[muldoon]

Originally posted on 10/01/2015:

The MIT students who paid tuition to attend there deserved access to those files. Not everyone else, which is who this guy was trying to give access to for free..

I disagree. MIT freely makes the documents available to students AND visitors. His offense was figuring out how to bulk collect. Maybe inconsiderate, but a felony?

Inconsiderate in the same way that a store might offer a free sample with no restrictions, and someone takes 20.

It was bullshit - and the same government that sent 0 HSBC bank executives to jail for laundering cartel money, pushed for the maximum sentence for this kid bulk gathering of data.

That would be the same government that says that bulk gathering of our data is legal because we use our phones on public cell towers and wifi and is public domain - but his gathering of data presented without any terms of service or restriction on an open network was a felony.

Many of the documents were available at other libraries - and many were public domain or the research paid for by public taxpayer funds.

So no - I disagree that he was stealing. He may have exploited a loophole, but there were no network terms or service violated, and this kid was railroaded.