Aaron Swartz is a hero
Aaron Swartz, 24, is an activist for freedom of information and one of the brains behind Reddit and RSS. Last fall, he was a fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, when he decided to hack into MIT’s network in order to download documents from the paid online archive JSTOR. When he was blocked, he allegedly went to MIT, broke into a closet, and wired his computer to the network. He downloaded 4.8 million documents, planning to distribute them for free on file-sharing websites.
For his actions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts charged him with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. He faces 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. He made his initial appearance in federal court yesterday and is out on $100,000 bail.
U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said, ”Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar and whether you take documents, data, or dollars.”
Additionally, almost every article about this case characterizes what Swartz is accused of doing as stealing.
With all due respect, Swartz did not steal anything. Stealing is when you take something from someone else, so that the other person no longer has it. This is not what Swartz (or anyone accused of copyright violation) did. He made copies of the information so that he, as well as the original owners, had it. Swartz did not deprive JSTOR of the information, because they still have it. He did, arguably, deprive them of the fees that they could have made by charging people for access to the information. But he did not steal anything.
It is up for debate whether JSTOR has a right to charge such fees (sometimes as high as $50,000) for digital files of scholastic papers. I argue that they do not. Information should not be treated as a product. Physical items and services are products, but information should be free. Swartz risked his personal safety and freedom for this principle, and for this reason, I think it is fitting that at the time he was working at Harvard’s Center for Ethics. Although his actions may have been extreme and reckless, and inconvenienced some people by causing servers to crash, he did not violate the rights of any individual. He bravely took a controversial stand for freedom of information, and for that I consider him a hero.
Sources: Boston Globe, Wired