This special post brought to you by me, who didn't get mod approval before doing it because THIS IS ALL BUSINESS.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935631

Seriously, 100% of the comments are either saying how awful this is or sympathetic to the guy. Not a single person giving a flying fuck what he did.

Warning: HN has the most atrocious layout of a website ever, so if you've never been, be prepared to immediately hate it.

This sentence is everything wrong with the American justice system.

EVERYTHING. WRONG.

The lesson here is clear: if you have money, there is no such thing as crime. If you don't have money, like this guy, then even if you plead guilty you get years in prison.

I'm sure this was about money. I'm sure this wasn't about him VIOLATING THE PRIVACY OF 50 PEOPLE AND PASTING THEIR PRIVATE PHOTOGRAPHS ALL OVER THE INTERNET.

Poor bastard. He did something that is unquestionably highly unethical and illegal, but he was also an awkward, messed-up nerdy guy who arguably just needed some real friends and a chance.

Won't someone think of the awkward nerdy white guy who hates women?

I agree the punishment for hacking emails should be harsh, because your email is your life. But not 10 years... because reading or leaking someone's email is not akin to killing them.

It's almost like the punishment for doing 50 of one crime is like the punishment for doing one of another crime. Oh, and the minimum sentence for murder is 10 years. Minimum. Sentence.

Now when we discuss the legality of NSA having wide open access to citizen emails and other personal data, we'll have a good reference point on what happens when regular people do it.

Obviously this is just like the NSA snooping on private emails, if the NSA sold those emails to smut websites for a huge profit.

Tack on a whole bunch more people saying the US is a police state or tying this back to AT&T or the NSA and we have ourselves the normal San Fran startup crowd!

barf