Yours truly writing at Reason.com:
The problem, therefore, is not just that federal prosecutors in this case refused to engage sober prosecutorial discretion, it’s that they had the option to seek—and to threaten with—a punishment so out of proportion to the crime. How can such severe punishments be justified for computer crimes?
As a tribute to Aaron Swartz, O’Reilly is making available for free, to download and share, the book Open Governemnt to which he contributed the chapter “When Is Transparency Useful?” I also have a chapter in that book, “All Your Data Are Belong to Us: Liberating Government Data.”
The files are posted on the O’Reilly Media GitHub account as PDF, Mobi, and EPUB files for now. There is a movement on the Internet (#PDFtribute) to memorialize Aaron by posting research and other material for the world to access, and we’re glad to be able to do this.
You can find the book here: github.com/oreillymedia/open_government
The January 29 episode of the Suprisingly Free podcast will be a remembrance of Aaron with James Grimmelman.
