Image: Wikimedia
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It's an interesting ruling, and one that many observers of weev's appeals hearing thought a likely outcome."Almost the entire thing was about venue," Tor Ekeland, an attorney who also represents Auernheimer, told me after the hearing in March. he speculated that weev was tried in New Jersey simply because the state had a major computer crimes division; it had no relevance to the case. "Nothing happened in New Jersey. No victims, no possession."The decision allows the state to vacate what many considered to be an overzealous prosecution—which led to 41 months in prison—without reconsidering the fundamentals of the outmoded law he was convicted under, the heavily criticized Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). That law, a relic of the 80s, is extremely ambiguous, and many commentators say it leaves room for overly aggressive prosecution. Aurenheimer was convicted of accessing a computer without authorization, after all. The federal prosecutor at the appeals hearing clearly demonstrated he barely understood what it was that weev did, nor how or why he should be punished for it.Meanwhile, weev has not been acquitted; the ruling has just been 'vacated.' That means that he can still be retried in another venue—either Alabama, where weev was when he sent the data, or New York, the location of the Gawker offices where it ended up.BREAKING: Judges reverse District Court’s venue determination and vacate Andrew Auernheimer’s conviction http://t.co/z1KqfkG09Y
— Andrew Auernheimer (@rabite) April 11, 2014
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An illustration from Weev's sentencing hearing by Molly Crabapple. Read her report here.
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