Internet Activist Charged in M.I.T. Data Theft

[reorg]

Source: The New York Times

By NICK BILTON

Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old programmer and online political activist, has been indicted in Boston on charges that he stole more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. (Read the full indictment below.)

Mr. Swartz was indicted last Thursday by the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz, and the indictment was unsealed Tuesday. The charges could result in up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

...

In 2009 Mr. Swartz downloaded 19 million pages of federal court documents from a government database system, acting on the belief that they should be made available free. ...

Read more: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data-theft/

---

“This makes no sense,” said Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal; “it’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”

“It’s even more strange because JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute,” Segal added.

James Jacobs, the Government Documents Librarian at Stanford University, also denounced the arrest: “Aaron’s prosecution undermines academic inquiry and democratic principles,” Jacobs said. “It’s incredible that the government would try to lock someone up for allegedly looking up articles at a library.”

Demand Progress is collecting statements of support for Aaron on its website: http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/support_aaron/

“Aaron’s career has focused on serving the public interest by promoting ethics, open government, and democratic politics,” Segal said. “We hope to soon see him cleared of these bizarre charges.”

http://demandprogress.org/aaron

[yourout]

1. So our DOJ is doing something........what a frickin joke.

Possibly my single biggest disappointment with Obama is the Department of (in)Justice. From the Siggleman case to Wall Street to the blind eye toward the Bush crimes the DOJ has been MIA.

[buckrogers1965]

2. Theft? Stole?

He removed the documents from JSTOR in such a way as to deprive them of the ability to sell the articles? No, he did not.

Sounds to me that he sent requests to JSTOR for each article and those requests were honored by that system. I can't make a web page and put it on the Internet and charge everyone for copyright infringement if they visit that page. If he requested and they sent the document, then it is their fault for giving away their own information. So the copy of the data he made appears to be completely legal. If you ask for permission to get a copy of an article and the company sends you a copy of the article, whose fault is it?

Even if he had a copy of that data, he couldn't then pass the info onto others, because he doesn't have the copyright on it. But I don't see any evidence that he planned to pass the information to anyone else.