so is Mike also going to write an article against DDoS attacks on targets whose copyright policies techdirt fans don't like? or are their sites not part of "the internet" that can be damaged? I could swear there was a small story about some sort of attack like this just the other day, internet speeds slowed all over the world or something (but I'm sure you know it's all propaganda).
i am more and more convinced by comment threads like this that massive for-profit corporations are refusing profits they could easily make and defying the law (which requires they maximize their profits by any legal means available), their Boards of Directors (which require corporations maximize their profits by any legal means available), and their shareholders (who requires they maximize their profits by any legal means available) by refusing to maximize their profits in order to piss off and hound their superheroic opponents like the commentators on this website.
the insanity of this story and so many of the responses to it on this site is a demonstration of one reason the prosecutors and judge took this case so far.
1) so few of the commentators care at all about the actual facts of the case--they have already decided (wrongly) that there was no evidence of weev's own malicious commercial self-interest. But there was substantial evidence presented at trial that he was not trying to "expose a security hole." So any story that bends the facts this way is starting from a wrong premise. The government convincingly (to the judge and jury) showed that he was trying to profit from his access to this information;
2) the very premise of the story--that what weev did was "expose a blatant security hole"--makes no sense on the surface. 10 or 100 email addresses would have sufficed to make that point and would have been very unlikely to produce this prosecution. 120,000 email addresses is prima facie evidence that he intended to do something far beyond "exposing a security hole";
3) from reading biographical stories about weev, it seems entirely likely that he had done this sort of thing before to his own significant profit--he had a lot of money of unclear origin;
4) to the commentator who compared this to looking into your neighbor's unfenced yard--that is both a frightening misunderstanding of privacy, and wrong, in that if I write down your account number on a piece of mail that I can see from the street, and then give that information to somebody else or have the intent--even the INTENT--to use it to my own profit, the fact that it was "visible" is irrelevant. It is stealing something to which I have no right--and it's stealing EVEN THOUGH I may have left the original document where it was.
Anyone who thinks weev is a freedom fighter is reading the wrong dictionary and the wrong law code, and that so many people do (on SUCH flimsy evidence and poor reading of the actual news stories) SHOULD concern law enforcement--and those of you who portray him as a freedom fighter are ensuring that crackdown is even harsher. This sight is amazingly blinkered, but this story is exceptional even by those standards. I know it's cool to love the outlaw, whatevs, but if you love the outlaw because they break the law, you don't then get to ask for the system to go easy on them too.
On the post: Damaging The Internet Is Not Acceptable Collateral Damage In The Copyright Wars
cool
On the post: Law Professor Eric Goldman: The CFAA Is A Failed Experiment; It's Time To Gut It
bizarre!!
On the post: Publishers Show Yet Again How To Make Money By Reducing The Price To Zero
On the post: Expose A Blatant Security Hole In AT&T's Servers, Get 3.5 Years In Jail
insanity
1) so few of the commentators care at all about the actual facts of the case--they have already decided (wrongly) that there was no evidence of weev's own malicious commercial self-interest. But there was substantial evidence presented at trial that he was not trying to "expose a security hole." So any story that bends the facts this way is starting from a wrong premise. The government convincingly (to the judge and jury) showed that he was trying to profit from his access to this information;
2) the very premise of the story--that what weev did was "expose a blatant security hole"--makes no sense on the surface. 10 or 100 email addresses would have sufficed to make that point and would have been very unlikely to produce this prosecution. 120,000 email addresses is prima facie evidence that he intended to do something far beyond "exposing a security hole";
3) from reading biographical stories about weev, it seems entirely likely that he had done this sort of thing before to his own significant profit--he had a lot of money of unclear origin;
4) to the commentator who compared this to looking into your neighbor's unfenced yard--that is both a frightening misunderstanding of privacy, and wrong, in that if I write down your account number on a piece of mail that I can see from the street, and then give that information to somebody else or have the intent--even the INTENT--to use it to my own profit, the fact that it was "visible" is irrelevant. It is stealing something to which I have no right--and it's stealing EVEN THOUGH I may have left the original document where it was.
Anyone who thinks weev is a freedom fighter is reading the wrong dictionary and the wrong law code, and that so many people do (on SUCH flimsy evidence and poor reading of the actual news stories) SHOULD concern law enforcement--and those of you who portray him as a freedom fighter are ensuring that crackdown is even harsher. This sight is amazingly blinkered, but this story is exceptional even by those standards. I know it's cool to love the outlaw, whatevs, but if you love the outlaw because they break the law, you don't then get to ask for the system to go easy on them too.
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