This kind of felony would hardly have been the end of the world.
Why, I bet it's possible that one could even go on to great success in the tech field, even with (or especially with) a CFAA felony.
That's kind of besides the point, because a felony conviction would have been overkill here. But it still would have been much better than the alternative we ended up getting. Let's face it, many hackers have faced felony charges before without killing themselves, and few of them had as much potentially going for them after the trial as Aaron would have.
You note the exceptional case. Of course odds of that happening are very low. Hence it is exceptional.
Sure - 2% of people survived a fall from the Golden Gate bridge, so that means it's silly to focus on the death aspects of such a fall when reasoning about "if someone does fall".
Similarly people occasionally choke to death on food. So we should stop talking about eating without serious choking warnings all over the place, right?
Look, there are people for whom a felony conviction could seriously ruin their life. If you've spent your entire life trying to be a defense attorney, or you long to join the FBI, a felony conviction ends your dreams.
Swartz wasn't like that. A felony conviction would have prevented him from working at IBM but he wasn't going to do that anyway. For all possible jobs he could have gotten before, a felony conviction would have been a badge of honor or irrelevant.
Well let me add another 'exceptional case' then. I worked with a felon who was even able to get a security clearance and a government job and serve on 'special' assignments.
Swartz happened to work in one of the very few fields where a CFAA felony is not only not a big deal, but might even be considered a badge of honor. So IMHO the argument that a felony would have been some kind of death sentence for aaronsw definitely requires evidence.
We're in maybe the one field where it really, truly doesn't matter what your background is--if you make the test suite happy, if you delight the customers, then fuck man, join the team!
I think it's time to start setting precedent in our companies that we welcome folks with colorful backgrounds as long as they can ship good code or move product.
I worked with a business bro who had a multi-million dollar fine levied by the .gov; he was one of the kindest and sharpest business folks I've had the pleasure of being with, and if I ever have the revenue to justify it I'll try to hire him from my old company.
It's time to stop assuming that felons in the US are not worth working with or employing.
Employment is one big chunk of the problems you would face as a felon, but it is not all there is. Also, I don't think software is completely immune. I'm not positive, but there are probably restrictions involving government work. A potential employer would have to consider what doors they were shutting by hiring you.
Which he rightly declined. Everyone should turn down plea deals and demand a trial, and they should demand a speedy trial. The reason the US is the world leader in imprisonment is that we railroad people into admitting guilt and accepting a prison sentence.
A plea deal would have required a guilty plea, guilty of stealing info he believed should be free. Asking him to violate his core beliefs was probably almost as bad to him as a 35 year sentence. It'd be like requiring RM Stallman to endorse commercial proprietary software.
So he could have gone for trial, and serve his 2-3 year sentence (if convicted), probably get out early for good behavior, and keep his sacred honor. And it still would have been far better than hanging himself.
Why assume his sentence would have been 2-3 years? The prosecutors clearly wanted to make an example of him. He could have wound up with a 10 year sentence, or even the full 35 years. There is also no guarantee that he would be let out early for good behavior.
It's not just the sentence itself. Defending his case was ruining his finances. Once out of prison he would have faced numerous hurdles, which would become more severe if his sentence were longer.
This is not to say that suicide was the right choice. Rather it is to point out that we are not talking about a slap on the wrists; the prosecutor was going for his throat. Any rational person would be scared in that situation.
Because no less an authority than Jennifer Granick said [1] that the conceivable range of a sentence would be from 15-21 months (though she said it could go higher, so I rounded up to 2-3 years), and she is decidedly on Aaron's side on this. In fact she ended her discussion of sentencing with "But Aaron could easily have come out to over a year in his guideline calculation.". Either way the sentence is in the end not up to the prosecutors, whether they wanted to "make an example of him" or not.
Now is a year is an easy sentence? Probably not, but it's certainly not a very hard sentence. Either way according to Dr. Lessig the sticking point for Aaron wasn't the length of the sentence, it was the 'felon' label.
All the other hurdles you've mentioned, all of them, are surmounted all the time by much lesser men than Aaron. Sometimes I think that Aaron might have actually started to believe the type of crap that gets slung around here on HN about how being a felon ends your life, and I wonder if that had any influence...
Would you say the same about any person facing a six-month plea deal?