> repeatedly broke in to a room

> rotated his MAC address

Do you really think these details drastically change how people should judge his actions vs those of a corporation?

Yeah, intent matters. Evading security matters. It's a big point that his actions were intentional and not passive or accidental - not that IP infringement by corporations isn't its own discussion.

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LostMyLogin 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How is Meta using BitTorrent to download over 80 terabytes of copyrighted books while avoiding using corporate IP addresses not evading security?

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9x39 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Torrents are openly accessible, even if .gov might enable infringement claims by the rights-holder. They're not hacking into networks.

Changing your IP isn't a crime, even if it has the effect of making attribution to Meta more difficult.

The thing with Aaron was that it went on for months to the point JSTOR's complaints had activated MIT's organizational antibodies, let's say, and the IS department was turned loose to investigate repeatedly. They went to the trouble of upgrading their load balancers and traffic analysis to narrow it down and installed a camera. At that point, the hook was firmly set and with digital and video evidence, the Secret Service had him red-handed abusing MIT.

Keep in mind the thing that spiraled out of control was how Aaron (mis)used MIT resources persistently and with overwhelming evidence - in the end, the civil part with JSTOR was largely irrelevant. MIT called in the big guns with the FBI and Secret Service, and they ate it up. I'm not arguing in favor of it, I'm just familiar with the zeal they bring once they get on a trail.

	▲	LostMyLogin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Changing your IP isn't a crime, even if it has the effect of making attribution to Meta more difficult. To borrow your words, intent matters. Also why are we acting as if Meta wasn’t doing this for over half a decade and that companies don’t actively take steps to try and prevent piracy?

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63stack 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure intent matters but I still don't see how this warrants the government going after him.

	▲	9x39 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		MIT called up the government and said there's this guy. Whether they should have is debatable, but they did.

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bigstrat2003 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, but they do drastically change how people should judge his actions vs someone who simply downloaded some documents that were served on an open web server. OP didn't say "it's ok if a corporation does that", he said that Aaron's actions were more serious than people commonly make them out to be.