I don't understand why the US Attorney is suggesting he be charged with such ridiculously inflated charges.

Reviewing the Indictment report, "JSTOR did not permit users... to download all of the articles from any particular issue of a journal." Further, "JSTOR notified its users of these rules, and users accepted these rules when they chose to obtain and use JSTOR’s content."

So basically JSTOR is claiming Aaron violated their terms of use. Their terms of use are likely an adhesion contract with a passive shrinkwrap notification. (remember ReasonableAgreement.org ?).
It is not certain that Aaron did in fact agree to such terms, or what consequences doing so and then violating said terms should have. Regardless, JSTOR proclaiming certain terms may not be sufficient to deny Aaron of his rights as a consumer, citizen, and human.

The report goes on to claim that Aaron took action to "avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying". MIT and JSTOR allowed users to access their network, with no system in place to ensure that a user was a student (by design, as MIT admits) or that they were using their real name (or a single MAC address). A researcher accessing JSTOR is really less of a concern than other potential types of access so perhaps this is not a good system. The report suggests Aaron took action to "elude detection and identification" but courts have held that anonymous speech and action are valid parts of society. They take issue with his using a Mailinator address but such an email address is just as valid as any other and simply allows others to read ones mail.

The report whines that the "rapid and massive downloads and download requests impaired computers used by JSTOR to service client research institutions". This inconveniencing of other users could have been avoided and the blame for how JSTOR allocates resources lies with the architects of JSTOR.

MIT acted to ban the IP ranges that they believe were in violation of their rules. Users were to use the network to support MIT’s research, or at least not obstruct it. However, very likely Aaron was conducting research. Any hindrance to other users may have been the responsibility of MIT's infrastructure team.They further request users "maintain the system’s security and conform to applicable laws, including copyright laws" seemingly suggesting Aaron was in violation of copyright. Very importantly, MIT should remember that when it comes to copyright "Reproduction for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." The last point of MIT rules is that users "conform with rules imposed by any networks to which users connected through MIT’s system" which makes little practical sense and is certainly selectively enforced. Assuming a JSTOR web server is now a network, so is my personal web server. On all html files on my webserver I link to a ReasonableAgreement-style notification that no user may browse such files between 8am and 11pm EST. Any MIT student, faculty member, or guest who connects during those hours is in violation and should be kicked by MIT, for if a rule is to be fair it should be consistently enforced. This third rule is simply a CYA clause and is its selective enforcement is arrogant.

To conclude, the document does suggest that perhaps Aaron did violate the JSTOR terms of use for their website. When a normal business decides to deal with a violation of their terms of use they deactivate that customer's accounts. However, Ithaka Harbors Inc., a “non-profit” organisation (Presidents yearly compensation is over $400,000 – see their 2009 Form 990 at http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2009/133/857/2009-1338... ) funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Gates Foundation and committed to “the core values of higher education” and to a “deep understanding of technology” (ha), decided to alert the feds. As to MIT's claims that Aaron broke their rules for using their internet connection, it seems he neither obstructed MIT's research nor violate laws or copyright laws. As to their third claim, he may have violated the terms of a "network" but so do a significant portion of MIT’s users everyday.

Why is the Obama administration pursuing an investigation in Wire Fraud and Computer Fraud?