
Aaron Swartz at the Boston Wiki Meetup in 2009. Photo: Sage Ross/Flickr
On Tuesday, Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old Internet activist and co-developer of RSS and a company purchased by Reddit, was charged with breaking into MIT’s restricted networks and stealing more than four million articles from the JSTOR academic database. According to the indictment, which reads like a crime thriller involving a secret wire closet, data mining programs and the odd bicycle helmet mask, the means by which he accessed and downloaded those articles constituted high cybercrimes worthy of federal prosecution. Yet many of Swartz’s supporters, who share his passion for free access to data and open government à la WikiLeaks, see the charges as being overblown.
Swartz reached an agreement with the nonprofit company JSTOR in early 2011 and returned the 4.8 million academic articles to the company, so there is no dispute about whether he downloaded the data from more than 1,000 scholarly journals that covered a wide range of subjects. JSTOR acknowledged that Swartz’s actions did violate its terms and conditions, but said they did not jeopardize the company’s relationships with publishers from whom it licenses. Rather, when a jury convenes for the trial, slated to begin September 9, what they will be deliberating is whether Swartz’s actions constituted federal cybercrimes that warrant a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines, as the statutes define.
Swartz faces six charges in the indictment, filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston, including wire and computer fraud, and charges related to breaking into a protected computer. The case falls under federal jurisdiction because the alleged crimes were committed via the Internet and JSTOR’s servers were located in another state. The wire fraud charge alone, which is based on the assertion that Swartz misrepresented himself in “wire communications in interstate commerce writings” over the Internet, carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The FBI previously investigated Swartz for allegedly downloading and posting almost 20 million court documents from the government-run PACER system in September 2008, but did not file charges.
Given Swartz’s involvement with open information advocacy sites Change Congress and Demand Progress, his perceived motives could make a big difference in the trial. Based on statements from Demand Progress and writings in Swartz’s own blog, his actions may be positioned as a Robin Hood effort meant to make important information accessible to the public. It’s not clear if he intended to share the JSTOR data with the wider public or if he simply wanted it for the research that he was conducting as a Harvard University research fellow. It will be up to a jury to decide how much that matters.
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