1) Getting followers/fans is not an accomplishment, unless you consider (say) Snooki "more accomplished" than your hero.
2) He didn't suffer because he stood for something, he suffered because he got caught, which he didn't foresee. Subtle difference. Too bad he couldn't handle it.
I did. He's obviously biased. He claims that Aaron "did nothing to cover his tracks or hide his activity." He tried to disguise himself when he went to retrieve the laptop. I think not clearing .bash_history or his browser history was just due to stupidity on Aaron's part, as he (again stupidly) didn't foresee that he would get caught retrieving the laptop.
Sorry but as far as i can tell from reading about this guy his main area of expertise seemed to be throwing away the opportunities that kept chasing him and i find it hard to see why he's held up as such a hero/martyr.
First, he didn't create the RSS single-handledly for us. He was part of a committee of about a dozen people that took over RSS from Netscape when they didn't support it anymore.
Admittedly that's impressive for a 14 year old to be involved in but the media narrative seems to be "we owe RSS to this guy".
Secondly in the Reddit case he wasn't actually a founder, although the articles insist he might as well have been one. Actually meaning another team was working on the Reddit project, and he was working on something different and they merged early on before Reddit was really popular. Which made him rich when the company was later sold. So we don't really owe Reddit to this guy either, which you might count in his favor, i guess..
Also he dropped out of high-school. Then he got accepted into university because he was so bright and dropped out again after one year because they weren't intellectual enough for him. Then he was made a Hardvard fellow until he hacked a computer network. Yeah.
And now let's look at his latest stunt that landed him in legal trouble.
From what i read about it, it went something like this. He used his laptop and the public Wifi + a spider to download academic documents in bulk in defiance of the ToS and brought the network to a halt. They detected him, banned his MAC address and didn't pursue it any further. He tried again after changing his MAC, and this time they cut him off for good. There was no question at this point that his access was unauthorized and he was well aware of it.
So what does he do ? He sneaks into the building and connects his laptop physically to a network router, and then tries to retrieve it the next day dressed like some kind of Batman and he gets arrested.
Anybody else who tried this kind of utterly incompetent intrusion thrice detected would've been prosecuted as a felon. It was only because this guy had academic and tech industry protectors who backed their precious manbaby that JSTOR and MIT were reluctant to pursue the issue themselves.
Obviously i don't think he deserved 50 years for this but that's because i don't think any crime but murder deserves 50 years. But he certainly deserved more than a slap on the wrist even if your only concern is deterrence and rehabilitation.