The outcry against Heymann follows the suicide of activist Aaron Swartz last month, who was being prosecuted by Heymann for allegedly violating computer crime laws in his downloading of millions of academic papers from the website JSTOR.
Swartz, 26, faced allegations that he stole millions of online documents -- mostly scholarly papers -- from MIT through the university's computer network.
After downloading millions of academic papers from the online service JSTOR, Swartz was prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and faced up to 35 years in prison.