Comment Re:You know what I think (Score 2) 52
Well, he was accused of unauthorized access to a computer system, but the owners of the computer system involved made it emphatically clear they didn't want charges pressed. So technically you're correct, which is the best type of correct, but the nuance is that, no, the law he supposedly broke was too much for this specific case.
The other thing he was accused of was copyright infringement, but that's not illegal unless you intend to profit from it (simplification), it's normally merely a civil, not criminal, matter. And the entire point he was making was that the files shouldn't have been protected by copyright in the first place.
Swartz almost certainly had more issues than criminal charges that would inevitably have been dropped, or gone to court and been dismissed as soon as the "victim" refused to testify or testified in Swartz's favor. So while there's been a pile-on for the prosecutor in this case, I'm reluctant to join it beyond thinking she should have listened to MIT/JSTOR. People who are accused of crimes, even crimes they know are under uncontroversial laws and for which they're dead to rights, don't generally kill themselves. Rather, given his background, I suspect depression caused by you-know-what is far more likely.