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Declan, I respect the work you've done, but this is a bad argument: > despite his JSTOR "victim" never asking for a criminal prosecution Law enforcement and p

by crucini 12y ago

Declan, I respect the work you've done, but this is a bad argument: > despite his JSTOR "victim" never asking for a criminal prosecution Law enforcement and prosecutors have to take the responsibility, and not put the weight on the victim's shoulders. You are implicitly advocating a system where the victim can be intimidated out of prosecuting.

matrixagent 12y ago
There are many, many crimes where the victim has to press charges for any prosecution to happen, and copyright infringement most certainly should be one of those.
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  Those are crimes where the victim's testimony is core or critical to the successful prosecution. In cases where, as this, the government has access to material evidence that doesn't rely on requiring someone to want prosecution or having to testify, then this is not the case.
declan 12y ago
<crucini>, thanks for your kind words. I may not have been as clear as I should have been, so let me try again. Let's look at what JSTOR itself said: "The case is one that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into from the outset... JSTOR settled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011..." http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz You're right that if victims can be intimidated into asking for non-prosecution, that would be a problem! But what JSTOR said above is precisely not the language of an organization that's been intimidated. More broadly, the problem lies with the over-criminalization of everyday activities, especially in federal law, as Harvey Silverglate has documented in "Three Felonies a Day." And, if you want to go back further in history, the modern police-prosecutor, victim-has-no-say approach to criminal charges is a relatively modern phenomenon. There are other ways to approach criminal law; I'd refer you to Bruce Benson's "Enterprise of Law" for more on that.

by crucini 12y ago

matrixagent 12y ago

There are many, many crimes where the victim has to press charges for any prosecution to happen, and copyright infringement most certainly should be one of those.

FireBeyond 12y ago
Those are crimes where the victim's testimony is core or critical to the successful prosecution. In cases where, as this, the government has access to material evidence that doesn't rely on requiring someone to want prosecution or having to testify, then this is not the case.

declan 12y ago

<crucini>, thanks for your kind words. I may not have been as clear as I should have been, so let me try again. Let's look at what JSTOR itself said: "The case is one that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into from the outset... JSTOR settled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011..." http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz You're right that if victims can be intimidated into asking for non-prosecution, that would be a problem! But what JSTOR said above is precisely not the language of an organization that's been intimidated. More broadly, the problem lies with the over-criminalization of everyday activities, especially in federal law, as Harvey Silverglate has documented in "Three Felonies a Day." And, if you want to go back further in history, the modern police-prosecutor, victim-has-no-say approach to criminal charges is a relatively modern phenomenon. There are other ways to approach criminal law; I'd refer you to Bruce Benson's "Enterprise of Law" for more on that.