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http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... Downloading four million files

http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... Downloading four million files, apparently. And if by breaking terms and services you mean illegally distributing protected content and threatening the business model of JSTOR then yes, I suppose that is true.

jacquesm 14y ago
> illegally distributing protected content Aaron never did that. He may have been planning that but nobody can say this for a fact.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  Like Philip Greenspun says, for all we know he wanted to do metaanalysis. There's no evidence at all he planned to distribute the files.
- RandomComment 14y ago
  Really? Not sure if it is just me but i found the JSTOR.torrent years ago and I always assumed it was from Aaron, the file was big like 35gb, I know there is another branded Aaron torrent floating around somehwere Ah worked it out, someguy did it a while ago, http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosoph... and released his version as a tribute to Aaron. Mystery solved.
ghshephard 14y ago
JSTOR wanted nothing to do with this case [Edit: they are a not-for-profit. Note that it's "http://www.jstor.org/ http://www.jstor.org/ not jstor.com.] JSTOR indicated that they had settled everything the needed to settle privately with Aaron. This was all on MIT and the Prosecution.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what the precedent is or what is reasonable when an affected party does not wish for charges to be pressed.
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
One, two, a million, four million, what difference does it actually make? The crime was violating the terms, it isn't relevant where the EOF bit was transmitted. If you made the same files half as big he would have "stolen" twice as many files, or twice as big then he would have done half the crime by your logic. He never distributed anything. No clue where you got that from? Additionally "threatening a business model" within its self isn't a crime. In fact one might argue that it is a very good thing. Monopolies have often fallen to disruptive technologies, should we go arrest the people behind VoIP because they went after the telecos? Or the inventors of the printing press because they put scribes out of business? Or the inventor of the light-bulb because nobody had to light all of those candles each night? The only "crime" here was violating terms. For that they want to hit him with between six months and thirty five years of jail (plus costs, fines, and a criminal record). If this same over-reaction was applied to all terms violators we would have half the country in jail right now.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  It makes a big difference. Four million is apparently the majority of JSTOR's database. Keep in mind that JSTOR doesn't own those articles, it just arranges approved access to paying institutions on behalf of the various journals which do own the articles. If Aaron had distributed them he might have damaged around a thousand different institutions involved in an important segment of the knowledge and innovation industry. You can argue that that industry should change but I am not sure I can agree that a brute force assault is a good way to create constructive change, especially in a relatively fragile and cash-strapped field like academia. Anyway, I've used JSTOR a lot as a university student. It's a really good service. They don't create the economics of the journal industry, they just try to work within it. And no, I disagree with you, Aaron's actions strike me as extreme and out of the ordinary.
  - colin_jack 14y ago
    "If Aaron had distributed them he might have damaged around a thousand different institutions involved in an important segment of the knowledge and innovation industry" I know there is his manifesto from a couple of years ago but we can't be sure what he was going to do with them.
Peaker 14y ago
Did he actually distribute anything?
jmilloy 14y ago
Now I'm on the lookout! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066721 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066721
jlgreco 14y ago
> threatening the business model of JSTOR I keep on hearing this, and it continues to make no sense to me, so forgive me for reposting one of previous posts (s/commercial value/business model/ if it helps): It seems implausible to me that publishing the contents of JSTOR in such a way would actually destroy any substantial amount of JSTOR's value. What university would actually drop their JSTOR subscription in favour of a bunch of unlicensed PDFs they torrented? JSTOR, in addition to keeping you on the right side of copyright law, gives you all their systems for querying their data, and keeps itself up to date. Maybe a university in a developing country would drop their subscription, but any in the US? I find it unlikely. Such a torrent would be far more useful to an individual who didn't have access to an organization that subscribed. However it seems these pay-per-download fees only account for a fraction of a percent of JSTOR's operating budget (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064408 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064408). So it looks like there is some feasible harm there, but by no means destroyed commercial value.

jacquesm 14y ago

> illegally distributing protected content Aaron never did that. He may have been planning that but nobody can say this for a fact.

Vivtek 14y ago
Like Philip Greenspun says, for all we know he wanted to do metaanalysis. There's no evidence at all he planned to distribute the files.
RandomComment 14y ago
Really? Not sure if it is just me but i found the JSTOR.torrent years ago and I always assumed it was from Aaron, the file was big like 35gb, I know there is another branded Aaron torrent floating around somehwere Ah worked it out, someguy did it a while ago, http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosoph... and released his version as a tribute to Aaron. Mystery solved.

ghshephard 14y ago

JSTOR wanted nothing to do with this case [Edit: they are a not-for-profit. Note that it's "http://www.jstor.org/ http://www.jstor.org/ not jstor.com.] JSTOR indicated that they had settled everything the needed to settle privately with Aaron. This was all on MIT and the Prosecution.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what the precedent is or what is reasonable when an affected party does not wish for charges to be pressed.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

One, two, a million, four million, what difference does it actually make? The crime was violating the terms, it isn't relevant where the EOF bit was transmitted. If you made the same files half as big he would have "stolen" twice as many files, or twice as big then he would have done half the crime by your logic. He never distributed anything. No clue where you got that from? Additionally "threatening a business model" within its self isn't a crime. In fact one might argue that it is a very good thing. Monopolies have often fallen to disruptive technologies, should we go arrest the people behind VoIP because they went after the telecos? Or the inventors of the printing press because they put scribes out of business? Or the inventor of the light-bulb because nobody had to light all of those candles each night? The only "crime" here was violating terms. For that they want to hit him with between six months and thirty five years of jail (plus costs, fines, and a criminal record). If this same over-reaction was applied to all terms violators we would have half the country in jail right now.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
It makes a big difference. Four million is apparently the majority of JSTOR's database. Keep in mind that JSTOR doesn't own those articles, it just arranges approved access to paying institutions on behalf of the various journals which do own the articles. If Aaron had distributed them he might have damaged around a thousand different institutions involved in an important segment of the knowledge and innovation industry. You can argue that that industry should change but I am not sure I can agree that a brute force assault is a good way to create constructive change, especially in a relatively fragile and cash-strapped field like academia. Anyway, I've used JSTOR a lot as a university student. It's a really good service. They don't create the economics of the journal industry, they just try to work within it. And no, I disagree with you, Aaron's actions strike me as extreme and out of the ordinary.
- colin_jack 14y ago
  "If Aaron had distributed them he might have damaged around a thousand different institutions involved in an important segment of the knowledge and innovation industry" I know there is his manifesto from a couple of years ago but we can't be sure what he was going to do with them.

Peaker 14y ago

Did he actually distribute anything?

jmilloy 14y ago

Now I'm on the lookout! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066721 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5066721

jlgreco 14y ago

> threatening the business model of JSTOR I keep on hearing this, and it continues to make no sense to me, so forgive me for reposting one of previous posts (s/commercial value/business model/ if it helps): It seems implausible to me that publishing the contents of JSTOR in such a way would actually destroy any substantial amount of JSTOR's value. What university would actually drop their JSTOR subscription in favour of a bunch of unlicensed PDFs they torrented? JSTOR, in addition to keeping you on the right side of copyright law, gives you all their systems for querying their data, and keeps itself up to date. Maybe a university in a developing country would drop their subscription, but any in the US? I find it unlikely. Such a torrent would be far more useful to an individual who didn't have access to an organization that subscribed. However it seems these pay-per-download fees only account for a fraction of a percent of JSTOR's operating budget (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064408 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064408). So it looks like there is some feasible harm there, but by no means destroyed commercial value.