Degrees of Severity

"Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data, or dollars."
- U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in the case against Aaron Swartz

26-year-old Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit and great contributor to RSS technology, allegedly committed suicide on January 11.  As a strong advocate of the philosophy that information should be accessed freely, he had stolen approximately four million scholarly articles from MIT's online database, JSTOR.  Although JSTOR did not press charges, the United States government did not drop the case.  Swartz could have served up to 35 years in jail and been fined $1 million.  Faced with these possibilities, Swartz decided to take the only sure way out.

Swartz's theft via hacking is unarguably wrong, both legally and morally (Lessig, L.).  He, in part, must be blamed for getting himself into the situation he was in.  However, it was wrong for the government to treat Swartz's case in the way that they did.  This was not a high-profile hacking job.  Swartz wasn't stealing credit card data or information that could lead to identity theft.  He wasn't a terrorist reading confidential files from the Pentagon or military networks.  He took scholarly articles that anyone on MIT's network could have accessed.  The government should not have intimidated Swartz by threatening charges that are fit for one accused of homicide. Yes, hacking is wrong, but there are degrees of severity that should be well-defined in federal internet regulation laws.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/tech/web/aaron-swartz-internet/index.html
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully