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"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to

"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to biased results in research, particularly in the area of climate change." This is complete speculation. Why include this in the article other to sway a certain demographic to view you in a favorable light? I know the HN community treats him like some kind if freedom of information hero, but I don't. He illegally copied information that he didn't own..and then cracked when the authorities went after him. He made millions of dollars from Reddit, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had.

MBCook 12y ago
I've got to say I've never seen that theory before, and people seem to be calling it out in the NPR comments as baseless speculation as well. > [H]e should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had Sadly mental health doesn't work this way. Many people refuse to admit they may have a problem or to seek treatment for it. Of course we don't know how much of a role his (alleged?) mental health issues played in all of this.
- droithomme 12y ago
  According to Ars Technica's interview with Swartz asking why he downloaded the JSTOR documents, he referenced his bio in the Demand Progress statement, which notes that "in conjunction with Shireen Barday, he downloaded and analyzed 441,170 law review articles to determine the source of their funding; the results were published in the Stanford Law Review. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-downloads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar... Here is the result of his research: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-damages-remunerated-research-and-legal-profession http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-dama... It found that there was extensive corruption in law journal publications which were often commissioned for specific upcoming cases. That research work led to his position as Harvard Fellow continuing that specific work of analyzing large journal datasets to find corruption. That is why he downloaded the journals - to continue his research into analyzing large datasets to find connections that indicate corruption. There can be no doubt that many people were unhappy about the corruption in the legal industry which he uncovered using his analysis methods. He was continuing that research on a broader scale, which he plainly indicates in his response to Ars Technica and is substantiated by his biographical, research and publication history. As a Harvard Fellow, and as a MIT visitor, and as the son of a MIT employee visiting, he has the right to access those articles, and MIT paid for that access to JSTOR, which JSTOR had no legitimate right to withhold from a credentialed researcher with valid access. He only had to circumvent anything because JSTOR implemented access countermeasures which were contrary to their access agreement with MIT. His circumvention was only for the purpose of obtaining the access he was legally entitled to, and thus was valid. The arguments that he was planning to redistribute articles are without merit and are nothing more than propaganda spread by the criminals at the Justice Department who targeted him for destruction. He was someone who had already revealed systematic corruption in their legal system and published about their corruption in Stanford Law Journal.
  - throwawaykf05 12y ago
    1. So I took a quick look at the study you cited. That article finds no such thing as "extensive corruption". It identifies a very real problem, in that many court decisions seem to indirectly rely on arguments made by non-peer reviewed "law review" articles published in venues with poor to no quality control. Some of these studies are funded by companies that have an interest in the results being in their favor, and thus present a vector for industry to subtly influence courts. It also highlights that courts are very aware of such influences, though they are imperfect in avoiding them. But as far as the data goes, the study takes "punitive damages" as an example topic and finds, out of a sample set of thousands, only 14 potential culpable studies that were industry-funded. The author attempts to make a case that these studies were more influential than their numbers suggest, but the fact remains that they represent only about a couple of percent of the sample size. At least as far as that study is concerned, it does highlight a real concern, but I could find no indication of "systematic" or "extensive", or indeed any real "corruption" in it. 2. Despite all the whitewashing folks try to do with respect to the Swartz, MIT, Harvard and access to JSTOR, it does not change the fact that he hid his face from the camera when sneaking into the closet where he hid his machine, and he ran from the authorities when they approached him. If he felt he truly was in the right, he did not need to act like a common criminal.
    - drdeca 12y ago
      The belief that one is in the moral right does not imply the belief that one will not be punished for one's actions. Trying to avoid being seen does not imply that one believes one's actions to be morally wrong. It may suggest that one is afraid of others knowing of one's actions. In addition, one can be afraid of legal repercussions while believing that what one is doing is legal. I don't know specifics about his actions, and you may have already taken these things into account, but I thought that these things were worth mentioning.
DanBC 12y ago
> He made millions of dollars from Reddit, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had. Your comment is ignorant and stigmatising. Apply it to different illnesses: {Jobs} made millions of dollars from {Apple}, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any {cancer} that he had. Some mental health problems are resistant to treatment, especially when the person is being subject to immense amounts of stress.
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  Mental health isn't cancer. Many people were blaming our healthcare system (or lack thereof). I disagree.
  - tellarin 12y ago
    The point you seem not to get is not to compare health issues, but that people are not guilty of many diseases they might develop; and neither directly responsible for not getting better from most of them.
tptacek 12y ago
This comment would be much, much better without the last sentence. There's some validity to the argument about NPR speculating about his motives; there's significant countervailing evidence about that. But that doesn't make being sick his fault.
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  This was my opinion..and I was silenced as a result of it. I wish the progressives on HN were more about being open and free, rather than closed. If I say something that anyone here even remotely disagrees with, I am down voted. This is why people like me will stop coming here and eventually leave the HN community completely.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Ok then.
  - paulhauggis 12y ago
    his was my opinion..and I was silenced as a result of it. I wish the progressives on HN were more about being open and free, rather than closed. If I say something that anyone here even remotely disagrees with, I am down voted. This is why people like me will stop coming here and eventually leave the HN community completely. I will keep posting this until I get my point across.
    - industriousthou 12y ago
      Is this the part where you're being silenced?
    - AngrySkillzz 12y ago
      Don't leave eventually, leave now. Thanks. HN already has enough idiots who don't understand mental health.
      - dang 12y ago
pervycreeper 12y ago
>"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to biased results in research, particularly in the area of climate change." That does strike one as being a bit disingenuous and lawyerly. Allowing that his actions might have been for the purposes of liberating information already in the public domain does not make the fact of his prosecution any less unjust. Furthermore, it obscures the vial necessity of the cause that he was fighting for.

