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Kathy Sierra made her feelings on the subject very clear on twitter before she left. Weev is a horrible person, and probably he even deserves to go to jail. B

Kathy Sierra made her feelings on the subject very clear on twitter before she left. Weev is a horrible person, and probably he even deserves to go to jail. But he does not deserve to go to jail based on bullshit. We should never forget that injustice done to Weev is not the same as justice for the things he done.

geographomics 12y ago
I'm surprised weev hasn't been prosecuted for the numerous campaigns of individual harassment he's instigated and been involved with. Does the USA not have any law against such behaviour? He's been responsible for deliberate and persistent personal abuse, causing much alarm and distress, and has bragged about it openly. Does this genuinely come under the protections of "free speech", as is claimed by those who defend him?
- knowtheory 12y ago
  Yeah. So there's a lot going on with harassment charges. First things first, i'm not a lawyer. I'm just a dude who cares about civics. The internet makes harassment considerably more problematic. Even setting aside constitutional defenses of speech, just trying to figure out which agency should be in charge of investigating and prosecuting harassment is confusing at best. Do you go to your local police? Do you go to a federal agency? Which one? Even when you do approach a law enforcement agency after receiving threats, do they think its worth their time to investigate? (Amanda Hess's piece on harassment is an interesting for her interactions w/ the police alone: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170/ http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-ar... ) Revenge porn is an analogous (but not identical) problem, and even in that case, where basically everyone can agree it's a bad thing, it's clear first that states don't have statutes which they can use to prosecute (until very recently at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#U.S._laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#U.S._laws ), and in several cases some of the laws being written are complete clusterfucks. The truth of the matter is that you can get away with a whole lot of bullshit before anybody starts trying to drop hammers on you. And harassers live in that space between what is legal and what is enforceable (a lot of other interesting stuff lives in that space too).
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Yes, definitely. From personal experience, not with harassment but with other crimes, if you go to the FBI with some sort of computer-mediated, cross-boundary crime, their first question is "can you demonstrate at least $25,000 worth of damages?" Even getting harassment handled in a purely local case is challenging. Talk to any woman who has been stalked and I'm sure you'll here a catalog of ways police can be inadequate. But once it starts crossing state lines and requires a lot of computer forensics to run down, it gets orders of magnitude harder.

geographomics 12y ago

I'm surprised weev hasn't been prosecuted for the numerous campaigns of individual harassment he's instigated and been involved with. Does the USA not have any law against such behaviour? He's been responsible for deliberate and persistent personal abuse, causing much alarm and distress, and has bragged about it openly. Does this genuinely come under the protections of "free speech", as is claimed by those who defend him?

knowtheory 12y ago
Yeah. So there's a lot going on with harassment charges. First things first, i'm not a lawyer. I'm just a dude who cares about civics. The internet makes harassment considerably more problematic. Even setting aside constitutional defenses of speech, just trying to figure out which agency should be in charge of investigating and prosecuting harassment is confusing at best. Do you go to your local police? Do you go to a federal agency? Which one? Even when you do approach a law enforcement agency after receiving threats, do they think its worth their time to investigate? (Amanda Hess's piece on harassment is an interesting for her interactions w/ the police alone: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170/ http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-ar... ) Revenge porn is an analogous (but not identical) problem, and even in that case, where basically everyone can agree it's a bad thing, it's clear first that states don't have statutes which they can use to prosecute (until very recently at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#U.S._laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn#U.S._laws ), and in several cases some of the laws being written are complete clusterfucks. The truth of the matter is that you can get away with a whole lot of bullshit before anybody starts trying to drop hammers on you. And harassers live in that space between what is legal and what is enforceable (a lot of other interesting stuff lives in that space too).
- wpietri 12y ago
  Yes, definitely. From personal experience, not with harassment but with other crimes, if you go to the FBI with some sort of computer-mediated, cross-boundary crime, their first question is "can you demonstrate at least $25,000 worth of damages?" Even getting harassment handled in a purely local case is challenging. Talk to any woman who has been stalked and I'm sure you'll here a catalog of ways police can be inadequate. But once it starts crossing state lines and requires a lot of computer forensics to run down, it gets orders of magnitude harder.