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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

The law was going to give him prison time and mark him as a felon for life for the crime of downloading academic papers with the intent of making them available to the public. It continued to pursue this even after JSTOR had asked the attorneys to back down, hounding him incessantly even after informed that he was psychologically ill.

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The tragic thing about this is that anyone affiliated with an academic institution already most likely has free JSTOR access and those who do not can find a large number of significant papers on sites like gen.lib.rus.ec, visit a local university library, email someone with access to the paper or can do any number of other things.

You're ignoring the other charges he had, the prosecution offered him an AMAZING deal. You can't just not prosecute people because they're depressed.

Wow, I am extremely surprised to see such attitude from a friend of Aaron.

Amazing deal? Really? Do you think that serving 6 months or more for his "crimes" is justice?

You probably mean 6 months or less, because that was the prosecution offer. And yeah, I think that was actually a pretty good deal. Although I would agree that in a perfect world the material he took would already have been public.

I think you are grossly underplaying the consequences of that plea deal. Six months (or less) in federal prison would still have him labeled as a "convict" and he would have lost numerous civil rights (voting being one) as a result. Needless to say, he would have to carry that label for the rest of his days as a US citizen. From what I understand, Aaron did not want to carry that cross, more so since he considered himself innocent. Hence, in protest, he took his own life. I am neither condoning nor criticizing his action and his final decision, as I am in no position to do that. However, I strongly doubt it was as simple or straightforward as you'd like it to appear. If you are a friend of Aaron's and you have come out publicly (on HN) as one, perhaps you could explain the reasoning and motivations better than most of us. Why not do that, instead of oversimplifying the whole situation?

Aaron did what he did knowing the consequences, my best guess is that at some point after he started regretting his decision.

This is how the world works, if you make a bad decision you'll have to live with it... Or not.

Aaron did what he did knowing the consequences, my best guess is that at some point after he started regretting his decision.

So, your "guess" is as good as mine, or any of my fellow armchair analysts on HN? Are you sure Aaron even considered you a friend?

Or perhaps, you were just trolling HN, eh?

Thing is, I'm not his shrink. I don't know everything that was going on inside his head, that's my best guess based on my daily chats with him on IRC.

Soldiers go to war knowing they can be killed. That doesn't mean when the enemy kills US soldiers, we should just shrug and say "well, they knew the risks, who cares?", does it?

No, I meant what I've written. If 6 months was an "amazing" deal, then 9 months or a year would be good a good deal and I absolutely disagree with that.

Felony conviction is hardly an amazing deal, with all that it implies in the American system.

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