It's not at all relevant to this thread, but no he wasn't. At their worst, prosecutors were threatening to push for 7 years; the guideline sentence for Swartz's offense, were he to take it to trial and lose, would likely have been under the level allowing for straight probation (go to a sentencing calculator and plug the values in); writing after his death, his own lawyer stated that had he gone to trial and lost he was unlikely to face a custodial sentence at all.

We get this "35 year" number from adding up all the counts he faced, taking their maximum sentence. That's just not how sentencing works. Like charges group, and you're sentenced according to the most severe charge.

People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them.

This is 100% correct.

Here are some useful links. This is an explanation of just how they got those ridiculous numbers like 35 years [1].

There is also often confusion of what he did and what hewas charged with. Here's a two part series going over that [2][3].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popeh...

[2] https://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/

[3] https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-a...