I think you stopped reading before the last paragraph of my comment. Or, really, one of the first ones, because, again: the prosecutors are on the record with the sentence they were actually threatening Swartz with, and, as I said, and Swartz's attorney said, and this New Yorker article said: it was nothing resembling 50 years.
Whether it's 50, 20, or 6, the real number is beside the point. Potential "years" of prison will scare the crap out almost anybody, and our government ALWAYS uses this tactic to coerce people into whatever outcome looks good for their careers.
I think we can leave this at "I disagree that there's no meaningful distinction between a threat of single-digit years and double-digit years sentence".
