Recent submissions

Comment · 19 hours ago
Safari is exempt.
Comment · 2 days ago
How did she do in the primaries?
Comment · 3 days ago
This is legally irrelevant to the statute.
Comment · 3 days ago
Comment · 3 days ago
Rockchip has stellar mainline kernel support for most of their SOCs.
Comment · 3 days ago
> there has to be a physical switch

Or literally any $1-3 SPDT RF switch? >80% of which are directly optimized and advertised for wifi and bluetooth?

Comment · 3 days ago
> you conceal your actions if you believe others will try to stop you

Which is conveniently exactly what the statute requires to establish criminality: knowingly exceeding authorized access. They have a lawful right to stop you (revoking authorization), you do not have a right to proceed anyway. This is the "wrong" and is accordingly a federal felony.

Comment · 4 days ago
Receiving stolen property is a specific, enumerated crime - which statute are you alleging that Anthropic knowingly and intentionally violated?
Comment · 4 days ago
> The distinction is that Aaron Schwartz was intentionally pirating research papers

And, you know, all of the intentional, physical, artfully-planned means by which he did so.

Comment · 4 days ago
Which is why GP should never have attempted the "theft" analogy. No part of what Aaron Swartz did was theft - so every single statute you can cite regarding knowingly receiving stolen property is irrelevant.
Comment · 4 days ago
And only a crime in one of them.
Comment · 4 days ago
If you leave the door to your house unlocked, am I welcome to come in, pop on into your utility closet, plug into a switch port and take everything your machines allow me to fetch?

I don't disagree with what he was doing from a moral standpoint or a hacker standpoint, but it's very easy to convict him.

This discussion typically devolves into an argument about what is "publicly accessible." No reasonable person (i.e. those who serve on juries - not autistic software engineers) would agree that someone who isn't even a student at a school is legally entitled to enter a building (unlocked or not), venture into their utility room and access protected computer resources.

Everyone loves to make this about JSTOR: they weren't the only victim. MIT was far more aggrieved; JSTOR blocking his Harvard account access and him proceeding to breach their TOS ("clickwrap agreements aren't law!!!") and circumvent their defenses isn't required to convict him of CFAA violations.

Why can't I go into a bank, sit down at a personal banker's desk who is away on vacation, plug into a switch port and do whatever I want? There's no lock on his cubicle, the door was open! This is the legal equivalent of "neener neener, I'm not touching you."

Mens rea is an important thing people love to sweep under the rug with this case:

• First and foremost: Why did he have to go to into a closet at MIT to fetch documents? Why not do it at home or a public library?

  • Because of rate limits and/or authentication requirements. He *knew* he could not obtain the access he needed through other means, so he had to trespass to do it.
• Why did he cover his face with his bicycle helmet... just when passing by cameras?

  • He wasn't some weirdo who liked to wear his helmet that way: he stopped immediately when he believed he didn't need to conceal his identity any further. He *knew* he shouldn't be there.

• He registered his guest account using false credentials: "Gary Host" and "Grace Host" - "Ghost"

  • Why wouldn't he just use his real name if he believed what he was doing was legitimate?

• When MIT blocked his IP, he released/renewed and fetched a new one. Fine, no problem on its own, hard to prove intent there. When MIT subsequently blocked his MAC address, he proceeded to change one character and kept on downloading.

  • Computer people will try to reduce this to "MAC addresses aren't legal identifiers blah blah blah." The beliefs of zealous third parties are completely irrelevant: direct measures were taken to prevent his access, he recognized and immediately circumvented them. He *knew* what he was doing. That's what matters.

• Why hide his hardware under boxes? In absence of all of the other facts, sure, one could argue that he didn't want students at this ultra-prestigious Ivy League school to steal his shit, but to a reasonable person weighing the totality of the circumstances: he was again concealing his actions because he knew they were wrong.
Comment · 8 days ago
Come and take them.
Comment · 8 days ago
> Swiss people are the absolute bottom of the barrel maybe followed by the cheap outsourcing countries next

Just by fact of population, a generalization may or may not hold more weight. Anecdotes are also tricky to really apply broadly: it's simply impossible for you to have encountered that many Swiss software engineers because few exist... few Swiss people exist. In 2019, there were over 300,000 Indian H-1B petitions to Switzerland's total of 202.

> I'm also sure i've worked with a lot more very good Indian engineers than German engineers here in America, but that might have more to do with who immigrates here.

Relative quality of life in Germany is objectively better in India by pretty much every metric, so there's an automatic/inherent bias - it's probable that more Indians wish to immigrate to the United States. (More than 10% of the Indian population doesn't have access to modern toilet facilities, for instance.) The competition for U.S. immigrant visas is far higher amongst Indians simply by the numbers, so there may also be a filtering function at play.

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