And doesn't the (alleged) fact remain that he continuously circumvented virtual and physical security systems in order to mirror a reported $1.5 million worth of assets in to his personal possession?
When you boil it down it doesn't exactly sound like he should be receiving 10 hours of commuter service because he ran wget a few times. MIT and DoJ are just supposed to -assume- that he has nothing but perfectly angelic intentions with $1.5 millions dollars of an asset that he secretly obtained? I don't make that logical leap with you guys. The facts will come out. He will present his case with his defense team, and hopefully justice will be done.
1) It's very likely the $1.5 million figure is heavily inflated so as to help the prosecution with their case. I would like to see people really investigate where this $1.5 million is coming from? Was that how much JSTOR was really making off those documents, or were they using RIAA-style accounting to come up with its "value"? Considering JSTOR hasn't exactly been forthcoming in their public statements, many believe they don't see anything criminal with A.S.' actions. They would prefer he simply go through 'proper channels'.
2) If Schwartz is smart, he will not comment on his intentions no matter what. Simply maintain his denial that he intended to upload them anonymously to BitTorrent. Make the case entirely about the facts on hand. "Is it hacking to violate a site's TOS"?
3. MIT and DOJ could assume that there are other ways to stop whatever illegal actions they're assuming besides criminal prosecution. Already someone has leaked 30 million scientific papers from JSTOR simply because they assumed this is what MIT and DOJ were trying to stop.
Doubt it. JSTOR subscriptions have a public price list; if MIT is paying "tens of thousands of dollars annually" for it, they are getting a deep discount. If every organization of MIT's size is paying tens of thousands of dollars for it, JSTOR is generating millions annually.
Yes, by the way: it is "hacking" (computer fraud and abuse) to violate a site's ToS knowingly, recklessly, or purposefully. To preempt a recurring stupid message board article: it is tremendously difficult to prove that a blog commenter or a site visitor knowingly violated some random clause in your ToS, which is why tiny little ToS violations on blog sites don't get prosecuted.
So if I were to try to scrub photos accessible to me with a valid username and password from Facebook, (btw Facebook makes millions annually off its users viewing photos) I would be hacking?
Not sure if it would be considered hacking but facebook has definitely sued and won judgments against folks who scraped data from public facebook profiles.
I did some googling, and while Facebook has sued small fare (like individual researchers) those researchers have pointed out that all the public profiles have been cached by Google's webcrawler, and they haven't sued Google (yet).
The was an article by a retired judge and law professor explaining how the law could be interpreted differently to suit the circumstances. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of what Aaron did, I'm very worried that the book is going to be thrown at him to make an example of activists in the area of intellectual property.
I telecommute. Most people today do most of their personal communication over the internet. A charge of wire fraud carries hefty penalties and would tax the finances of most people to be able to defend against such charges.
If the scope of wire fraud isn't reduced, then if I even do something like tell a lie on news.ycombinator.com, I could potentially be charged with it.
The charge isn't the problem. It's the money (and time) sink of having to retain a lawyer and prove your innocence. The game is the prosecution load you up with charges and then leaves it up to you and your lawyer to chip away at each one.
If you've read the news lately you'll see 100 counts of X and 24 counts of Y. They are trying to intimidate you into a plea. They know that a conviction would be hard to get on the charges as presented so they are trying to trip you up just once. Chances are you've done something illegal and don't know it yet. So, while you are burning through savings and equity the DOJ has unlimited resources and time to come to pin something on you.
With all that pressure most people would just cop to something to have it be done with.
> MIT and DoJ are just supposed to -assume- that he has nothing but perfectly angelic intentions with $1.5 millions dollars of an asset that he secretly obtained?
Yes. That's known as "innocent until proven guilty".
Let me rephrase that: They are supposed to -ignore- an action they are aware of that they believe constitutes criminal conduct? Prosecutors, DoJ don't drop cases they think they can bring to trial when, in their perception, illegal activity is taking place just on a hunch. Right?
When you boil it down it doesn't exactly sound like he should be receiving 10 hours of commuter service because he ran wget a few times. MIT and DoJ are just supposed to -assume- that he has nothing but perfectly angelic intentions with $1.5 millions dollars of an asset that he secretly obtained? I don't make that logical leap with you guys. The facts will come out. He will present his case with his defense team, and hopefully justice will be done.