I agree with much that you say. Sensationalism satisfies many of our base neurological desires. Indeed, I know that I share many thoughts with "sensationalists" and I responded similarly.
I cannot make any statements of blame, since being sensationalist is to be human, as we all are. However, I'd ask that everyone please inform yourself as much as possible. The indictment is available [0]online and is well worth reading.
If you want sensationalism, read a federal indictment. Their job isn't to paint a fair picture of the accused; it's to make the accused sound like scum.
Thanks for that. A good read. Assuming they had evidence to back that up (which both legal teams would have been privy to and would have been presented at trial), it seems pretty clear to me that he knew that what he was doing was not exactly above board there. I have little doubt Aaron knew what he was doing would get him in trouble if caught. Sure he probably did not expect that much trouble. We can be upset that he was possibly facing 35 (or what ever) years as that seems a bit excessive... but let's not pretend that Aaron had no clue that he was doing something he shouldn't be doing.
There's "shouldn't be doing" as in "will get you personally banned from MIT's network with a stern talking to from the IT department," and there's "shouldn't be doing" as in "will get you 35 years in federal prison."
I'd wager Aaron expected the former, or maybe a post-it note on his laptop saying, "Please discontinue what you are doing; call xxx-yyy-zzzz with any questions."
It doesn't really matter what he was expecting. If he knew he shouldn't do it then he should not have done it. And unless he had been living under a rock for the past decade, he should have expected a bit more than MIT leaving a post-it on his laptop asking him to stop. Come on... we all know that these types of actions have become more common and more public and therefore more heavily litigated. For him to expect anything less than police and lawyers would have been really naive boarding on stupid.
There are lots of things that people "shouldn't" do, like jump off of cliffs, jump out of airplanes, follow traffic even if traffic is going 75, yet people make the judgment that doing is better than not doing. In all of your "make stuff, do stuff, buy stuff, destroy stuff," life, have you never once colored outside the lines to accomplish some greater good?
There appears to be a vast cultural disconnect between those who recognize the nobility of Aaron's effectively harmless stunts, and those who take a hardline stance in defense of the status quo.
It is my sincere opinion that any sort of prison time should require genuine criminal intent (that is, the intent to do serious harm), that the judicial system should focus on prevention and rehabilitation, not punishment or deterrence, and that sacrificing the odd "example" here or there is an unacceptable infringement of the rights of the one who is made an example.
I have colored outside the lines plenty of times... both good and bad. And when it got me in trouble (which is has), I took my punishment. The people doing the act and the people standing on the sidelines and those that benefit from the act can think the act is "effectively harmless" or that there was no intent to do "serious harm" all they want. But there is always someone on the other end of it. Aaron's actions (and the efforts to stop/prevent them) caused servers to go down & legit access to be cut off. That caused harm to others. Maybe that isn't the same definition of "harm" that you use but you don't get to dictate what others feel is harmful or not any more than I do.
Whether it is cultural or whatever, I don't think what he did was noble at all. And hardly a stunt. He started downloading for free all the documents that were otherwise behind a pay-for-access service that placed limits on what a person could get at. He used various methods to circumvent attempts to prevent him from doing it. He took measures to conceal his activity. Those seem to be the facts that no one disagrees about. This has little to do with defending the status quo.
But we can agree here. It is also my opinion that Aaron should not have been facing prison time. We have prisons overflowing with bad people that have caused far greater chaos and pain than Aaron. Aaron probably should have had a lengthy house arrest and a hefty fine. Maybe restricted use of computers, etc. And that very well might have been what he would have ended up with if he'd stuck it out.
I'll restate some of the items from your second paragraph in a way that emphasizes why I think Aaron's Guerilla[sic] Open Access[0] concept is a noble one.
He started downloading for free all the documents that were otherwise behind a pay-for-access service that placed limits on what a person could get at.
He saw that scientific research, much of which was paid for by taxes (i.e. the people), was held hostage behind a paywall and wanted to provide that information to a deserving audience.
He used various methods to circumvent attempts to prevent him from doing it.
He encountered a bug in a computer system and created a workaround.
He took measures to conceal his activity.
He behaved like many of the students on any college campus would when preparing a harmless prank or exploring a steam tunnel, and perhaps didn't want his laptop stolen.
But we can agree here. It is also my opinion that Aaron should not have been facing prison time. We have prisons overflowing with bad people that have caused far greater chaos and pain than Aaron. Aaron probably should have had a lengthy house arrest and a hefty fine. Maybe restricted use of computers, etc. And that very well might have been what he would have ended up with if he'd stuck it out.
Much of my vehemence in these discussions of the last week stems from the sheer magnitude of the onslaught that is standard practice for prosecutors. If the law and its enforcers were more reasonable in this case, I'd find it much easier to be reasonable in response. Instead, prosecutors seem to see fit to alienate a huge chunk of the population, spreading disrespect for the law (and, I guess, giving them more defendants to prosecute in the future).
I'd be perfectly happy myself, if I were Aaron, to publicly apologize, do some community service, and go on my way never to interact with JSTOR or MIT again, as this prevents the alleged harm that would have come to JSTOR with the minimum necessary imposition from the law. But I would not be happy about being bullied by prosecutors. I don't even see why house arrest should be "lengthy," or a fine "hefty," because in reality his actions had a minimal effect on MIT or JSTOR (bandwidth is cheap).
Someone had to do something to upset the status quo of paywalls and ignorance because it certainly wasn't going to happen from within the publishers. Increased scientific literacy and better science reporting due to the availability of the entire paper (and all the other papers that support or refute it) instead of a press release are greater goods than profit for Elsevier (which wouldn't be significantly affected by releasing historic papers anyway).
I cannot make any statements of blame, since being sensationalist is to be human, as we all are. However, I'd ask that everyone please inform yourself as much as possible. The indictment is available [0]online and is well worth reading.
[0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/217117-united-states...