Comment by diabllicseagull
11 days ago
arguing that the application of the law was as expected to people who point out how unjust the expected application of the law is is pointless.
ideally, we would see a stronger legal reaction to the biggest IP heist in history but clearly it's not what's happening. it's only natural for people to criticize the current system until a change for the better materializes, while doing so draw attention to extreme cases such as Aaron's.
But my point it is not an unjust application of the law, the law is specifically structured to treat certain behaviors as worse than others. IMO that is actually fair in theory: We do NOT want to punish people who casually pirate stuff for private use, but we probably do want to punish and deter bad actors who want to profit off of the work of others'.
Aaron Swartz's case was actually neither -- you could say he wanted to "liberate" information for the "public good" -- but unfortunately the law has no provision for that and all his actions were consistent with how the law specifies the bad actor case, which is what escalated things drastically.