Re: My $0.02
On the other hand, when you "steel" money by robbing a 7/11, usually that involves walking in and threatening an attendant with bodily harm, sometimes with a weapon. You're also taking someone else's property (the cash in the register) directly, instead of being paid for work you actually performed, though in this case that work was performed in illegal and unethical ways.
I don't approve at all of what this guy did (and especially not of how he did it), and it's unfortunate that he pocketed a lot of money doing it, but in terms of effort to dissuade criminals I'm on board with in-person, physical robbery being penalized more harshly than using compromised servers as botnets for spam, even if there is a huge disparity in the gains.
If there's any aspect of this that I think might warrant a harsher penalty its the alleged material support of illegal narcotics sales. It's not clear that the authorities could pin that on him, though, since that's not something he ended up found guilty of.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
