Prison for copy & paste?

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I received this email and am sharing it here. Please don't shoot, I'm just the messenger

Hey Friend,

You may have heard about this -- it's crazy. We've entered an age where copying-and-pasting a link can land you in jail.

Barrett Brown, a journalist who often reported on the activities of Anonymous, has been locked up for almost a year for just that. Barrett copy-and-pasted a link from one chatroom to another to share with his peers during his research on the activities of private intelligence firm, Stratfor. The link contained data which had been hacked but was already publicly available information at that point. Now he's facing 105 years in prison.

Click here to sign the petition to drop all charges against Barrett Brown The "copy-and-paste" case

The persecution of journalists and whistleblowers is on the rise, and even simple actions like joking on facebook or sharing a link are leading to people going to jail. Barrett's case sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the future of information sharing, free speech, and journalism and it affects all of us. If we don't act now, the next link that one of us shares may be a criminal offense.

Fight for the Future has teamed up with the good people of the Free Barrett Brown campaign to demand that the charges are dropped.

Barrett Brown could go to jail for the rest of his life for a copy-and-paste. That's just wrong.

After you sign, take the bold next step of sharing the link, and forwarding the email to everyone you know.

Our lawyers are pretty sure you won't go to jail for sharing this one! So share while you still can. Share *so* you still can.

Thanks for doing your part to defend journalism, linking, and the First Amendment! Democracy can't survive without free press and free speech. The stakes are high. If you want to help out with this and other campaigns, reply and let us know!


Talk to you soon,

-Evan and Laila

Fight for the Future

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  • Profile picture of the author Kay King
    No thanks -won't be fighting for this guy.

    The "link charge" is interesting and it's made to sound like "big, bad govt going after little guy". All he did was share a link...right? No, not right.

    Former Anonymous Spokesman Barrett Brown Indicted For Sharing a Link to Stolen Credit Card Data

    Seems to me what this says is that you can no longer post links to stolen identity info and then claim "I was only posting a link". I don't have a problem with that.

    Identity theft through hacking is a big problem for those people who are compromised - and I will never support anyone who participates in any way with sharing that information. There is nothing "innocent" about it to me.

    "The other guy did it, too" is not a good defense.
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