• Hubi@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    He didn’t even share them as far as I know, he just downloaded them. And the trial hadn’t started yet when he committed suicide.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      He didn’t get the chance to share them because he was caught downloading them, and his download requests were getting blocked.

      And to be clear, he wasn’t downloading from the Internet as one might download a car, he went into a restricted networking closet and connected directly to the switch, leaving a computer sitting there sending access requests. He had to keep going back to it to check on the progress, which is when they caught him.

      And the trial hadn’t started yet when he committed suicide.

      Yeah, I agree with the sentiment of the post, but this is just wildly misleading. He was not sentenced to anything, he committed suicide before the trial.

      He was given a plea deal for 6 months that he rejected, in an effort to make the feds justify the ludicrous charges they were pressing. Had it gone to trial, he certainly wouldn’t have been found not guilty, but it’s unlikely many of those charges would have stuck. It’s extremely unlikely he would actually have served 35 years.