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Thursday, July 21, 2011
Bad Ideas
It turns out that it's not a good idea to break into MIT's computer system and download over 4 million JSTOR articles, even if one's intent is to research the sources of funding for the articles in question.Posted by Stuart Buck on July 21, 2011 at 12:45 PM | Permalink
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Comments
I wrote a post about this at Co-op:
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2011/07/two-stories-about-the-morality-of-copyright.html
Though I was more interested in how the media represented the event than in the substance of the charges. Re the latter, it's far from clear what Swartz' intent was. One theory is that he simply meant to do research, but another is that he intended to make the whole JSTOR archive available for free download. In any event, only two of the charges are fraud; I don't think all the others have the same kind of specific intent requirement.
Posted by: Dave | Jul 21, 2011 6:35:46 PM
Well, that much is evident. I'm curious whether you (or any of the contributors) have substantive thoughts on the charges here, though. If his intent was research, doesn't that mean he didn't have the specific intent to defraud that is an element of most of the crimes he's been charged with?
Posted by: Patrick | Jul 21, 2011 1:05:55 PM
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