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"had to shut down" It didn't have to shut down any more than you'd have to burn your own house down after a burglary. If somebody broke into my house and was c

• foldr 11y ago
  I don't think it's credible to suggest that JSTOR would have shut down if they didn't think it was necessary. I dislike this victim-blaming mentality that some people seem to have in relation to computer-related crimes. JSTOR appear to have done their best to handle the situation, bearing in mind that they cannot be seen to condone violations of the licenses which they have negotiated with publishers.
  • chris_wot 11y ago
    Both JSTOR and MIT declined to pursue civil litigation. They clearly didn't consider themselves to have been materially harmed. Where did you get the information that the entirety of JSTOR was shut down, even temporarily?
    • foldr 11y ago
      >Both JSTOR and MIT declined to pursue civil litigation. They clearly didn't consider themselves to have been materially harmed. The second statement doesn't in any way follow from the first. There are call kinds of reasons why JSTOR might have decided not to pursue civil litigation. Swartz quite possibly didn't have enough money to make it worthwhile, and it would have been bad publicity. On top of that, given that Swartz was already facing criminal prosecution, there was no need to pursue civil litigation as a deterrent to others. >Where did you get the information that the entirety of JSTOR was shut down, even temporarily? http://swartz-report.mit.edu/faq.html http://swartz-report.mit.edu/faq.html ("This activity was in violation of MIT's licensing agreement with JSTOR, and its scale threatened JSTOR's network so profoundly that JSTOR blocked all MIT access for three days in October 2010.") My original post was open to the interpretation that JSTOR shut down everywhere for everyone, which is not the case. But anyway, it's clear that Swartz's activities were significantly disruptive. What you seem to be missing is that Swartz's actions were a direct challenge to JSTOR's entire business model. The only way that JSTOR can make money out of scanning old journal articles is to charge fees to someone or other for access to those articles. If the entire JSTOR database becomes freely available, then this income stream is cut off. It's worth considering what the effects would have been if Swartz had succeeded in doing what he intended to do, i.e. release JSTOR's entire database of articles. This wasn't merely a prank or a protest. It was something that had the potential to destroy JSTOR entirely. (And JSTOR isn't even evil -- it's a non-profit that does a lot of great work.)
      • chris_wot 11y ago
        You can read JSTOR's statement here: http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and-criminal-case http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-... "The criminal investigation and today’s indictment of Mr. Swartz has been directed by the United States Attorney’s Office. It was the government’s decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR’s. As noted previously, our interest was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter." They genuinely weren't interested in making him an example.
        • foldr 11y ago
          I didn't say that JSTOR was interested in making an example of Swartz. I said that if they had wanted to make an example of him, that would still not have given them a reason to pursue civil action, since Swartz was already facing a criminal prosecution that would have acted as a far greater deterrent than any conceivable civil action. There would simply have been no point in spending lots of money on a civil suit (money which probably could not be recovered in full) when the person in question was already facing jail time. More generally, that fact that JSTOR did not pursue civil action is totally unsurprising given that Swartz was already facing a criminal prosecution, and it tells us very little about what JSTOR did or didn't think about what Swartz did. It's like saying "you must not think that the burglar harmed you by burgling your house because you're not pursuing civil action against him" -- in an instance where the burglar was already facing a criminal prosecution. If JSTOR had believed Swartz's actions not to be harmful, they clearly would not have blocked JSTOR access from the MIT network. And indeed, Swartz didn't actually succeed in doing JSTOR much harm becuase they successfully stopped him. What you're effectively saying is that being caught before you've succeeded in completing a crime ought to count as a good defense. In other words, if I try to burgle your house and you catch me before I succeed in making off with your stuff, then you can't complain, because after all, I didn't actually get hold of any of your stuff!