No, but he obviously felt that JSTOR could persuade a court to make it one. Poor kid.

You wouldn’t download a car would you??

He was being charged under the CFAA, a hacking criminal statute that prohibits unauthorized access to computer systems. It was controversially being stretched to cover Aaron’s conduct that violated TOS by an ambitious prosecutor.

Just for context for those who haven’t heard the podcast: the Christmas episodes often center around non-bastards. This is one of those. :P

I don’t know why but i just didn’t want to type that slur. It’s edited now.

I think this is a consequence of any (unregulated) capitalistic system in general. The system is founded on money, more money will give anyone more influence and power over the system

It’s evidence that we live in corporatocracies masquerading as “democracies”. The 0.1%, shielded by the liability protections of the corporations they own and armies of lobbyists, finance our politics, choose who ends up on the ballot, and shadow write most of our legislation and policies.

Trump is free because he is a part of that < 0.1%.

The Boeing execs who oversaw systemic fraud, lied to the FAA, and murdered 166 people ARE FREE AND RICH. Why? Because they are the 0.1%.

The IPCC hosts fossil fuelled climate summits in fossil fuel exporting countries, inviting fossil fuel corporations and lobbyists to attend — at a scientific conference about how to solve the crisis they created and profited from. Why? Because we live in corporatocracies.

It’s the subtle difference between a JUSTICE system and a LEGAL system.

One aims to maintain law and order in society in a fair and equal way regardless of one’s status or situation.

The other is a system gamed to benefit the richest and wealthiest individuals to get away with everything.

At risk of sounding cringe, it’s evidence of one injustice system.

Someone should look up the maximum sentence for what he’s been charged with. The current biggest hold-ups are not being able to make someone appear in multiple trials in different places simultaneously, and avoiding the appearance that the court is trying to interfere with an election.

You don’t want the court to not care about the appearance of interfering with elections, or else you’ll have the GoP trying to get Democrat politicians on dubious charges that they’ll definitely not be guilty of but will definitely bury them in scandal and prevent them from campaigning effectively.

The comment in OPs post is misleading but he did nevertheless kill himself because of the justice system trying to prosecute him for accessing science most likely funded by public money in the first place.

And will never know, selfishly speaking, the possible extent of his further contributions to society. Died at 26 after an incredible life already.

Besides his life, what else did they steal from us?

RIP Aaron

Not at the time this happened. Aaron’s case was one of the motivating factors that led to the Open Access publication movement gaining enough traction that authors could publish that way. JSTOR access is paid for and administered on college campuses by libraries and librarians as a whole field felt terrible both about the paid publication system and the way Aaron was treated. As a community of professionals, the Librarian and Information Science community pushed very hard for the adoption of Open Access publishing into the Academic community.