How The 'Computer Wizard' Who Created The First Internet Virus Got Off Without A Day Of Jail

The suicide of 26-year-old Aaron Swartz has spurred calls to reform the federal anti-hacking law used to prosecute him for illegally downloading millions of academic articles at the MIT campus. The controversy over Swartz's prosecution echoes some of the public response to the very first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986: Robert Tappan Morris, who now teaches at MIT. In November 1988, the then-23-year-old Cornell graduate student wrote a program that led to unpreced...