Sorry, but the suggestion that fighting for justice is somehow the thing only "irrational people" would choose totally pisses me off.

I totally understand someone making a rational decision in favor of other priorities. It's what most people would do. But thank god for people who take the road less traveled. It's to them we owe the rights and freedom the rest of us take for granted. There's nothing "irrational" about that.

A major thrust of what I'm saying is in the fact that Marco is a single indie developer. Not a large company with more resources.

Fighting against the federal government over this seems like picking the wrong battle. He got is server back in a couple of days. Obviously its likely that the feds have already cloned it but its not like they kept it indefinitely or wiped it clean.

Does it suck? Yes. Is this something he should be fighting over? Not in my book.

The road less traveled is starting and running Instapaper. Chasing the FBI is a waste of time. If you really care about the problem, start a "company" meant to provoke the FBI into accidentally procuring its servers.

This would seem the perfect situation for the EFF. At some point someone needs to choose (a) or else it will keep happening.

Perhaps. But a one-man team probably shouldn't be the one choosing that option.

Depends on the market you're in. I'd say overall, Steve Jackson Games gained enough publicity to make it worth their lawsuit in a different illegal-search-and-seizure case, especially when you add the $300k they got ($500k in today's money) from winning it. They had a stronger case, though, since the raid was directly targeted at them, and fairly carelessly executed.