Swartz wasn't the kind of person to accept a plea bargain from an overzealous prosecutor who was indicting him on 13 felony charges with a possible sentence up to 35 years along with a $1 million fine. I assume he wanted a trial because he wanted to continue his fight for open access. And maybe he thought he might lose, but wouldn't lose on all counts, and would make the prosecution look unreasonable in the public eye. Was that decision rational from a self-interest point of view? Maybe not.

And then you might ask, if he wanted a trial, why did he kill himself? Obviously no one knows what was going through his head when he did it. He left no note. But the prospect of being locked in a cell until he was an old man probably had something to do with it.

You can certainly argue it was his own fault for not pleading down, but even if that's your view, that doesn't absolve the prosecutor. Ortiz has a lot of blame in this too, and the fact she still hasn't acknowledged it over a decade later speaks volumes to the kind of person she is.

I agree there's more nuance here than was initially stated, but I also think there's more nuance than simply "he was offered 6 months". Even if he was offered 6 days, the ways in which someone's life and livelihood changes by having ever been convicted of a crime and gone to prison, is dramatic. This is especially true in white collar work and/or knowledge work.

Schwartz was a research fellow at Harvard. Really think he would've been able to continue?

Wild to see the concept of the plea bargain being defended. It's a blatant retraction of the due process clause from the bill of rights, and here you are defending it.

On that note, Lawrence Lessigs talks on copyright from that period are worth a watch https://youtu.be/9xbRE_H5hoU