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Aaron Swartz and MIT: The Inside Story
An anonymous reader writes: "The Boston Globe has reviewed over 7,000 pages of documents from Aaron Swartz's court case, shedding light on the activities that got him in trouble and how MIT reacted to his case. Quoting: 'Most vividly, the e-mails underscore the dissonant instincts the university grappled with. There was the eagerness of some MIT employees to help investigators and prosecutors with the case, and then there was, by contrast, the glacial pace of the institution's early reaction to the intruder's provocation. MIT, for example, knew for 2½ months which campus building the downloader had operated out of before anyone searched it for him or his laptop — even as the university told JSTOR they had no way to identify the interloper.
And once Swartz was unmasked, the ambivalence continued. MIT never encouraged Swartz's prosecution, and once told his prosecutor they had no interest in jail time. However, e-mails illustrate how MIT energetically assisted authorities in capturing him and gathering evidence — even prodding JSTOR to get answers for prosecutors more quickly — before a subpoena had been issued. ... But a number of JSTOR's internal e-mails show a much angrier face in the months that Swartz eluded capture, with employees sharing frustration about MIT's "rather tepid level of concern." JSTOR officials repeatedly raised the prospect, among themselves, of going to the police, e-mails show."
And once Swartz was unmasked, the ambivalence continued. MIT never encouraged Swartz's prosecution, and once told his prosecutor they had no interest in jail time. However, e-mails illustrate how MIT energetically assisted authorities in capturing him and gathering evidence — even prodding JSTOR to get answers for prosecutors more quickly — before a subpoena had been issued. ... But a number of JSTOR's internal e-mails show a much angrier face in the months that Swartz eluded capture, with employees sharing frustration about MIT's "rather tepid level of concern." JSTOR officials repeatedly raised the prospect, among themselves, of going to the police, e-mails show."
So MIT as a body did not care about Swartz, but some busy bodies did. I wonder if it is a part of their job description?
I agree in part and disagree in part. Swartz was not an asshole, he was however a moron, who let occupioer types convince him that just because you protest, you cannot be arrested for your protests. Which is just the opposite of what Martin Luther King said which is that if you break laws protesting an unjust law, you should gladly go to jail.
That said, let us remember that what Swartz did was download a bunch of papers describing research that was mostly paid for by the government, and that researches paid [1] to be published. The money used to pay to publish also mostly out of government money. Fact is that the system for publishing academic articles served us well for many years, but is now obsolete. The job could effectively done better by the government sponsoring e-journals, and would be much cheaper then the government is paying now, and be free to anyone with internet access.
The thing is that I believe the Boycott Elvesier movement has done more to promote the cause of publicly open journals then anything that Swartz did.
[1] Because I'm sure some idiot will come along and claim that Swartz was stealing from the authors of the papers.
The whole story is just a damn shame.
I just hope there are some people who feel guilt about it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Former researcher here:
a) while the System for publishing needs to be overhauled seriously (and thats happening all the time) it is by no way obsolete
b) while publication fees exist these are usually minor, and are quite low if you dont demand printing features (e.g. colored prints)
c) I think JSTOR fulfills a important role. Without such a organization, univerities would be forced to eat the shit of the publishers in a much bigger extend
d) Not acting on the illegal copying of a big database would undermine the attempts to open up the situation. Something which Aaron did is exactly what the publishers alsways fear.
e) The MIT acted correctly. If a business partner of mine is attacked in such a way on my network, i have the responsibility to clear the situation and secure evidence but no responsibility to press charges on my own.
f) I dont share the interpretation that he did not know what he was doing
g) Reasons for suicides are complex. The assertion that somebody is responsible for a suicide, since he was not 100% positive and supportive about an individual is not the right message, especially *not* in the light of preventing future suicides
In this case it appears that one major factor was that his girlfriend was threatened and he seemed to think that suicide would take the pressure off her. Due to the fuss generated over his suicide he was correct and the threats of legal action against his girlfriend stopped.
Are you starting to see what sort of people were involved here? If they were petty criminals instead of lawyers or their agents acting like petty criminals they would probably be doing time for their actions.
> Swartz was not an asshole,
No, he was an asshole. The *scale and intensity* of his attempt to download and replicate *all* of JSTOR, including the indexing, was not only illegal in itself. Because of the amount of bandwidth he was using, he repeatedly crashed parts of JSTOR. That means that researchers and scholars woldwide lost access to a vital research tool. And as a response, and to protect the rest of the world's access, they finally had to cut off MIT's access. He was screwing with people doing medical research. People *die* because cutting edge research gets held back for bonehead reasons.
If Swartz had taken the single step of cutting the bandwidth he used by 75%, JSTOR wouldn't have kept crashing and had to punt MIT. And if he'd done it from his office at Harvard, *which had similar access to JSTOR*, there probably wouldn't have been a way to charge him, and it would be his employer's problem. Swartz was allowed on the MIT campus because of his Harvard ID, and his screw up has cast that whole reciprocal agreement between MIT and Harvard for library and campus access in doubt.
What Swartz did was not directly stealing from the authors of the research, it was making their research inaccessible while in progress. It screwed with the thesis writing of friends of mine, and interfered with research projects throughout MIT. Frankly, MIT should have been *much* more eager to help slap cuffs on this twit, but they're traditionally very, very slow to act against "cracking" because it's *embarrassing*, and the prosecutors inevitably fuck it up. Look into the David Lamacchia case about 10 years ago for an example
> I do not understand the rationale for universities and researchers more particularly wanting to have their research locked behind pay-walled services such as JSTOR
It's well indexed and cross referenced, reliably available, and has become the "one-stop" resource for research documents. That is _invaluable_ when looking for obscure documents or tying together research among multiple fields. JSTOR is getting paid, and not an outrageous amount, for that work. Some fool replicating their entire index and layout, as Aaron Swartz was clearly attempting, means that their income to continue the organization of the material dries up and will not be continued. And JSTOR subscriptions have been much more cost effective than Google searching or library searching for research documents.
It's the same reason newspapers or magazines put up paywalls: one has to pay the writers and editors, or in this case the indexers and the maintainers of the quite robust and effective back end. Good backups and failover facilities are not free, and JSTOR has been a reliable and invaluable resource. Aaron was threatening that by overwhelming and crashing the services. The documents are kept available much longer, and much more reliably, than a community driven or freeware service could hope to manage. JSTOR see themselves as librarians of knowledge, not as vendors of knowledge, and I applaud their efforts.
> Swartz didn't use anything but bandwidth that would have gone wasted otherwise.
No, he didn't use only "bandwidth that would have gone wasted otherwise", He overwhelmed the _JSTOR_ servers at least once, enough to crash some critical JSTOR services. That cut off access not just for MIT but for researchers worldwide. And the amount of bandwidth he was using slowed JSTOR significantly for MIT's students and researchers repeatedly in the months before he was arrested.
So no, he was blocking the service for other people.