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Comment by mpyne | Hacker News Reader

Oh look, I can find a convenient mouth piece too (one who has defended a famous CFAA case, no less):

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

http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

You might instead argue that the law is ridiculous (e.g. I would agree that Swartz's conduct is not serious enough to warrant a felony conviction).

You might argue that there were certainly other cases which were more deserving of a U.S. prosecuting attorney's time (though I don't know how we would confirm or refute that). But the charges themselves are well supported by the indictment.

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Ad Hominem.

You might try responding to the statements she made. For a retired judge to step into the public arena like this is quite out of the ordinary and it indicates to me that the behavior she witnessed in Ortiz was so egregious that extraordinary measures were called for.

So much for business as usual, happens all the time, nothing to see here, move along, move along..

Appeal to authority.

I at least bothered to respond with arguments at all (both mine and links to Olin Kerr's), and I did so without reciting high school debate knowledge under the assumption that HN readers are smart enough to figure out the difference between debating tactics and logical argument.

You have responded with a doubling-down of the appeal to authority, as if it would really be that unusual for a judge interested in a case which has lit the Internet and media on fire for a whole week now to get her name out there as well. In fact, the very article you linked calls it a "chorus of criticism". Oh, and a couple of clichés.

On the other hand, I did respond to the opinion you linked in by linking in other opinions. Yay, opinion war, go me.

I will say thanks for the article though, as even your talking head confirms that the 35-year sentence was never going to happen (and by extension, the 50-year sentence I must assume).

So on one hand you accuse people of being unqualified to hold an informed opinion, then when people come with people who are qualified, you say they are making an appeal to authority.

You are so full of shit.

People are often overzealous in labelling things logical fallacies.

"My argument is proved because person x thinks so" is a fallacious appeal to authority.

but there is nothing wrong with arguing "The fact that person x thinks this increases the probability that the argument is correct." as long as you correctly weight this factor amongst others.

Not all arguments need to follow the rules of deductive logic. There is such a thing as heuristics.

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