The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched an internal investigation into the school’s involvement in the suicide of 26-year-old computer programmer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz, MIT’s president L. Rafael Reif said Sunday. Swartz was accused of breaking into MIT’s computer system in order to access academic articles and make them available for free on the Internet.
Before he died last Friday, Swartz, who was a well-known computer programmer — but not an MIT student — faced a 35-year prison sentence on federal data theft charges for illegally downloading articles from the subscription-based academic research service JSTOR. [1]
Do you think Aaron helped with what he did? Well, what he did was legally illegal, but also very RIGHT in its essence. How can science and society progress if we have everything under a cloak of “pay or go away” ? But, believe it or not, I think we are discussing for the wrong question here…
Knowledge is NOT free and NOTHING can ever change that (as analyzed at this article). But do not misunderstand me. Not “free” as my friend “The Light” says here. JSTOR articles SHOULD be free for everyone to see! And it is indeed a terrible fascist movement of the DA and MIT to make this boy think he could be 35 years in jail for a crime which had no victimes… Knowledge is not “free” in the sense that one needs to put too much effort and time in order to even understand a JSTOR article once he gets his hands onto it!
Are you willing to put the effort?
Because no Aaron can help you with that… Unfortunately…
