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by microarchitect 5449 days ago
Fair enough. I agree with most of what you're saying here. I definitely believe that any punishment involving more than a fine and/or some community service would be disproportionate to the crime here.

What I didn't like was the statement portraying him as some kind of hero. I'm just pointing out that he's not. He didn't have a legal right to be using the documents, he shouldn't have been trying to download the documents using a guest account at MIT obtained by submitting false information, and he certainly shouldn't have tried to get back into the network after being banned multiple times.

If his goal was to put a lot of scientific papers into the public domain, I can think of many other ways he could have achieved this. So I'm also a bit puzzled by his approach here.

Stop being such a conformist and stop using their language.

This attack seems rather uncalled for.

Every time you test these boundaries and fight for it you will be fighting for your freedoms.

I can see where you're coming from on this, but I'm not entirely convinced that you're right.