Year in Jail for Web Links

[Eric Cordian]

Duncan Frissell opines:

> You can't protect people from cowardice.  Jim Bell plead the first time.
> Michael Milkin plead.  Bill Gates plead.  Various Arabs plead recently.
> If you plead you can't be acquitted unless you can convince a judge to let
> you withdraw your plea tough.  Courage.

The problem here is that if you have a family and assets and
responsibility and something resembling a future, you cannot afford to be
the 1 in 100 who refuses to plea bargain, because the government has the
vast amount of money it saved itself not taking the other 99 cases to
trial with which to screw you and make an example out of you to anyone
else who may stupidly think they can defy the system.

Thus, the problem of plea bargains can only be solved by eliminating plea
bargaining itself.  It cannot be solved by individuals caught in the
system demonstrating "courage."

It's one of those Prisoner's Dillema-ish situations.  The demonstration to
the Sheeple that one cannot break the system, one can only break oneself
against the system.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"