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As I understand it, being branded a felon in the U.S is a big deal... you essentially lose a bunch of 'rights' that you have as a citizen. This dominos on to making it harder to find jobs, places to live, loans... etc.

You could argue someone with Swartz status in the community would alleviate some of those things... but I'm not sure how far that goes.

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One of the founders of YCombinator was convicted of a felony under the CFAA. In addition to having made enough money with pg to do that sort of thing, he's also an (excellent) professor at MIT.

A felony conviction sucks, but it's not a huge price to pay if you're serious about changing the world (or think you'll probably lose at trial).

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