He didn&#x27;t just do some silly illegal thing; he illegally hacked a network from a closet he should not have been in and hit it with so much traffic that he caused legitimate users of the network to suffer loss of access for multiple days and he did this multiple times after being kicked out. Legitimate users were harmed, regardless of what what anyone feels, Aaron committed a felony and was rightfully arrested.<p>Beyond that, you seem to be overlooking the fact that it wasn&#x27;t MIT that was after Aaron, but JSTOR, who constantly pushed MIT to help them locate the hacker who was taking their data from the MIT network.  MIT didn&#x27;t have the option to just handle the matter internally, a third party was involved who was being hacked through the MIT network.<p>You know what happens when you&#x27;re a hacktivist; you go to jail.  Aaron knew he was guilty, he knew he was breaking the law when he did it, it was willful civil disobedience by his own admission.  His suicide was likely the result of his knowing jail was coming even if the prosecutor hadn&#x27;t been overzealous because he committed a felony and knew it and he couldn&#x27;t deal with facing the consequences of his actions.<p>He wanted to change the system, he went about it the wrong way and figured that out too late.