I will agree to some extent that the prosecution over sharing a single link is somewhat troubling, and would call for further review …if that is what the sentence was for.

A lot of the folks I’ve seen disagreeing with this decision are also ones who are against the whole Gamergate mess, which sees a lot of issues with threats towards women online, etc. I was snarky about it above, but really: how do you reconcile being okay with threats against the FBI made online but standing against threats made against women online? Both are wrong. Both should have consequences. That one is rarely enforced does not mean that the other should be ignored - it means we need to do a better job on both.

The people who are going to show up in the court cases for this kind of thing are rarely going to be likable, which is something that I try to keep in mind - just because someone is a jackass, they have not sacrificed their right to free speech. As a case overall I have somewhat mixed feelings because the charges he ended up facing probably came about as a result of the scrutiny he was under for sharing a link. That one link, however, was to people’s personal information that he had no right to share. It’s a complicated case, and a lot of people want to simplify it down into one black and white issue. It’s not. I imagine that for a lot of people, their opinion might change if the personal information he linked to was their own.

I don’t know, just some thoughts on this I guess.