The U.S. government today indicted computer activist Aaron Swartz on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, data theft and property damage.
25-year-old Swartz, who is best known as co-author of the initial RSS specification, allegedly broke into a computer closet at MIT, accessed MIT's network connected to JSTOR and downloaded "a major portion of JSTOR's archive" without authorization, and distributed the acquired content through file sharing networks.
Demand Progress, a website for which Swartz previously served as Executive Director, set up a web page and petition in support of Swartz, indicating that the indictment came with surprise and questioning a legal strategy that makes downloading "so many journal articles" a felony that should be punished with jail time. Demand Progress also noted that "the alleged victim has settles any claims against Aaron, explained they've suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute."
Swartz himself reached out to his Twitter followers and thanked for their support via tweets. Demand Progress' current Executive Director David Segal said that “Aaron’s career has focused on serving the public interest by promoting ethics, open government, and democratic politics. We hope to soon see him cleared of these bizarre charges.”
Go chase conspiracy theories somewhere else. Obama isn't and never was a muslim. As a jew, I don't feel neither offended nor threatened by Obama.
Politically speaking I disagree with a lot of his actions, but what you say is pure insanity. Please, remove yourself from this discussion if you can't contribute in a meaningful way.
Back to topic, this is BS and I'm pretty confident that he will not be found guilty.
Go chase conspiracy theories somewhere else. Obama isn't and never was a muslim. As a jew, I don't feel neither offended nor threatened by Obama.
Politically speaking I disagree with a lot of his actions, but what you say is pure insanity. Please, remove yourself from this discussion if you can't contribute in a meaningful way.
Back to topic, this is BS and I'm pretty confident that he will not be found guilty.
In it you'll find that MIT pays for the JSTOR service and makes most, not all, articles available only to the MIT Community (students, faculty, etc.).
During the time when Swartz was downloading the millions of articles, it tied up MIT's gateway to JSTOR so that MIT researchers were unable to access the information they needed. Swartz spent a lot of time downloading the articles. It wasn't just a few hours JSTOR was unavailable for use by the MIT Community - it was multiple days at a time.
I don't think Swartz should be severely punished - but I don't think he should be let off with a slap on the wrist either. What he did is not equivalent to just getting stuff out of a library.
I was part of the MIT Community for 20+ years. Research is the life-blood of the place. So is obtaining grant money. It's quite possible, due to the long unavailability of JSTOR cause by Swartz's downloading, people may have been negatively impacted - due to info needed from JSTOR - in writing grant proposals. Grant proposals have deadlines. Hopefully nobody missed a deadline because they could access what they may have needed on JSTOR.