MBCook 12y ago

I've got to say I've never seen that theory before, and people seem to be calling it out in the NPR comments as baseless speculation as well. > [H]e should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had Sadly mental health doesn't work this way. Many people refuse to admit they may have a problem or to seek treatment for it. Of course we don't know how much of a role his (alleged?) mental health issues played in all of this.

droithomme 12y ago
According to Ars Technica's interview with Swartz asking why he downloaded the JSTOR documents, he referenced his bio in the Demand Progress statement, which notes that "in conjunction with Shireen Barday, he downloaded and analyzed 441,170 law review articles to determine the source of their funding; the results were published in the Stanford Law Review. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-arrested-for-excessive-jstor-downloads/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar... Here is the result of his research: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-damages-remunerated-research-and-legal-profession http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-dama... It found that there was extensive corruption in law journal publications which were often commissioned for specific upcoming cases. That research work led to his position as Harvard Fellow continuing that specific work of analyzing large journal datasets to find corruption. That is why he downloaded the journals - to continue his research into analyzing large datasets to find connections that indicate corruption. There can be no doubt that many people were unhappy about the corruption in the legal industry which he uncovered using his analysis methods. He was continuing that research on a broader scale, which he plainly indicates in his response to Ars Technica and is substantiated by his biographical, research and publication history. As a Harvard Fellow, and as a MIT visitor, and as the son of a MIT employee visiting, he has the right to access those articles, and MIT paid for that access to JSTOR, which JSTOR had no legitimate right to withhold from a credentialed researcher with valid access. He only had to circumvent anything because JSTOR implemented access countermeasures which were contrary to their access agreement with MIT. His circumvention was only for the purpose of obtaining the access he was legally entitled to, and thus was valid. The arguments that he was planning to redistribute articles are without merit and are nothing more than propaganda spread by the criminals at the Justice Department who targeted him for destruction. He was someone who had already revealed systematic corruption in their legal system and published about their corruption in Stanford Law Journal.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  1. So I took a quick look at the study you cited. That article finds no such thing as "extensive corruption". It identifies a very real problem, in that many court decisions seem to indirectly rely on arguments made by non-peer reviewed "law review" articles published in venues with poor to no quality control. Some of these studies are funded by companies that have an interest in the results being in their favor, and thus present a vector for industry to subtly influence courts. It also highlights that courts are very aware of such influences, though they are imperfect in avoiding them. But as far as the data goes, the study takes "punitive damages" as an example topic and finds, out of a sample set of thousands, only 14 potential culpable studies that were industry-funded. The author attempts to make a case that these studies were more influential than their numbers suggest, but the fact remains that they represent only about a couple of percent of the sample size. At least as far as that study is concerned, it does highlight a real concern, but I could find no indication of "systematic" or "extensive", or indeed any real "corruption" in it. 2. Despite all the whitewashing folks try to do with respect to the Swartz, MIT, Harvard and access to JSTOR, it does not change the fact that he hid his face from the camera when sneaking into the closet where he hid his machine, and he ran from the authorities when they approached him. If he felt he truly was in the right, he did not need to act like a common criminal.
  - drdeca 12y ago
    The belief that one is in the moral right does not imply the belief that one will not be punished for one's actions. Trying to avoid being seen does not imply that one believes one's actions to be morally wrong. It may suggest that one is afraid of others knowing of one's actions. In addition, one can be afraid of legal repercussions while believing that what one is doing is legal. I don't know specifics about his actions, and you may have already taken these things into account, but I thought that these things were worth mentioning.

DanBC 12y ago

> He made millions of dollars from Reddit, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any mental health issues he had. Your comment is ignorant and stigmatising. Apply it to different illnesses: {Jobs} made millions of dollars from {Apple}, he should have had plenty of money to take care of any {cancer} that he had. Some mental health problems are resistant to treatment, especially when the person is being subject to immense amounts of stress.

paulhauggis 12y ago
Mental health isn't cancer. Many people were blaming our healthcare system (or lack thereof). I disagree.
- tellarin 12y ago
  The point you seem not to get is not to compare health issues, but that people are not guilty of many diseases they might develop; and neither directly responsible for not getting better from most of them.

tptacek 12y ago

This comment would be much, much better without the last sentence. There's some validity to the argument about NPR speculating about his motives; there's significant countervailing evidence about that. But that doesn't make being sick his fault.

paulhauggis 12y ago
This was my opinion..and I was silenced as a result of it. I wish the progressives on HN were more about being open and free, rather than closed. If I say something that anyone here even remotely disagrees with, I am down voted. This is why people like me will stop coming here and eventually leave the HN community completely.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Ok then.
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  his was my opinion..and I was silenced as a result of it. I wish the progressives on HN were more about being open and free, rather than closed. If I say something that anyone here even remotely disagrees with, I am down voted. This is why people like me will stop coming here and eventually leave the HN community completely. I will keep posting this until I get my point across.
  - industriousthou 12y ago
    Is this the part where you're being silenced?
  - AngrySkillzz 12y ago
    Don't leave eventually, leave now. Thanks. HN already has enough idiots who don't understand mental health.
    - dang 12y ago

pervycreeper 12y ago

>"It's speculated that what he might have been doing is downloading these articles to analyze them for corporate funding — corruption, essentially — that led to biased results in research, particularly in the area of climate change." That does strike one as being a bit disingenuous and lawyerly. Allowing that his actions might have been for the purposes of liberating information already in the public domain does not make the fact of his prosecution any less unjust. Furthermore, it obscures the vial necessity of the cause that he was fighting for.