Thank You nullc. It's really tough to contribute something useful to the
discussion about and around Aaron Schwartz. The best I can offer is a
paper that I found a few hours ago. I haven't read it yet, but it was
just released a few days ago. From what I can tell from the description
quoted below by one of the authors, it may be good related research
worth reading.
WEIS 2014: Experimental Measurement of Attitudes Regarding Cybercrime
http://weis2014.econinfosec.org/papers/GravesAcquistiAnderso...
> "Online activists appear to be treated much more harshly by
prosecutors than equivalent street protesters; meanwhile online
fraudsters are often treated more leniently than the traditional
variety. Over two thousand mTurkers participated in six different
between-subjects experiments to assess the seriousness or cybercrimes by
type of data (directory vs medical info), scope 10 to 1,000,000 records)
motivation (student, activist, profiteer) financial consequences,
co-responsibility and whether the victim was a firm, a nonprofit or a
government agency. Respondents saw more records as more sensitive than
less; profiteers as much worse than students or activists; more
expensive cases as more serious; that firms were less liable if servers
were patched (but that the data were more sensitive in that case). In
summary, participants recommend harsher sentences when cybercrimes
involve more or more sensitive data, have costlier consequences, or are
motivated by profit. This is much more rational than the reported
behaviour of some prosecutors and judges."