A prominent internet activist has been arrested and charged with stealing more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. Aaron Swartz, 24, is founder and director of the nonprofit group Demand Progress, and created a site that later merged with the mecca internet message board Reddit in its infancy.
Swartz has long been a champion of open access, arguing in this manifesto that there should be unrestricted online access to articles published in journals: "We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks...." Swartz is accused of illegally downloading millions of articles which he believed either were, or should be, free. “This makes no sense. It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library,” said Demand Progress executive director, David Segal.
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz argued, “Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.” Forbes is sympathetic toward Swartz's cause, agreeing that "it’s inevitable that academic research will become freely available" for download, and thinks it's ridiculous that he is facing felony charges; but ultimately, they disagree with his methods, and think he may have set back the open access movement:
Open access advocates have the natural high ground and are gradually winning the debate over the future of academic publishing. Change comes slowly, but things have been changing. Aaron’s actions are likely to slow that progress by allowing the bad guys to lump open access advocates in with malicious clowns like LulzSec. The incident makes JSTOR look like an injured, even magnanimous, party and gives them an excuse to make their policies more restrictive.
Swartz has been charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, criminal forfeiture and obtaining information from a protected computer; he could face up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
Reddit seemed a bit miffed when every article regarding Swartz referenced him as a "Reddit co-founder" in their headlines. The Times noted that they changed their headline and post "to remove reference to Mr. Swartz being a co-founder of Reddit, as this is disputed" by actual co-founders Steve Huffman and Alex Ohanian. Or as one pithy Reddit post put it, "Aaron Swartz, the Reddit (non)cofounder charged with data theft today, is a Chicago boy."
