Hacker News Reader

Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

Well he did sneak into a closet and cause JSTOR to threaten to cut MIT's access. After things settled down, MIT dropped all charges. I think that was pretty reasonable.

View on HN

Where have you seen that they dropped charges? Everything I've read has indicated exactly the opposite.

MIT dropped trespassing charges. (JSTOR also dropped their charges after Aaron deleted the files and promised not to do it again or something.) The feds got involved with the "hacking" because it crossed state lines, and the district attorney in Boston continued the criminal case after both JSTOR and MIT had settled with Aaron out of court.

And according to what the Aaron's lawyers have said, the prosecutors pursued the case because MIT behind the scenes wanted them to.

MIT is not necessarily blameless here. I for one will be reading that report.

It wasn't JSTOR's fault, and it wasn't MIT's fault.

Why, it can only be the government's fault!

It was a bit MIT's fault. It was a bit less JSTOR's fault. And it was a whole lot more the feds' fault.

And perhaps it was also a little bit Aaron Swartz's fault.

He was not doing anything that other people who faced no criminal charges did not do. He just did things differently.

There are a lot of people in prison who wish that was a defense.

He was fighting against the commodification of academic journals. MIT should have given him a medal.

Yes but did it occur to him that maybe the only reason such journals exist is because they are commercial enterprises?

You may not know this, but he founded Demand Progress. He was also the keynote speaker at Freedom to Connect 2012 in Washinton, D.C. So yeah, he probably thought about it a lot more than you have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com