Some information on the Aaron Swartz case
[cn: suicide]
Orin Kerr is one of the few lawyers in the country who has been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney for IP and privacy related cases involving the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Wire Fraud statutes. He defended Lori Drew in United States v. Drew (you might remember the case as involving the girl who committed suicide after getting bullied on MySpace and the government prosecuting the mother under this act for violating the TOS of MySpace) and, despite his presence on a libertarian-to-conservative legal blog, has no dog in this race. In fact, he's been calling for re-writing the CFAA for more than two years now, because he dislikes how vague it has become.
I highly recommend reading his extremely even-handed treatment of the case. It gets a tad legalese-y, because the main audience of the websites is lawyers, law professors, and law students, but it contains some very important information.
Part 1: The Charges
Part 2: The Prosecutor's Actions
And, as a bonus, Kerr's work on the CFAA.
The articles are not perfect; he falls into a couple of logical fallacies, but they do not invalidate his main argument. He apparently doesn't know literally everything there is to know about how JSTOR works, but he knows a lot more about how the CFAA is charged than anyone else on the planet.
Orin Kerr is one of the few lawyers in the country who has been both a prosecutor and a defense attorney for IP and privacy related cases involving the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Wire Fraud statutes. He defended Lori Drew in United States v. Drew (you might remember the case as involving the girl who committed suicide after getting bullied on MySpace and the government prosecuting the mother under this act for violating the TOS of MySpace) and, despite his presence on a libertarian-to-conservative legal blog, has no dog in this race. In fact, he's been calling for re-writing the CFAA for more than two years now, because he dislikes how vague it has become.
I highly recommend reading his extremely even-handed treatment of the case. It gets a tad legalese-y, because the main audience of the websites is lawyers, law professors, and law students, but it contains some very important information.
Part 1: The Charges
Part 2: The Prosecutor's Actions
And, as a bonus, Kerr's work on the CFAA.
The articles are not perfect; he falls into a couple of logical fallacies, but they do not invalidate his main argument. He apparently doesn't know literally everything there is to know about how JSTOR works, but he knows a lot more about how the CFAA is charged than anyone else on the planet.