The 2-step shuffle is yours. If Swartz's material had been released, J Random Hacker, who simply wouldn't have read any of the JSTOR papers before, would now r

The 2-step shuffle is yours. If Swartz's material had been released, J Random Hacker, who simply wouldn't have read any of the JSTOR papers before, would now read them. MIT, on the other hand, would still pay for them. Though I can see how Podunk Community College in ThirdWorldistan might not pay for it. The same way that you can get pirate Windows now, and some 15 year old kid in Thailand does. But Goldman Sachs still pays for a license. But some dodgy outfit in Beijing might not. The principle here is not a legal principle, it is an economic principle. It is called loss of earnings. Look it up. Instead of whinging that Swartz was going to destroy a $50 Million business, admit that the loss of earnings he would have caused would have been ZERO. More disturbing than your ignorance of Econ101 is how you are fixating on the cost of Swartz's "crime", excluding the wider social aspects including the deadweight loss imposed on society as a result of copyright lobbying. It's like a hobbit-sized version of somebody complaining about how the cotton industry would shrink - the horrors! - if we were to stop slavery.