I would say that what he did was obviously a bad idea. But there are a lot of possible mitigating factors that people don't seem to grasp.
First, what account was he using? I read that the account was a guest account. Being a university IT staff person, I can tell you that these are fairly common. We often have guests on campus that need access for the day/week or longer. If he used a guest account, he may not have been illegally accessing the system.
Second, did he actually use force to enter the network closet? It would seem that if he forced his way in, the IT staff would have noticed that the door had been tampered with. This would have caused him to get noticed right away. If the door was unlocked and there were no signs stating restricted access, you can't blame people for going in. Our IT closets are locked, but there is no indication what is actually behind the door or that its an IT closet.
What material did he actually get? Much of the material JSTOR has is actually public domain. You can't really steal public domain material can you?
At the end of the day, both JSTOR and MIT settled the matter without legal intervention. What I don't understand is how the DA has the right to charge him with anything. Out of the crimes he was charged with, they are only crimes if the owners of the systems deem it so. If you entered my house but I told the police it was ok, they really have no case to charge you with breaking and entering do they? This whole mess smells like an election effort by a DA wanting to be a judge, IMHO.
I work at the Rochester Institute of Technology and we offer a number of classes online. In fact, I did my Master's project on re-designing lab based classes around virtualization so that the labs could be done remotely. That project was later turned into a VMware Lab Manager system that we use to offer an entire Master's program through distance learning. I don't know if we technically open source our curriculum but we did share it with a lot of other universities starting their own IT programs.
I would say that what he did was obviously a bad idea. But there are a lot of possible mitigating factors that people don't seem to grasp.
First, what account was he using? I read that the account was a guest account. Being a university IT staff person, I can tell you that these are fairly common. We often have guests on campus that need access for the day/week or longer. If he used a guest account, he may not have been illegally accessing the system.
Second, did he actually use force to enter the network closet? It would seem that if he forced his way in, the IT staff would have noticed that the door had been tampered with. This would have caused him to get noticed right away. If the door was unlocked and there were no signs stating restricted access, you can't blame people for going in. Our IT closets are locked, but there is no indication what is actually behind the door or that its an IT closet.
What material did he actually get? Much of the material JSTOR has is actually public domain. You can't really steal public domain material can you?
At the end of the day, both JSTOR and MIT settled the matter without legal intervention. What I don't understand is how the DA has the right to charge him with anything. Out of the crimes he was charged with, they are only crimes if the owners of the systems deem it so. If you entered my house but I told the police it was ok, they really have no case to charge you with breaking and entering do they? This whole mess smells like an election effort by a DA wanting to be a judge, IMHO.