>Ortiz framed a brilliant, selfless young man as a criminal who should be locked up behind bars.
Law is about drama? There's plenty of drama and hyperbole in your post. He broke the law. Which means he is a criminal.
If you think the laws are retarded, then how you protest that is your prerogative. If you choose to protest by blatantly and purposely breaking the law, unless you are 99.999% certain that an obvious interpretation of the law violates the constitution, you should expect to get charged and convicted of breaking said law.
Prosecutors aren't hired to be nice, they are hired to represent the state and bring charges against people who violate the state's laws. If you seriously think that he shouldn't be charged with breaking the law because 'he didn't deserve it', 'he did not have malicious intentions' or 'the law is dumb', then by extension no one should be convicted of any crime, because there will always be some point of view where you could think that of anyone.
The prosecutor's case was pretty tenuous. Basically, by accessing a network that intentionally has no real access control in an unusual way, and accessing JSTOR in an unusual way through that network -- a network for which a JSTOR subscription is available -- Aaron supposedly committed a crime (or was it 13 crimes? Or 4 crimes?). Unless you want to make the argument that doing strange things is criminal, it is hard to see how exactly any law was broken here.
"If you seriously think that he shouldn't be charged with breaking the law because 'he didn't deserve it', 'he did not have malicious intentions' or 'the law is dumb', then by extension no one should be convicted of any crime, because there will always be some point of view where you could think that of anyone."
If you think every violation of the law should be prosecuted, prepare yourself for some jail time; it is a near certainty that you have committed at least one felony offense in your life, and it is likely that you have committed more. Can you seriously claim not to be a criminal -- have you actually read all laws that you are expected to follow?
This conservative "the law is right and absolute" perspective is truly scary. Laws are passed by people, and are often severely flawed. Laws are often misapplied -- laws meant to protect banks and the government from hackers are applied to people who download too much knowledge, laws meant to protect children from pedophiles are applied to comic book collectors, etc. The far-right law-and-order attitude is the reason America is the world leader in both arresting people and imprisoning them -- not just per-capita, but on raw numbers, we arrest and imprison more people than China, and that even accounts for the recent decline in the prison population.
He allegedly broke the law. According to network security expert Alex Stamos, an expert witness in the case, the worst thing you can say about Aaron's actions is that they were "inconsiderate", not criminal.
I've refrained from posting here as I'm in the UK, not my issue &c but I do work with young offenders and adults in retraining &c.
'criminal' is not a 'type' or irrevocable condition. It is a social status that exists in the mind of people and state records, especially in this case with little measureable damage to anything or anyone.
First of all, he hasn't been convicted of ANY law breaking. Secondly, if Ortiz wanted a lesser sentence and was 100% sure he was going to be convicted (the criminal part), she could have brought one count to avoid the stiffer sentencing.
Law is about drama? There's plenty of drama and hyperbole in your post. He broke the law. Which means he is a criminal.
If you think the laws are retarded, then how you protest that is your prerogative. If you choose to protest by blatantly and purposely breaking the law, unless you are 99.999% certain that an obvious interpretation of the law violates the constitution, you should expect to get charged and convicted of breaking said law.
Prosecutors aren't hired to be nice, they are hired to represent the state and bring charges against people who violate the state's laws. If you seriously think that he shouldn't be charged with breaking the law because 'he didn't deserve it', 'he did not have malicious intentions' or 'the law is dumb', then by extension no one should be convicted of any crime, because there will always be some point of view where you could think that of anyone.