[bobbtmann]

This seems like an important development.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/01/12/swartz-internet-obit.html

[General Battuta]

The whole JSTOR thing was pretty big when I was working at MIT. I heard a lot about this guy.

[Aardwolf]

Wow.

What the ****, Justice Department?

[Scotty]

Wow.

What the ****, Justice Department?

I really have to ask how this is the Justice Department's fault?  He plead not guilty, and his trial was scheduled to begin next month.  Not his conviction, not his sentencing, his trial.  If the charges were really as ridiculous as it sounds this sounds like at best a massively premature reaction and at worst the end to a promising life that wasn't even going to figuratively end.

None of it lessens the tragedy of his death, however.  I just really have to ask why conducting a trial is an injustice.

[karajorma]

Well for one thing, you can't sue the state for lawyer's costs afterwards. Even if the charge is completely ridiculous.


More importantly, why the hell is the Justice Department bringing a case for theft if the supposed injured party has said they don't care?

[headdie]

The article mentions in passing that he suffered with depression.  Now I have no idea of the extent of it but from my own experience just the idea of being taken to court in a case of this nature (baseless or not), especially with the potential sentences involved would have put an immense amount of pressure on him and personally speaking under that sort of pressure suicide would look really tempting to me too.

[newman]

I just really have to ask why conducting a trial is an injustice.

One word: intimidation. Trials aren't free, short, stress-free processes. If one happens that threatens the person on it with prison and / or high fines, and the case is on some pretty shaky legs from the get go, the supposed injured party going on record that they don't even care, then yes it's an injustice. Now this person is forced to spend a lot of his time and money on this process; time and money nobody's going to give back to him. Not to mention stress and impact to general health. That's assuming the person isn't suffering from depression and won't off himself before the process even begins, which is what happened here. So yes, trials aren't the same as convictions, but they're also not happy memories for the people involved and shouldn't happen lightly. Or in short, the legal system shouldn't be used as a form of intimidation / legal racket. Unfortunately, any system is only as good as the people it's made of.

A good mental exercise is to picture yourself accused of something that you either didn't do or was just horribly (possibly intentionally) misinterpreted to serve someone else's interests. Are you going to be happy you'll get to have your day in court and exercise your rights to defend yourself, or are you going to be stressed and angry because for the next several months (years? depends on the case and where it's being processed) you will be spending time otherwise spent with your family / job / life in general on a legal process you're not guaranteed to win, and if you don't you're facing some jail time and / or high fines? Now add depression into the mix and you have a pretty good way to get someone to commit suicide before it even goes to trial.

[The E]

More importantly, why the hell is the Justice Department bringing a case for theft if the supposed injured party has said they don't care?

Because as far as I can tell, the prosecution intended for him to be jailed as an example pour encourager les autres. I mean, he's a high-profile hacktivist who had no problem entering grey areas in the pursuit of his ideals; we can't have that in modern America, can we?

[karajorma]

That's pretty much the reason I'm seeing too. In which case it's rather a pity that the people involved will never be charged for abusing the law in this way.

[Aardwolf]

There's a petition to can the prosecutor for something something "overreaching" something? Uh... petition. It exists.

[Flipside]

The sad thing is, if an online troll had harassed and threatened someone till they committed suicide, lawmakers would be calling for something to be done.

If the lad committed a crime, then the reaction should be proportional, not vindictive, and seeing as the victim did not want to pursue the case, this stinks of vendetta.

[karajorma]

Actually, I have to ask. If the victim wasn't interested in the case, what the hell were they prosecuting him for? What hell charge can you make for theft if the victim doesn't want to prosecute?

[Lorric]

I wonder if this was a story about some average Joe that you'd never heard of, how many of you would be saying "obviously he was guilty, why else would he end his own life?"

I'm just saying...

[NGTM-1R]

Actually, I have to ask. If the victim wasn't interested in the case, what the hell were they prosecuting him for? What hell charge can you make for theft if the victim doesn't want to prosecute?

Computer crimes laws do not require a complaining victim on the grounds that the victim may not even know a crime has taken place much more easily than with physical objects. Data which is copied is not removed.

[Lorric]

Actually, I have to ask. If the victim wasn't interested in the case, what the hell were they prosecuting him for? What hell charge can you make for theft if the victim doesn't want to prosecute?

Computer crimes laws do not require a complaining victim on the grounds that the victim may not even know a crime has taken place much more easily than with physical objects. Data which is copied is not removed.

I wonder how this could work with other crimes. There are reasons victims won't go forward with charges besides no crime being comitted. From not worth the hassle to blackmail and threats.

[Flipside]

I wonder if this was a story about some average Joe that you'd never heard of, how many of you would be saying "obviously he was guilty, why else would he end his own life?"

I'm just saying...

To be honest, the fact he co-invented RSS etc is secondary from my perspective, whilst I blame the depression, not the DA for his actual suicide, the reason his depression got to that point appears to be because of many threats of disproportionate punishment for a crime even the victim considered to have been resolved almost a year previously.

I'm concerned that, rather than the law serving the people, the opposite is becoming more and more the case.

[karajorma]

Computer crimes laws do not require a complaining victim on the grounds that the victim may not even know a crime has taken place much more easily than with physical objects. Data which is copied is not removed.

Seems rather like overreaching to me. While I can see an argument for not needing a complainant for investigation, not needing one for prosecution seems somewhat silly to me.

Crimes which don't require a complainant really should be restricted to those where the victim can't complain (murder) or won't because of intimidation (abuse). It seems rather silly to say "Well the victim was unaware of the crime and wasn't in any way damaged by the crime but we're still going to prosecute anyway against their wishes"

[Luis Dias]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/aaron-swartz-suicide_b_2467079.html

Prosecutor as bully

(...)
But all this shows is that if the government proved its case, some punishment was appropriate. So what was that appropriate punishment? Was Aaron a terrorist? Or a cracker trying to profit from stolen goods? Or was this something completely different?

Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured "appropriate" out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the "criminal" who we who loved him knew as Aaron.

Here is where we need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor's behavior. From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The "property" Aaron had "stolen," we were told, was worth "millions of dollars" -- with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.(...)

[Ghostavo]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck

[MP-Ryan]

Seems rather like overreaching to me. While I can see an argument for not needing a complainant for investigation, not needing one for prosecution seems somewhat silly to me.

Crimes which don't require a complainant really should be restricted to those where the victim can't complain (murder) or won't because of intimidation (abuse). It seems rather silly to say "Well the victim was unaware of the crime and wasn't in any way damaged by the crime but we're still going to prosecute anyway against their wishes"

While there is a push in some places to eliminate so-called "victimless crimes" (drug possession, prostitution, gambling, alcohol production - the 'vice' offences), most criminal law in Common Law nations doesn't actually require a cooperative victim for prosecution to occur.  This is for two reasons:  (1) in Common Law nations, a crime is philosophically against the state and the social contract, not an individual.  This is why punishment is not 'eye-for-an-eye' or up to the victim. (2) It may be in the best interests of public safety for a successful prosecution to occur even in the absence of a cooperative victim.  Crimes committed against known criminals as well as domestic violence fall in this category.

Not saying the Swartz prosecution was a legitimate exercise of criminal justice, just that there are very good reasons why a cooperative victim/complainant is not essential to prosecution.