I was just in a lawsuit with my neighbors. It was an extensive property rights suit over the fact that if someone is away from their property from extended periods of time, can you use an easement as an excuse to claim ownership rights, hunting rights on the rest of my estate, including my lake.

One of the parties is crying that they had to bankrupt themselves, all I sued them for was for them to stay off my land.

Then they countersued me and my wife for 750,000 for damages in NOT being able to use my property because I and previous owners had guests over who used the lake.

I even gave them money to build their own road so they could stay off my 1/2 mile asphalt raod instead of sending delivery trucks down it constantly rutting it out.

I Asked them just to stay off my land, not hunt, not shoot into my lake in the direction of my main cabin and principal guest cabin and the two thousand square feet of docks, decks and outdoor recreational facilities I was in the process of building.

Well the suit lasted over a year costing everyone tens of thousands of dollars and they lost on all counts but as we are in that stupid rule where even in the most aggregious of cases you cannot recover attorney fees.

I had to stay here, missed Erica’s sophmore year, and now it looks like they are trying to appeal and I cant leave as Tennessee requires 30 day answers and where I am in Jakarta there is very little chance to respons – so now I am missing Erica’s Junior year.

Think of it forced to be separated from my family for two years for a bullsh$t lawsuit – Erica is never going to be back in highschool again.

Legal matters are tough, even civil suits, think of what Pat is going through,Aaron has gone through and now Mandy Nagy, Et al.

Swartz’s parent mortgaging their house is not an issue to prosecutorial misconduct. Sorry if I have any real sympathy except for the loss of their son, but they seem to be losing their cause the more they blame others for people just doing their job

As Orrin Kerr tells it:

http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/#disqus_thread

In Swartz’ first attempt, he purchased a laptop, went into a building at MIT, and used the MIT wireless network to create a guest account on MIT’s network. He then accessed JSTOR and executed a program called “keepgrabbing” that circumvented JSTOR’s limits on how many articles a person could download — thus enabling Swartz to start to download a massive number of articles. MIT and JSTOR eventually caught on to what was happening, and they blocked Swartz’s computer from being able to access the MIT network by banning the IP address that he had been assigned.

Swartz responded by changing his IP address, and it took a few hours before JSTOR noticed and blocked his new IP address. To try to stop Swartz from just changing IP addresses again, JSTOR then blocked a range of IP addresses from MIT and contacted MIT for more help. MIT responded by canceling the new account and blocking Swartz’ computer from accessing the MIT address by banning his MAC address, a unique identifier associated with his laptop.

Undeterred, Swartz tried again. This time he brought a new laptop and also spoofed the MAC address from his old one to circumvent the ban. Using the two latops and the program designed to circumvent JSTOR’s limits on downloading articles, he started to download a significant chunk of JSTOR’s database. A day or two later, JSTOR responded by blocking all of MIT’s access to JSTOR for a few days.

Again undeterred, Swartz came up with a different plan. Instead of trying to connect to the MIT network wirelessly, Swartz broke into a closet in the basement of a building at MIT and connected his computer directly to the network — hiding his computer under a box so no one would see it. Over a month or two period, he succeeded in downloading a major portion of JSTOR’s database.

Investigators were on to Swartz at this point, however. They installed a video camera in the closet to catch Swartz when he accessed the closet to swap out storage devices or retrieve his computer. Swartz was caught on camera, and he even seems to have realized that he was being filmed; at one point he was filmed entering the closet using his bicycle helmet as a mask to avoid being identified. (Here’s the picture.) Swartz was spotted on MIT’s campus soon after by the police and tried to run away, but he was then caught and arrested. Federal charges followed.

.

http://betabeat.com/2013/01/tom-dolan-defends-carmen-ortiz-aaron-swartz-twitter/

seems to quiote a tweet:

Craig Butler · Top Commenter

Seventh Circle for violence, outer ring. Saved for those violent against others and their property.

As I understood, Aaron’s parents were about to mortgage their home to help Aaron to provide his defense after he had squandered his fortune battling the gov’t (at the taxpayers’ expense).

Why should such petty acts be a Federal crime, much less a felony?

SPQR, there was once a time when “Don’t make a felony case out of it” meant something.

Nowadays, spitting on the sidewalk is a felony case, if the Feds want to do something.

But hey, there’s no worry about needing guns!! Those rumors of encroaching fascism, they’re only the blatherings of nutjobs like Alex Jones!!

Characterizing an Ethernet MAC address as “burned into the card” is incorrect and misleading. It makes normal, expected and common actions sound like counterfeiting.

All Ethernet adapters have configurable MAC addresses. The also commonly have a small memory that contains a suggested address that is supposed to be unique (but sometimes, erroneously, isn’t). The software driver is usually responsible for setting the MAC address, with a higher level policy deciding if it should use the suggested MAC address or a different one.

Thirty years ago the only type of small memory available was a PROM, programmed (“burnt”) by blowing fuses. Twenty years ago essentially all Ethernet implementations had changed to using EEPROM, which could be reprogrammed or “flashed” rather than “burnt”.

But back to the primary point: it’s just a suggested MAC address. The driver can choose to use the suggested one, use a locally generated one, or an assigned MAC. Half of the range is designated for locally generated addresses. I’ve seen plenty of hardware where the MAC address is missing, invalid or not unique.

I’d like to see the entire email and see if its as goofy as this page 3. Could it be that the discovery was not via the MAC address, but not disclosed. I suppose the US’s case would be required by law to disclose all means of discovery of evidence to the defense, or be found to have “dirty hands”. Settling out of court saves money, and I know no money was wasted by the US.

Good comment. Thank you for making that point.