Opinion: Hacking vs. rape: Which is a crime more deserving of jail time?

I think the Weev sentencing has major implications for not only white hat hackers (although it hits them pretty hard), but anyone using the internet. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the courts interpretation are to blame. CFAA was written in 1984 and it's so vague that it's can turn anyone working in security and potentially anyone on the internet into a criminal with one click.

The courts are saying here that unauthorized access to a computer occurs whenever the computer owner says so, and the Department of Justice has enforced this point of view. Someone can violate the law even where there is no notice and where no password was hacked. All that is required is that a person, corporate or natural, subsequently says you don’t belong. This is an incredibly dangerous ruling that can criminalize trivial things like google searches.

People should be mad about this, but I fear most do not understand this ruling or the law enough to make sense of it.

This makes the justice system seem totally fucked. Yes, they are different cases, but they are intimately tied together. The justice system is punishing the same people that want to expose heinous crimes. It is punishing the same people that want to expose heinous and systematic crimes. No wonder they feel threatened.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are increasingly seeing the frictions of a power shift between governmental bodies and the collective action of individuals on the internet. I imagine that it will only get worse before it gets better. We need to protect the freedom of the internet, because at this point it is the only real weapon we have against (at worst) organized corruption and (at best) an inefficient government.

Apples-to-oranges comparison. Convicted rapists don't get nearly enough jail time as it is (then again, I'm one of those people who believes that rape should carry the death penalty). But this doesn't have any bearing on what amount of jail time, if any, computer criminals deserve.