Basing whether or not Aaron's actions were "wire fraud" based on quantity doesn't really make sense. Saying he downloaded more than other users at MIT is really just saying other people requested less files than he did. I remember when I needed academic papers, I stopped using my institution's access to JSTOR because frequently the same paper could be found (legally) using Google Scholar or similar. As academia switches to things like arXiv, JSTOR will be used less and less. I understand that 2 million is orders-greater than an average individual might request, but basing the legality on quantity is flawed. If one file is accessed illegally, you have broken the law. If 2 million are, you have also broken the law.
As to being entirely clear, yes, I would have expected the employees at JSTOR (like the VP of technology making $300k) to have thought of possible ways to rate limit a connection. Just as you can prevent DDOS with something like iptables hashlimit, JSTOR could have done something better than simply refusing all MIT traffic. http://serverfault.com/questions/211135/how-to-prevent-a-loi...
As an analogy, if I host 1 million images of cats on my webserver, and I keep everything open and allow indexes in the Apache configuration, expecting the average person to only download 10 pictures and then you use 'a little WGET magic' to download 1 million jpgs, it seems odd for me to complain when my server crashes and my friend Erica can't download 1 single cat image that she had been wanting to. Yes, your downloads caused the tie up but how angry can I be? Your browser sent a request to my server and my server fulfilled the request.
Like David Segal says, the United States government wants to punish someone for an action akin to allegedly checking out too many books from the library. Over the objections of both MIT and JSTOR, presumably. And you're saying I'm bonkers.
This is what I mean by bonkers: nobody is "basing the legality on quantity". You made that up. I didn't say that. The indictment didn't say that. The law doesn't say that.
As it seems your concern for fact starts and ends with the considerably less relevant quantity of JSTOR employee compensation, I see no reason go on.
One of the summary findings of the indictment does seem to suggest that quantity was a factor:
"[The] defendant, AARON SWARTZ, knowingly and with intent to defraud, accessed a protected computer... in excess of authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthered the intended fraud".
JSTOR's salary rate is really the least of my concerns (though wasteful bureaucracy in the non-profit industry does concern me in general and tangentially relates to this story). My concern is over the US federal government pursuing felony charges when a researcher violated a website's terms of service statement. I'm sorry you received any other impression.
As to being entirely clear, yes, I would have expected the employees at JSTOR (like the VP of technology making $300k) to have thought of possible ways to rate limit a connection. Just as you can prevent DDOS with something like iptables hashlimit, JSTOR could have done something better than simply refusing all MIT traffic. http://serverfault.com/questions/211135/how-to-prevent-a-loi...
As an analogy, if I host 1 million images of cats on my webserver, and I keep everything open and allow indexes in the Apache configuration, expecting the average person to only download 10 pictures and then you use 'a little WGET magic' to download 1 million jpgs, it seems odd for me to complain when my server crashes and my friend Erica can't download 1 single cat image that she had been wanting to. Yes, your downloads caused the tie up but how angry can I be? Your browser sent a request to my server and my server fulfilled the request.
Like David Segal says, the United States government wants to punish someone for an action akin to allegedly checking out too many books from the library. Over the objections of both MIT and JSTOR, presumably. And you're saying I'm bonkers.