[pyre]

1. He used the network closet because they booted him off of the wireless network.

2. He changed his MAC address because they blocked his old one.

I don't think that this alone should be enough for a conviction though. For instance, he wasn't privy to the reason that his network connection wasn't working anymore (so far as the MAC address was concerned). The prosecutors wanted to argue that changing the MAC address was a purposeful attempt to thwart restrictions, but from the outside he couldn't have known why the old MAC was no longer working.

3. Instead of using Harvard's network and signing up with his own name, he used MIT's network (which is open to the public) and signed up for access with a fake name. The prosecutors would have argued that this was his way of hiding his identity because he knew what he was doing was wrong.

4. The US Department of Justice has had a hard-on to expand the hacking statutes to cover "any crime with a computer." See the case about the MySpace/Facebook mother that drove her daughter's classmate to suicide. They tried to go after her for 'hacking' into the website because she signed up with a fake name which is against the Terms of Service (i.e. "unauthorized access" to the website).

[derekp7]

For your point #4, I don't think the prosecutors were specifically trying to go after another _hacking_ conviction (to expand the statutes), but they were reaching for any law that could apply, since what the woman did (emotionally harassing a minor until driving her to suicide [allegedly]) was considered to be abhorrent but not in itself illegal -- just like the prosecutor's conduct with Arron. And in our society, any time something tragic happens people feel that someone has to be held accountable.

[dkl]

Problem is, once a law is used for a new use, no matter how virtuous it is, it will now be seen as one of the tools in the toolbox for prosecutors to punish people. Many of those new uses will not be looked on favorably, either.

[pyre]

There would be significant fallout from setting a precedent that violation of a website's Terms of Service constituted a Federal crime with punishment up to 35 years in prison, no matter how much we dislike the person being prosecuted.