Reddit Cofounder kills himself.

Part of the real problem is that everybody has been putting forth this ridiculous strawman, thinking anybody said this. Not one person on this topic actually thinks he would've gotten the full sentence. Not I, not anyone. Not Swish either. What we've said is that he should've went to jail or fought to win in the Trial.

Which still would not have gotten him even 20 years. Because he didn't cause severe problems to anyone, just really annoying ones. Seriously, I'm calling out this strawman because it is one.

Nobody said his crime is super severe. We did call it a felony because it's classified as one.(three felonies he committed, in fact) We did not say he was to be given the most severe punishment ever. Nobody did. I am a bit tired of hearing it. I'm going to ask people fully read what's said in this topic before making these assumptions again.

This guy would not have gotten anywhere 20 years under any normal trial and circumstances. He did not pull anything worth that. He would've gotten a lot amount of years, if he lost, but not a hefty amount like people are saying that people are... saying.

He seemed to be willing to take his chances at trial. The prosecution seem to have been the ones holding back getting to that stage by upping the ante bit by bit, trying to get him to plead guilty before even setting foot in court by applying the pressure and going for the scare tactics.

To my mind, it looks as if they just wanted to get him to plead guilty. Sod the trial. <_< And, were willing to continue drawing it out.

edited 19th Jan '13 8:52:51 AM by Euodiachloris

No disagreements on that.

Still doesn't change that none of us were saying he should get every year possible.(which is s strawman since nobody is arguing that)

Irene: Did I say anyone in this thread supported that? No I did not. Do not put words in my mouth. Do try to be less insulting.

The threat of a such harsh term is not an empty one. If they can get it they would go for it. Care to go examine similar conflicts related to similar issues? They have a record of going overboard with excessive fines and jail time for what is at worst a petty crime. The harm he did was minimal. To even threaten such a severe sentence is immoral for such a petty offense.

I believe they would have gone for the full sentence anyways. There is no gurantee they would have fully accepted the plee bargain and could have just been jerking him around. It would not be the first time such a thing has been done. And again the DOJ has a really bad rep for a reason. More then a few Americans alone think they have gone over board and are often over zealous.

edited 19th Jan '13 12:35:43 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The extremely broad definition of fraud in the case is far more directly linked and would be far more horrifying to people ("You know the stuff that you do on forums that gets you modded? Or using a fake username? or making sockpuppet accounts? The government can charge you for all that with "fraud" and sentence you to 10 years in jail for that.").

edited 19th Jan '13 2:06:02 PM by IraTheSquire

Yeah. You know how some of your friends will slightly change the name on their social media account to throw off potential employers rifling through it? Yeah that counts as "computer fraud" in most places, with a minimum sentence of about half a year.

edited 19th Jan '13 2:36:40 PM by Pykrete

I need to wonder, though, is there any precedent for that sort of thing. Has anyone ever been prosecuted for using a nickname on Facebook, or a username on a forum, or, dare I say it, sockpuppeting (assuming that each of these people are doing these things for harmless reasons and mean no mischief).

edited 19th Jan '13 2:39:18 PM by 0dd1

So it is illegal to be anonymous on the internet. Great.

Not yet. They still haven't made a bill for that that passed through Congress yet. (They've been trying though.)

And I just realized in my last post I used periods instead of question marks. I am an idiot.

edited 19th Jan '13 2:41:20 PM by 0dd1

To oversimplify with only some loss of accuracy, it's illegal to be deceptive. As in, anonymous screen names are not illegal, but falsifying information on social media is. With a whole lot of poorly-defined gray area in between, of course.

So, the fact that I use a cartoon picture of a cat on Facebook instead of a picture of myself is illegal?

I'm gonna love it if that bill is passed and all of a sudden, crimes that could have been avoided through secret identities (coughonlinepredatorscough) sky rocket.

Only if you try to obtain money or services as a cat. Or try to convince a public service that you are, in fact, a cat. The IRS or HM Revenue are likely to be particularly lacking in humour if you do that.

