"Aaron knew what he was doing was breaking the law. He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences."
Yes, it is obvious to anyone downloading academic papers that they are committing 13 crimes and could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. After all, changing your MAC address, hiding a laptop in a closet, and ignoring JSTOR's TOS clearly add up to 13.
He should have read the law? Have you read the law? Are you sure you haven't committed any felonies today?
I seriously doubt that Aaron really considered the possibility of criminal action for what he did, and certainly not so many charges that he could have been legally imprisoned for the remainder of his adult life. A civil suit by JSTOR would have been a reasonable expectation, and note what Aaron did when faced with a civil suit: he returned a hard drive of files to JSTOR and settled the matter, without any suicidal actions.
Your sort of reasoning -- that he allegedly broke the law, therefore no mercy can be considered and the prosecutor was right to harass him -- is one of the most destructive far-right concepts to have been popularized in America. It is the line of reasoning that leads to teams of soldiers attacking civilian homes to serve a basic search-and-arrest warrant. It is the sort of reasoning that opens the door to the crushing tyranny of overly broad laws and abuses of the justice system. Allowing ourselves to fall victim to the logic that the law is perfect and absolute, that prosecutors have a moral duty to enforce all laws, opens us to a system where nobody is safe from the government.
"If he didn't think he was committing a crime why did he attempt to conceal his identity?"
I did not say that he thought he was doing something entirely legal, I said that he probably only expected a civil case for his actions, which is entirely reasonable. If I had to guess, I would say that whatever attempt he made to conceal his identity was done to ensure that he would not face a court order to stop until he had finished what he had set out to do.
If you are saying that concealing one's identity is evidence that a person is doing something criminal, then you are accusing a good friend of mine of being a criminal. He used proxy servers to download large numbers of patents, as part of his masters thesis project, to avoid bandwidth restrictions imposed by servers. In the end, he developed a system that helps locate patents, and could help people avoid violating patents or find prior art. Should he face a 50 year sentence too?
"If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him?"
He did nothing even remotely similar to that. His actions were as close to accessing private information as posting to HN.
"Unauthorized access is unauthorized access."
His accessing was not unauthorized. MIT's network is open to the public, and JSTOR's archive is open to anyone on MIT's network. What access was unauthorized in this case?
(b) except as set forth in Section 2.1(e) and 5 of the Terms and Conditions for Use for Journals, Plants, GIS Data, Select Other Content Types, and Data for Research below, provide and/or authorize access to the Content available through Individual Access, the Publisher Sales Service, or other programs to persons or entities other than Authorized Users;
(d) undertake any activity such as computer programs that automatically download or export Content, commonly known as web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators that may interfere with, disrupt or otherwise burden the JSTOR server(s) or any third-party server(s) being used or accessed in connection with JSTOR; or
(e) make any use, display, performance, reproduction, or distribution that exceeds or violates these Terms and Conditions of Service and the Content-Specific Terms and Conditions of Use.
Is this TOS from the time when Aaron downloaded the articles? I wouldn't be surprised if they updated it after this incident which would invalidate your argument.
Is that the same JSTOR that refused to press charges? You can't really base your argument on his felony charges from the entity that didn't press charges.
Yes, it is obvious to anyone downloading academic papers that they are committing 13 crimes and could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. After all, changing your MAC address, hiding a laptop in a closet, and ignoring JSTOR's TOS clearly add up to 13.
He should have read the law? Have you read the law? Are you sure you haven't committed any felonies today?
I seriously doubt that Aaron really considered the possibility of criminal action for what he did, and certainly not so many charges that he could have been legally imprisoned for the remainder of his adult life. A civil suit by JSTOR would have been a reasonable expectation, and note what Aaron did when faced with a civil suit: he returned a hard drive of files to JSTOR and settled the matter, without any suicidal actions.
Your sort of reasoning -- that he allegedly broke the law, therefore no mercy can be considered and the prosecutor was right to harass him -- is one of the most destructive far-right concepts to have been popularized in America. It is the line of reasoning that leads to teams of soldiers attacking civilian homes to serve a basic search-and-arrest warrant. It is the sort of reasoning that opens the door to the crushing tyranny of overly broad laws and abuses of the justice system. Allowing ourselves to fall victim to the logic that the law is perfect and absolute, that prosecutors have a moral duty to enforce all laws, opens us to a system where nobody is safe from the government.