i guess JSTOR wanted to drop it and MIT didn't, which is what gave the prosecutors the opening they needed to really pursue this.
Andy Good, Swartz’s initial lawyer, is alternately sad and furious.
“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.”
Good says the hard-line attitude was not unique to his case, but the facts were. People who steal things usually benefit financially from it. Swartz downloaded the material because he believed that such information — in this case, much of it research underwritten by taxpayers — should be free to the public. He did it not to make a buck, but to make a point.
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