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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
(blog.curiousquail.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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No. He placed a computer in a unlocked network closet and used that to download a bunch of data from JSTOR (which he had acces to, and a lot of the data is public domain anyways) and kinda-sorta caused DDoS attack against the service. Prosecution then slapped him with a shitload of federal charges which (in my opinion) were largely at least massively exaggerated if not straight made up. Threat of 50 year jail sentence and million(s) in fines then pushed him to take his own life.
Wikipedia has pretty detailed info about him and the whole case.