I think you put the argument better than Byrne did, but I have several problems with it. First, in terms of sneaking around, remember that Swartz's goal wasn't

I think you put the argument better than Byrne did, but I have several problems with it. First, in terms of sneaking around, remember that Swartz's goal wasn't to ensure that his children and grandchildren could enter MIT server closets and jump on the network whenever they want. It was to download and publish the contents of JSTOR, and to complete that he had to make sure his activities weren't cut short by discovery. He was basically still trying to board the bus. And to the extent that he used inappropriate means to reach his goal, we should condem him for it, but using questionable methods doesn't make it not civil disobedience. So the whole sneaking thing seems like a red herring. Second, a huge part of this is that Swartz's could not have expected to face the railroading he did. The requirement that you accept the consequences of your civil disobedience isn't completely open-ended, so this matters a great deal. I can't pretend to know if he would have been willing to face some more proportional fallout for his actions, but it's unfair for us to assume he wouldn't just because the trumped-up charges proved to be too much. Take this, for example: > Certainly Rosa Parks would not have regretted refusing to move seats, even if she landed in jail from it. But what if they charged her with sedition and threatened to execute her? Of course I don't know what she'd have done, but the question is whether we'd think less of her if she backed down. "Well, that's civil disobedience for ya. Gotta accept the consequences." If that seems like an extreme analogy, let's look at it the other way: while Swartz's and Parks' actions were, in absolute terms, more or less on-par, Parks' was obviously way more--for lack of a better word--outrageous relative to the established power structure. She was facing down a much larger, more deeply seated, more sinister set of rules and was pursuing a much loftier cause; she was a black woman doing as she pleased in Alabama in 1955. And still Swartz faced much nastier consequences. So it's hardly fair to bash Swartz's unwilling to own up to the "consequences" of his actions; they can't be what he bargained for. Another way of approaching this is to note that we've been comparing Aaron Swartz to Rosa Parks and Mahatma Ghandi, freaking giants in the history of civil disobedience. Is that really the standard we mean to set? You can't push the ball forward unless you're willing to spend significant portions of your life in jail? Gotta look unblinkingly into the eyes of false justice or accept things the way they are?