Activist who downloaded four million JSTOR articles kills himself after bullying from justice system

[unjapanologist]

Remember Aaron Swartz, the information freedom activist who set off a broad online discussion about academic databases in 2011 when he downloaded about four million articles from JSTOR to make a point about how knowledge shouldn't be locked away from the public?

Swartz never put those four million articles online anywhere, or did anything else with them besides downloading, but the way he downloaded them (edit: better link) was in violation of JSTOR's terms of service. JSTOR recognized that they were dealing with an activist doing a stunt, not some kind of pirate who wanted to deny them income; they declined to press charges. However, a federal prosecutor decided to make an example of Swartz and pursued him relentlessly, threatening to slap him with a million-dollar fine and up to thirty-five years in jail. With the upcoming trial looming over him, Swartz hanged himself on January 11 at the age of 26.

We often point to examples of incidents that show how broken copyright law is, but this is just too enraging for words. Karl Fogel at QuestionCopyright.org and Lawrence Lessig say best exactly how shameful the prosecutor's behavior was, regardless of whether or not Swartz' actions were wrong (they differ on that). This guy did not deserve what he was being threatened with. The people who wasted public money hounding him to his death instead of dealing with actual crimes should be too ashamed to ever look in the mirror again.

Comments

[bookshop]

yes, so much, to all of this.

[unjapanologist]

*nod*

[ithiliana]

Danah Boyd linked to a blog post by an expert witness for the defense that puts out some information (having been cleared with lawyers and family) about the extent to which MIT's own actions and contracts with JSTOR allowed this incident which was not really hacking by any definition of it. Definitely worth reading.

http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

[unjapanologist]

Yeah, hadn't seen that one yet yesterday. Will link.

[angrymermaids]

I had never heard of this until the other day when it turned up on Reddit but now I'm just sad.

I don't know how some people can live with themselves.

[unjapanologist]

The injustice of this is just stunning.

[kouredios]

I met him, once. Well, not really "met." I was at the party that Ethan describes here, and Aaron was clearly not the kind of person to introduce himself to a room full of strangers.

The thing I am struck by right now is the difference in tone between the friends who are mourning him, the activists who are martyring him, and the people who are both, and are trying to express a nuanced view of the situation. danah boyd's post is very good.

[unjapanologist]

Yeah, I've seen the post and was very impressed. As by many others, especially those by the man's friends.

But there's not much I can do besides be angry and fight harder to make research freely accessible. I and many others never met him, so it stands to reason that he means something different to most people than to his friends. I'm not going to pretend that I'm personally saddened by this death, or strike a tone to suggest that I am - that would be disingenuous. For me, this is a reason to be incredibly pissed off.

[kouredios]

Oh, absolutely. It's just been a strange experience, seeing all these different reactions, and so public. Ethan was at my home today, watching football and talking about how he was processing it, and it's surreal to see it all happening from all these different perspectives.