MovieChat Forums > The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) Discussion > A very questionable 'crime'

A very questionable 'crime'

posted 9 years ago by blaircam
5 replies | jump to latest

One of the key issues one looks at to determine the criminality of something is usually 'what is the harm' or 'what is the mischief that the law is trying to address'.
So, apart from unauthorised access of the MIT servers, I struggle to see the crime.
Let's assume that Aaron intended to republish the articles for free. Does this need to be a crime? Can't it be handled civilly?
Of course, I think they would have had a hard time proving his intention was to republish - which makes it even less a criminal issue.
The whole thing was crazy.

"They who... give up... liberty to obtain... safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

[–] Strazdamonas 9 years ago

The crime is that Scientific articles are not accessible to everyone freely. JSTOR is a criminal for holding them behind a paywall.

---------------------------------------------
Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

[–] blaircam 9 years ago

Hum, not sure I can agree with that.
Do researchers work for free? Do publishers/printers/distributors etc work for free?
Copyright is important but breach of copyright is usually best handled civilly - not criminally.

"They who... give up... liberty to obtain... safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

[–] thisted101 8 years ago

It had already been payed for by the government and MIT.

[–] kousgh92 8 years ago

You would be surprised to know that researchers barely get any money from their work,which is owned by big corporations.Elsevier is such a company and even Harvard struggles to pay them for their copyrighted material(they are the biggest one as far as I know).So,if you think this is acceptable and not a criminal offense,then I have nothing to say.

[–] richard_corey 8 years ago

MIT had access to JSTOR and Aaron had an account -- as far as I know, he wasn't accessing any data that he didn't legally have access to. I believe it was just the place he accessed it from.
So, the copyright issue is not germane, as he had an account through MIT that allowed him access already.