<story><title>US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide</title><url>http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/13/139218/us-attorney-chided-swartz-on-day-of-suicide</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>watty</author><text>There&apos;s nothing ridiculous about claiming Aaron caused his situation and killed himself.  There is a prosecutor, defendant and a judge.  Prosecutors typically exaggerate their case, defendants typically downplay their side, and the judge is responsible for determining the outcome.&lt;p&gt;Wasn&apos;t she just doing her job?  She was brought a high profile case.  It involved a notorious internet prodigy who stashed a laptop and wrote a program to download 4M+ articles that otherwise would have cost a ton of money.  A quick search revealed prices around $30.  $30 * 4M = 120M.  What am I missing?</text></item><item><author>duairc</author><text>Totally ridiculous, victim-blaming comment.&lt;p&gt;“If you add up everyone&apos;s responsibility for something, it doesn&apos;t equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.”
— Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item><item><author>flipper28</author><text>I think it&apos;s kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at &quot;everyone else&quot; other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.&lt;p&gt;Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I&apos;ll admit I don&apos;t know the entire backstory of what led up to this man&apos;s suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.&lt;p&gt;It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.&lt;p&gt;He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.&lt;p&gt;Let&apos;s celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;#62;Wasn&apos;t she just doing her job?&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. There is a reason that prosecutors have prosecutorial discretion and this case is it. The prosecutor&apos;s job is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; to zealously convict anyone they encounter with everything they can convict them with, it is to represent the interests of the people. There is no fathomable way that sending Aaron Swartz to prison for 35 years could possibly do that.&lt;p&gt;But let&apos;s not put all of the blame on the prosecutors. The prosecutors &lt;i&gt;did wrong&lt;/i&gt; here, but we allowed it to happen by giving them the &lt;i&gt;authority&lt;/i&gt; to do wrong. We are, as we speak, allowing laws to remain on the books that make &quot;crimes&quot; that should be a minor misdemeanor at worst (and not illegal at all at best) into felonies punishable by a sentence of imprisonment longer than the sentences received by many unrepentant criminals who have committed &lt;i&gt;premeditated murder&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;These outrageously disproportionate laws are what allowed these prosecutors to abuse their discretion. Get rid of the laws, or cut the penalties by a factor of a thousand, and you get rid of the problem. That should be the goal here. Making an example of these prosecutors is not a bad first step, but actually prohibiting what they did by removing their ability to levy outrageous charges at minor offenders has to be the long-term solution.</text></comment>
<story><title>US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide</title><url>http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/13/139218/us-attorney-chided-swartz-on-day-of-suicide</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>watty</author><text>There&apos;s nothing ridiculous about claiming Aaron caused his situation and killed himself.  There is a prosecutor, defendant and a judge.  Prosecutors typically exaggerate their case, defendants typically downplay their side, and the judge is responsible for determining the outcome.&lt;p&gt;Wasn&apos;t she just doing her job?  She was brought a high profile case.  It involved a notorious internet prodigy who stashed a laptop and wrote a program to download 4M+ articles that otherwise would have cost a ton of money.  A quick search revealed prices around $30.  $30 * 4M = 120M.  What am I missing?</text></item><item><author>duairc</author><text>Totally ridiculous, victim-blaming comment.&lt;p&gt;“If you add up everyone&apos;s responsibility for something, it doesn&apos;t equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.”
— Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item><item><author>flipper28</author><text>I think it&apos;s kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at &quot;everyone else&quot; other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.&lt;p&gt;Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I&apos;ll admit I don&apos;t know the entire backstory of what led up to this man&apos;s suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.&lt;p&gt;It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.&lt;p&gt;He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.&lt;p&gt;Let&apos;s celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mindslight</author><text>Critical thinking skills. Instead, you&apos;re repeating a tired emotional appeal to top-down prescribed &quot;morals&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Here is a program to download &quot;4M+&quot; articles:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    i=1;while true;do wget http://foo/$i;i=1$i;done
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I&apos;ll license my Unary Downloader Pro to you for $120MM. Oh wait, you just copied it into your brain and then reverse engineered it even!? You just did $120MM+ worth of damages!</text></comment>