The truth about Aaron Swartz’s “crime:”

Alex Stamos, who had planned to testify as an expert witness for the defense at Swartz’s trial, speaks out:

Swartz did not “do anything more complicated than call a basic command line tool that downloads a file in the same manner as right-clicking and choosing ‘Save As’ from your favorite browser.”

He adds: “If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were ‘wrong’, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as ‘inconsiderate’. In the same way it is inconsiderate to write a check at the supermarket while a dozen people queue up behind you or to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence.”

Terrific roundup of Aaron Swartz links from +Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Also this:

“Remember yesterday, when we were all crowing about the wonderfully geeky White House response to the tongue-in-cheek “build a Death Star” petition? Just remember that the same people were in charge of the Federal prosecutors who destroyed Aaron Swartz.”