Posted on 01/26/2013 11:54:47 AM PST by virgil283
"A Tewksbury motel owner who just beat back U.S. Attorney three-year bid to seize his business has become the latest critic to accuse ...of prosecutorial bullying.
I don’t think she should have the power she has to pull this stuff on people,” Russ Caswell, owner of the Motel Caswell, .... The feds first tried to grab Caswell’s property in 2009 under drug seizure laws, citing numerous drug busts at the motel. Caswell’s defense team argued that he was not responsible for what guests did. And his lawyers found there was actually more drug activity at nearby businesses, and theorized the government was going after Caswell, who has no criminal record, because his mortgage-free property is worth more than $1 million.
“It’s bullying by the government. And it’s a huge waste of taxpayer money,” said Caswell, whose father built the motel in 1955. “This has been a huge financial and physical toll. It’s thrown our whole family into turmoil. You work for all your life to pay for something and these people come along and think it’s theirs. It’s just wrong. The average person can’t afford to fight this.”
(Excerpt) Read more at iowntheworld.com ...
And he was a student, therefore entitled by his crushing paid tuition to download from the site.
We have the same thing here with the court mailing things back to our offices: they want a filing fee, PLUS you should leave them prestamped envelopes for mailing your final judgments back. So, many of us say, look, we paid a filing fee, surely that should cover some postage.
You'll know where to go for your drugs!
:D
Actually he wasn’t an MIT student, which is why he got busted.
http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf
I see the True Bill asserts Swartz was a fellow at Harvard with guest privileges. Not totally unauthorized. He overstayed his welcome, but is that a crime?
One of the big internet issues that continues to rage today is the fight between freeware and profitware. Here is the thing, if you don’t want it shared, don’t put it on the internet. Internet stuff is there to share. That is the philosophical argument at the heart of this sad story.
Still, it can be argued that Swartz knew he was breaking the “rules” (legitimate or not as they may be) because he had his bike helmet concealing his face, which means he was sneaking around. His position is that the “rules” were not legitimate I am guessing.
I disagree that anything on the internet has to be free. If that is the case, there’s a whole lot of businesses that have to go under. People should be able to define their own terms for a service they offer. I really dislike the ‘free internet’ nonsense. It costs money to make and compile information, and if someone wants to charge for that, it is their right. Some philosophical point bought into by some does not grant a license to steal.
well, therein lies the issue, right?
The deal about Swartz is this: The state of Massachusetts was about to let the guy go free with a stern warning. All of a sudden, this Ortiz character shows up and decides to “make an example” of Swartz. Hits him with charges that could add up to 35 years in prison (which was extremely excessive) and fines of up to 1 million dollars.
His lawyers almost had a plea deal set up, but MIT refused to sign off on it. Faced with the possibility of spending the majority of the rest of his life in jail and an over-zealous fed prosecutor breathing down his neck, he figured that death was preferable to prison.
Maybe he didn’t do something exactly legal, but the real problem here is the power the fed has to totally destroy your life if they feel like it. I believe in following the law, but I do NOT like the power the federal government has.
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