yes, that's exactly the point. He was violating the ToS of JSTOR.
Aaron felt that all of these research papers behind paywalls / university logins should be public domain. So he was downloading a copy of everything to publish it openly. Which was very much illegal as he did not own the rights to that research.
Was much of this research at least partially funded with taxpayer dollars and should be open to the public? Yeah, and that would be nice, but that's not how things are. We've got to pass laws to change that. You can't just steal and publish the data and expect the entire system will throw up their hands and accept this as the new norm.
I am very sympathetic to Snowden for uncovering crimes against Americans and getting us that classified information. Government should not be able to hide crimes against its own citizens as classified information.
Absolutely zero sympathy for Aaron for trying to be a hero though.
https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf
Fall smell is leaf mold 🍁
npub1sw…ny2dn
2026-08-21 23:58:38 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…y8y0
Author Public Key
npub1swcr8w6tyv7apu54cuda5efm96mzfdl4hmg5fkcczyrjd396fpzqtny2dnPublished at
2026-08-21 23:58:38 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "yes, that's exactly the point. He was violating the ToS of JSTOR.\r\n\r\nAaron felt that all of these research papers behind paywalls / university logins should be public domain. So he was downloading a copy of everything to publish it openly. Which was very much illegal as he did not own the rights to that research.\r\n\r\nWas much of this research at least partially funded with taxpayer dollars and should be open to the public? Yeah, and that would be nice, but that's not how things are. We've got to pass laws to change that. You can't just steal and publish the data and expect the entire system will throw up their hands and accept this as the new norm.\r\n\r\nI am very sympathetic to Snowden for uncovering crimes against Americans and getting us that classified information. Government should not be able to hide crimes against its own citizens as classified information.\r\n\r\nAbsolutely zero sympathy for Aaron for trying to be a hero though.\r\n\r\nhttps://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf",
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