Response of Defense Counsel to the
   United States Attorney's Indictment of David LaMacchia



	Sadly, the United States Attorney for Massachusetts has chosen
to conduct a test case by inappropriately using his power to prosecute
criminal cases.  He and his staff are trying to brand as a criminal, a
computer systems operator (a so-called "SYSOP" in computer jargon) for
what other people place on, and take off of, a computer system that
the SYSOP creates and maintains but does not control.  It is not at
all clear that a SYSOP commits any crime in such a situation.

	The guinea pig chosen by the U. S. Attorney is a 20-year-old
student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David LaMacchia.
This prosecution presumably will decide whether current criminal law
would penalize a SYSOP who neither controls what is placed on the
system nor profits one cent from any copyrighted software that others
upload to and download from the system that he and others create and
operate.

	If the government wishes to outlaw the activities in which
David LaMacchia is alleged to have engaged, it should ask Congress
to pass a statute clearly making such conduct criminal.  We frankly
believe that the Department of Justice would have trouble convincing
Congress to do so because of the troubling statutory, constitutional,
and policy problems involved.  So, instead, the U. S. Attorney will
use this to try to convince the federal courts to agree to make David
LaMacchia into a felon by stretching and mangling the meanings of
certain existing criminal laws.

	David LaMacchia's conduct was not in violation of the criminal
law, and we are confident that the courts will agree with us.  It is
unfortunate that this young man -- among the best and the brightest
that our society produces -- will have to suffer while this process
goes forward.  Given the explosion of violent crime and other criminal
pathologies in our society, one would think that the U. S. Attorney's
staff of lawyers and FBI agents would have better things to do with
their time and the taxpayers' money than to imitate the fish species
known as guppies, which devour their own young.

	We and our client hope to have much more to say about this
case and its implications at that point in time when we are able to
say more.  Meanwhile, we ask that David LaMacchia be accorded the
presumption of innocence to which our Constitution and laws entitle
him.  We ask that all citizens concerned with liberty and fair play
follow this case closely and then, at the end, ask some hard questions
about the motives and judgment of the prosecutors who have brought
this prosecution.


                          * * * * *
					Harvey A. Silverglate
					Silverglate & Good
					89 Broad Street, 14th flr
					Boston, MA 02110-3511
					Tel (617) 542-6663
					Fax (617) 451-6971
					Internet:has@world.std.com


					David Duncan
					Zalkind, Rodriguez, Lunt &
						Duncan
					65A Atlantic Avenue
					Boston, MA 02110
					Tel (617) 742-6020
					Fax (617) 742-3269

					Counsel for David LaMacchia

Dated:  April 7, 1994