Is the goal to do aaronsw favors? This is pretty clearly newsworthy.

I think you can ding the reporting for missing important subtleties and lacking context (i.e. the fact that the downloaded material wasn't covered by a JSTOR copyright somehow gets skipped!). But arguing that we should plug our ears to news about a case with clear impact to the community because it might look bad for the defendent is just ... weird.

The point about this being a bargaining tactic makes sense though. They want a plea on something to avoid embarrassment, and it wouldn't surprise me if Aaron was refusing to deal.

The "goal" is to not be a group of spectators in a gladiatorial arena in which one of our own has to do battle with the government's lions. That's all -- just a matter of regard for a fellow human being. It's exactly the same reason I don't rubberneck at the scenes of grisly accidents and why I think the paparazzi are scum.

I disagree that this case has a clear impact on our community, or that this article -- or most of the others about this case -- are newsworthy.

How does ratcheting up the charges minimize the embarassment to the DOJ if Aaron is ultimately vindicated?

Presumably they're ratcheting up the pressure on Aaron to accept a plea bargain.

That sounds plausible; also, isn't this what happens after plea negotiations fail?

Yes.

The DoJ isn't human and is not subject to emotions like "pride" or "embarrassment." Their goal is to win cases and enforce laws, and if the bureaucratic cost of adding more charges improves their chances of having the defendant found guilty on them, they're successful.

The DoJ is part of the executive branch, and ultimately answerable to elected officials who absolutely are sensitive to embarassment. No one wants to see a headline like "FBI wastes $2M on failed prosecution of harmless nerd" when it could be "Hacker gets jail time and fine". So they're throwing mud trying to get something to stick. If it looks like anything does, they'll offer a plea again.

You can't really believe that politics have no impact on the case decisions in the DoJ, can you?

If your point here is, "it doesn't", I agree. I don't think the extra charges were added to minimize embarrassment.