At the bare minimum, whether or not you believe MIT aided the prosecution over the defense (and I believe they did), it seems clear to me that Aaron and his family (his father is an alumnus, and worked for the MIT Media Lab) deserved better than "neutrality" from the MIT administration, if for no other reason than that I can't think of a single conceivable technical reason to call what Aaron did "felony" hacking.
By standing pat, MIT also contributed to the ongoing prosecutorial weaponization of laws like the CFAA, which makes a felony of a wide range of activities that most hackers would not even categorize as misdemeanors, to say nothing of crimes that bar you from voting or holding most jobs. It is a terrible precedent no matter how you look at it.
Even if Aaron was still alive, the things MIT did would be no less wrong.
So Aaron had nothing to do with getting himself into the situation that he did?
>> Correct me if I'm wrong but they deserve blame for initiating the
>> destruction of someone's life (jail time and fines in the millions)
> So Aaron had nothing to do with getting himself into the situation that
> he did?
There exists such a thing known as a disproportionate response. I assumed
that was the implication here. (Not that Aaron did nothing wrong, but that
the response to his wrong-doing was wildly disproportionate.)
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus by two MIT police officers and a U.S. Secret Service agent. He was arraigned in Cambridge District Court on two state charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony.
On July 11, 2011, Swartz was indicted in Federal District Court on four felony counts: wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
On November 17, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a Middlesex County Superior Court grand jury on state charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny and unauthorized access to a computer network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz#A...
What you posted is a fancy way of saying that Aaron logged into JTSTOR using his own credentials and downloaded publicly funded research papers onto a computer hidden in an MIT supply closet. Who's the victim in his crime?
Huh? This is new.
"Swartz used a Perl computer script running on Amazon cloud servers to download the documents, using credentials belonging to a Sacramento library."
Again, who actually got hurt aside from Aaron?
"AARON SWARTZ, 24, was charged in an indictment with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million."
Gee I wonder why someone would contemplate suicide?
Maybe to outsiders, but Aaron and Aaron's lawyers both knew the six-month plea deal was on the table.
The DOJ publicly said "up to 35 years," and they deserve what they get for saying that --
-- but Aaron's lawyers didn't just fall off the turnip truck. They knew federal sentencing guidelines. Even if guilty on all counts, there were good odds that Aaron would face 0 days in jail, being a first-time non-violent offender. There was a 0.00% chance of Aaron going to jail for 35 years.
Also there are thousands of people every year sentenced to possibly long term jail time who don't kill themselves, therefore I put the blame more on Aaron himself than MIT.
'The thing that galls me is that I told Heymann the kid was a suicide risk,' Good told me. 'His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, ‘Fine, we’ll lock him up.’ I’m not saying they made Aaron kill himself. Aaron might have done this anyway. I’m saying they were aware of the risk, and they were heedless.'"
"Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not.
'There were subsets of the MIT community who were profoundly in support of Aaron,' Weinberg said. That support did not override institutional interests."
I also really hate arguments that blame the victim.
He broke the law. Then he committed suicide. I don't think there's much debate to be had about where any blame lies.
> He broke the law.
Was the law that was broken make sense? Was the response to a victimless crime appropriate?
> Then he committed suicide.
You're acting like people dealing with a serious mental illness for years can easily make the same mundane choices that people without mental illness do everyday. It's more complicated than that.
> A sad tale, but the law is the law.
Some laws are unjust, ridiculous, or both. There's also something called "the spirit of the law" as well.
To be clear do you mean that MIT deserves blame for the suicide?