Twelve months ago on this very site it was discussed how a private company named Path was, without permission and certainly illegally, stealing the entire address books of users and uploading it to their own servers. The CEO of that company appeared right here on this board personally (not surprising he follows this board as he has invested in YCombinator projects [http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleperlroth/2011/08/25/yc-com...] ) and not only defended his actions but justified them, proud of the fine work of data theft he engaged in. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3563368] He also said in a comment on his blog that these actions of stealing entire address books was a common practice in industry: "This is currently the industry best practice" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3563639]. And in fact it turned out that companies as large as Twitter were also engaging in the same type and manner of data theft [http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/14/business/la-fi-tn-tw...].

At that time some HN members, possibly some of the same ones here attacking this hacker (perhaps with good reason), defended the data-theft-for-profit actions of these companies.

These two positions are not consistent. People may wish to pick a side of this issue and stick to their position if they wish to be taken seriously, or frame a coherent argument why it is acceptable for corporations to engage in data theft from individuals but the reverse should be severely punished with prison time and other penalties.

Those who genuinely believe that weev should be prosecuted and imprisoned for his actions may wish to consider if the same call should be made for criminal proceedings against the larger scale and more clearly profit driven data theft actions taken by large and well funded companies such as Twitter, Path, Facebook, Apple, and many others.