Aaron Swartz's case is so unlike Randal Schwartz's case that just making the comparison is a kind of "tell".
Randal Schwartz was a contractor for Intel, through an IT contracting company. At the conclusion of his contact and, as I remember, his employment with the company that placed him, he backdoored systems at Intel. He later used those backdoors to regain access to Intel systems and got caught.
Randal Schwartz' defense has always been that his activities were innocuous (and, in some cases, necessary to complete work for Intel, which is a claim that is damaged by the fact that some of his actions took place after his business relationship with Intel was severed). There is no "service to the greater good" angle in Randal Schwartz's case. What happened with him was either a spectacular misunderstanding or a galactic-scale instance of bad decisionmaking on his part.
Aaron Swartz set out to liberate information from a private database, because that information had been unjustly locked up.
What you're saying when you draw an equivalence between these cases is that you think most computer fraud/abuse cases are illegitimate. I'm not saying that's a ridiculous perspective to have (though it is not mine), but you should be on guard for the ways that perspective can cloud your reasoning. By all means keep believing that the Internet should be a "wild west" where the strong/gifted rule unchecked so long as they don't steal people's credit card numbers. But also read the case files when you want to argue about them.
I never claimed that the two cases are the same. Just that Aaron's case reminded me of it.
You are right, Randal never had a motive remotely close to Aaron for any greater good of any sort. [In fact I will go on and argue that there is no reason Aaron should be prosecuted since the plaintiff has decided not to pursue the case against him].
What I meant was that (same as the parent) although Aaron's goals may have been good, I do not agree with the manner he went about achieving it.
The fact that JSTOR isn't pressing charges against Swartz is not dispositive evidence that JSTOR believes it hasn't been harmed.
The DoJ's role in this case isn't simply to right a single wrong done to JSTOR; it's to defend JSTOR and every organization like JSTOR from everybody like Swartz. If Swartz walks from this case because JSTOR --- the victim of a crime --- doesn't put its own reputation on the line to stand up against him, that's a signal that it's OK for other people to liberate documents from other databases.
By prosecuting Swartz criminally and regardless of JSTOR's actions, the DoJ is in effect saying that it doesn't fall to JSTOR to "heroically" defend federal law; that's the DoJ's job.
Again: while I don't like what Swartz did, I hope he wins his case, because I kind of like him. But that means I need to be more clear-eyed about what's happening here, not --- like many commenters on this thread --- less clear-eyed.
Randal Schwartz was a contractor for Intel, through an IT contracting company. At the conclusion of his contact and, as I remember, his employment with the company that placed him, he backdoored systems at Intel. He later used those backdoors to regain access to Intel systems and got caught.
Randal Schwartz' defense has always been that his activities were innocuous (and, in some cases, necessary to complete work for Intel, which is a claim that is damaged by the fact that some of his actions took place after his business relationship with Intel was severed). There is no "service to the greater good" angle in Randal Schwartz's case. What happened with him was either a spectacular misunderstanding or a galactic-scale instance of bad decisionmaking on his part.
Aaron Swartz set out to liberate information from a private database, because that information had been unjustly locked up.
What you're saying when you draw an equivalence between these cases is that you think most computer fraud/abuse cases are illegitimate. I'm not saying that's a ridiculous perspective to have (though it is not mine), but you should be on guard for the ways that perspective can cloud your reasoning. By all means keep believing that the Internet should be a "wild west" where the strong/gifted rule unchecked so long as they don't steal people's credit card numbers. But also read the case files when you want to argue about them.