Fraud is really complex partly because it's one of those areas where intention is important. It's fairly clear that Aaron Swartz may have been using his fake logins to access a service he wasn't entitled to - that would justify a prosecution for fraud. But people use pseudonyms all the time for entirely legitimate purposes.

edited 19th Jan '13 2:57:38 PM by Bluesqueak

But as I've asked, have there ever been any cases involving that (assuming that the false information wasn't there for the purpose of deception)?

edited 19th Jan '13 2:58:35 PM by 0dd1

It's not illegal (certainly not in the UK, and as I understand it, in most US states) unless you are using the fake identity to commit or conceal a criminal act. The cases I know of were connected with stalking or cyber-bullying.

Facebook can remove the page - they've got a right to do that under their TOS.

edited 19th Jan '13 3:13:11 PM by Bluesqueak

No, Tuefel, that's the entire brunt of this silly strawman. That he'll get the max amount of years. The problem is, the people who saying he should be punished have not actually said that. Only a select few people who think we want him to be severely punished.

Yes, he definitely deserved punishment because his entire intention was harmful to others. However, it wasn't super ridiculous, and had a point; But he didn't follow through. We have yet to know why he killed himself. The most reasonable theory is that the hounding combined with his depression was his reasons alone.(and makes sense, logically)

But only because he was hounded. Even all of that combined? He wouldn't never gotten the full amount of years. And if he somehow did? You do realize that would've sent an actual message about how ridiculous that amount was for the weak amount of felonies he committed. As of right now, the only legitimate message he left is that hounding people for guilty pleas is morally wrong. He never followed through to stop the problem he tried to fight.

Nobody who thought he should be punished has ever said it should be the full time or that it's comparable to murder. That's been a constant strawman pushed throughout this entire topic. And a bad argument since the former is unlikely and the latter would never apply. I'm sorry that I'm sick of the hearing that beyond bad argument that is nothing but flame bait. So please drop that, okay?

Irene; I am sorry but it is not strawman. There is no misrepresentation of their postion when they have actively stated their intent.

Did I say he shouldn't be punished? No I did not. One last time since you seem to like saying I state one thing when I don't. They actively threatened to sentence him as hard as possible. I have pointed out this excessively harsh especially in realtion to the nature of his crime. They also have a track record of going for the max penalty any chance they get. There is also a track record of trying to make examples of people just like him. Look over the past flare ups with other online activism events. Stick to what is said.

I will point out one more time track record vs your absurd absolute statement. Such things have been done before. Saying they won't do this when they have a track recrod that shows otherwise. Not only did they state their intent they have followed up on such intent in the past. This is not a straw man but a established pattern of behaviour.

Again excessive sentencing has been done multiple times before and has become a regular pattern of behaviour int he legal system especially from the DOJ.

There is better track record for them going for max sentence the minute you don't play their way. This is also not the first time excessive sentencing for a relatively minor amount of harm compared to the potential sentence being leveraged and also in past cases carried out.

I am sorry but you can't just conviently ignore past behaviours because it doesn't mesh with your personal view. Never mind current behaviour.

Also when it comes to going against the goverment they use dirty tricks like tying you up in the legal system behind as much red tape as they can layer you in, to run you out of money when they have virtually unlimited funds, and they pulled it here as well.

Minor amount of fraud that resulted in short term outages that was likely shorter then a major patch or update for the server or from other hiccups in service that require maintenance.

Even proposing such an excessive sentence is bordering on the legally questionable never mind ethically questionable. It is a catch 22. Either do things their way or they hit you as hard they can. Rather then giving a reasonable sentencing option they used a threat of a max penalty that they can and will try their best to get. They can and have done this.

There is a huge difference between reasonable punishment vs the legal system being used to bully and harass someone into saying they are guilty in hopes of a lighter sentence. Nevermind the same prosecutor has a pattern of behaviour that reflects this practice.

