> He was charged with felonies for stealing PDFs for publicly funded research papers, he was tried as if he hacked these systems. He took his own life as a result of them throwing decades of prison time at him for what's hardly a serious hacking offense (seriously, Kevin Mitnick was way worse).

None of the federal charges really had anything to do with copying the files [1].

> Kevin Mitnick served five years, they were looking to throw up to 35 years at him, and a minimum sentence of seven years if he went to trial.

You are comparing the ridiculous DOJ press release number [2] for Swartz to Mitnick's actual sentence. You should compare like to like, so should be comparing 35 years for Swartz to the ridiculous DOJ press release number for Mitnick which was 200 years.

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

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