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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence (blog.curiousquail.com)
submitted 3 days ago* by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

I'm on Aaron's side, but didn't he break into a network closet and patch directly into their servers?

It's splitting hairs but the law treats breaking and entering very differently than remote access. When I went to school, I had a job on campus but I'm sure the University would have considered it illegal if I broke into the utility closet of the building I worked in.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 days ago

    didn’t he break into a network closet and patch directly into their servers?

    No. He placed a computer in a unlocked network closet and used that to download a bunch of data from JSTOR (which he had acces to, and a lot of the data is public domain anyways) and kinda-sorta caused DDoS attack against the service. Prosecution then slapped him with a shitload of federal charges which (in my opinion) were largely at least massively exaggerated if not straight made up. Threat of 50 year jail sentence and million(s) in fines then pushed him to take his own life.

    Wikipedia has pretty detailed info about him and the whole case.

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