It is not reasonable to sentence or even threaten to sentence someone to 35 years in prison with a huge fine for a relatively minor offense. The down time was short lived and not executed out of malice yet they treat him like he murdered someone in the middle of the street in broad daylight with threats of an excessive sentence. He downloaded research data. Big fricken whoop.

I would agree with this statement if you actually got what I was talking about. It is a strawman, because what you're saying was actually unlikely to ever happen.(and it clearly didn't) Either way, if you want to argue their actions had a dire effect on his suicide, fine. But him being punished at the highest possible point; No.

Then you clearly do not get what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people here who agree he should get punished disagree it should've been for the max amount of time. The only people who have said that here is acting like we want that. That's the strawman. Nobody here is supporting max sentences, so I kindly ask for people to stop acting like we are.

Read what I said again. I said unlikely, not unable to happen.

Doesn't mean it will happen, which is the only thing I'm getting from those arguing about him being tried if he was charged for murder.(which is still flame bait and should be dropped as an argument, but clearly people still think it's a relevant one)

I never said it couldn't happen. I said it's not guaranteed. Try again.

Because that's what I'm doing. No, what I'm doing is realizing that the max statement is not guaranteed. There's a difference.

Which is another problem, not the Fraud or Copyright Law problems. And probably why he killed himself. But this has zip to do with what he committed was a crime worthy of some kind of punishment. I'm not arguing about the sentence time except that expecting it to be max is ludicrous. It's not that likely generally. His actions, clearly, may have gotten him a high amount of time, but that would be due to being extremely uncooperative and have nothing to do with them trying to get a high sentence. Different situations altogether.(just a faint relation)

Hardly relevant. His attempt was to harm, therefore, it's punishable. Something that has an intent to help or an accident is not the same situation. I see no relevance here.

Nobody has said otherwise. Not I, not anyone. We all think it's excessive. Which is why there's no need for the argument or point to be made. It's a useless point in this topic.

And I already said I have a problem with the harassment. I never said otherwise. I also said, that while the practice is legal, I did not like it either.

Nobody here has said it's reasonable. We said he deserved some kind of punishment.

Yeah, not one thing you said was what I was arguing against. Or to put it specifically, you just said my entire stance, not me arguing against it. That's why I called out the strawman, because words are being put into my mouth.

Here, I'll say what my actual argument is again; He broke a law, a severe law, and deserves some kind of punishment. The harassment was wrong and should not have happened. I feel sorry that he lost his life, but I do not find him a hero because none of his actions proved anything about the copyright or fraud laws. It just proved that their harassment is immoral, which is a different problem.

Now stop acting like I ever said anything else, because I didn't.

"He downloaded research data. Big fricken whoop."

This is pretty much the TL:DR version of my stance on the matter.

And it seems Anonymous has decided to step in...

Took them a while to do something about it.

I've always wondered when they would go into actual terrorism.

Also, it's disconcerting that it seems so easy to crack a federal website.

Just as a side note, this isn't the first time Anonymous, insofar as it can be referred to as an organization, has attacked a government website.

xkcd.com/932/

This is relevant.

Look, all they're doing is using a shit-ton of computers to ping the website "The poster" with requests, causing it to crash. It's not hard. You can download an auto-DDOS program for your computer for free with a google search (Not that I recommend it. Gov isn't looking so kindly on it anymore.) It's not very impressive, and it's something that can be fixed within a week. IT doesn't touch data, or anything else.

And this is coming from someone who (mostly) likes anon. I liked project Chan-ology, in paticular, and wish that they had long enough of an attention span to continue it. (Though calling it "they" would be just as misleading as calling the Echo Chamber a "TV Tropes Project"). It was done by Tropers, but who does Anon shit at any given time is constantly shifting an amorphous, mostly determined by who gives a fuck, and who can get others to give a fuck.

Honestly, best thing Anons ever tried was the "Zeta Cartel thing" and we all know how that turned out. (...not well.)

But this isn't some grand, nation-security compromising hacker scheme. All it takes is a shit-ton of reasonable fast computers with networks, and some coordination.