copyright infringement shouldn't be a crime, but rather a civil issue. But the entrenched interests that made mass copyright infringement a crime are probably different than the ones you're thinking of--it was the tech industry, the BSA with Microsoft, Oracle, etc, that turned copyright infringement into a criminal matter in their fight against mass pirating of Windows, etc.

I didn't say "there is nothing wrong with changing your MAC address" and didn't imply that's what he was charged for. The article mentioned the prosecutors using it in support of treating the case harshly, and I just compared its seriousness (as a threat to social order etc.) to wearing a hoodie (which you basically agreed with). And I still don't believe it's justifiable for the virtual equivalent of either trespass or burglary to fit in a category of crimes that are more serious than physical assault on a living, breathing person.

> I didn't say "there is nothing wrong with changing your MAC address" and didn't imply that's what he was charged for.

> "Changing your MAC address, for instance, is no worse a threat to society than wearing a hoodie in public"

I'm not sure how else to read this other than "there is nothing wrong with changing your MAC address."

> And I still don't believe it's justifiable for the virtual equivalent of either trespass or burglary to fit in a category of crimes that are more serious than physical assault on a living, breathing person.

It may be more or less serious--it depends on the context. Trespass into a network system with intent to steal credit card numbers is worse than punching someone at a bar, while trespass into a network system just for kicks is much less bad than beating someone up. That's why both crimes can range from misdemeanors to serious felonies.

Well you were being a bit dishonest; the actual maximum sentence was 50 years. :P

> Why does trespassing onto a network fit into a category of crimes for which prosecution can (and does) seek worse punishment than for actual physical assault?

In a word: automation. It can be (note: doesn't mean always is) entirely different in scope to be a network trespasser than to trespass in real life.

The Allies executed Germans after WWII who never so much as met their victims, based only on the fact that they wrote, approved and otherwise perpetuated policies that caused millions on the same continent to later perish.

I'm not trying to say that Aaron or anyone else is killing people obviously, just that there's a lot of things you can conceivably affect on a computer network, which might make a computer-related charge even more serious than a similar charge in real life.