How Aaron Swartz's Cause Wins in the End

January 23, 2013

Aaron Swartz downloaded academic articles from JSTOR in violation of JSTOR’s terms and conditions. He was indicted for violating federal law. Refusing the prosecutor’s plea bargain offer of six months in jail, he killed himself. Depending on who you believe, he misused MIT’s facilities or he did not; he willfully broke the law or unknowingly broke a poorly defined and selectively enforced law; and he sought to destroy intellectual property or only to prod JSTOR to share research with academics and the taxpayers who had financed it. But the facts no longer matter: By becoming a martyr to open access,...

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