But you should totally sign their petition.
As if being run by grifter Adam Green (to whom you should totally send three dollars, by the way) isn’t enough to stain PCCC and Bold Progressives’s reputation, PCCC’s co-founder Aaron Swartz was indicted for wire and computer fraud today.
From AP,
A Harvard University fellow who was studying ethics was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles.
Aaron Swartz, 24, of Cambridge, was accused of stealing the documents from JSTOR, a popular research subscription service that offers digitized copies of more than 1,000 academic journals and documents, some dating back to the 17th century.
In an indictment released Tuesday, prosecutors say Swartz stole 4.8 million articles between September 2010 and January after breaking into a computer wiring closet on MIT’s campus. Swartz, a student at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, downloaded so many documents during one October day that some of JSTOR’s computer servers crashed, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors say Swartz intended to distribute the articles on file-sharing websites.
Swartz turned himself in Tuesday and was arraigned in U.S. District Court, where he pleaded not guilty to charges including wire fraud, computer fraud and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer. He was released on $100,000 unsecured bond and faces up to 35 years in prison, if convicted.
[snip]
Swartz is an online activist who founded the website Demand Progress, which says it “works to win progressive policy changes for ordinary people.”The site describes Swartz as “the author of numerous articles on a variety of topics, especially the corrupting influence of big money on institutions including nonprofits, the media, politics, and public opinion.” It said he and another researcher once downloaded and analyzed more than 440,000 law review articles to determine their funding sources.
Demand Progress’s executive director David Segal said on the website that the charges against Swartz don’t make sense.
“It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library,” he said.
A Harvard spokesman said Swartz was placed on leave from a 10-month fellowship after the university learned about the investigation. He said the fellowship ended last month.
Swartz had legitimate access to JSTOR through Harvard, but the company has usage restrictions that would have prevented such colossal downloads.
The nonprofit JSTOR, founded in 1995, enables libraries to save space, time and labor by digitally storing centuries worth of academic journals. Its oldest publication is a Proceedings of the Royal Society of London from 1665.
Its annual subscription fees can cost a large research university as much as $50,000.
According to the indictment, Swartz connected a laptop to MIT’s system in September 2010 through a basement network wiring closet and registered as a guest under the fictitious name, Gary Host, in which the first initial and last name spell “ghost.” He then used a software program to “rapidly download at extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR,” according to the indictment.
In the following months, MIT and JSTOR tried to block the recurring and massive downloads, on occasion denying all MIT users access to JSTOR. But Swartz allegedly got around it, in part, by disguising the computer source of the demands for data.
In November and December, Swartz allegedly made 2 million downloads from JSTOR, 100 times the number made during the same period by all legitimate JSTOR users at MIT.
The indictment also alleges that on Jan. 6, Swartz went to the wiring closet to remove the laptop, attempting to shield his identity by holding a bike helmet in front of his face and seeing his way through its ventilation holes. It said that he fled when MIT police tried to question him that day.
An MIT spokeswoman said the school had no comment on the apparent breach.
McGregor said JSTOR recognizes it’s very difficult for any institution at any level to protect its data.
“Hacking is rampant,” she said. “Protecting systems is a huge challenge right now for any industry, and in the academic space it’s especially challenging because we all want to be as open as we can and have policies that promote use.”
I’m stunned, and don’t even know what else to say. Just…dayum! grifters gonna grift!
Also, too, I might be having a schadenfreudorgasm. I can’t really tell. I’m just sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
[Here's Reddit disputing the original version of the New York Times which identified Swartz as a co-founder of Reddit.]
[image via New York Times]
**** Edited to correct description of charges — “Mail Fraud” to “Wire and Computer Fraud.” [8:20 pm]
Wish I could come up with something wittier to say, than BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Maybe Michael Snook will say that it’s a misunderstanding and ask what Obama could do to make me want to support backwater Congressional candidates instead of Obama.
Nah, he’s high on his grifter salary and delusional.
Wait, but why is that mail fraud? Doesn’t the article say wire fraud? (And what, may I ask, is wire fraud?)
Also, and not unrelated: What the hell? Whyyyyyyy?
I think wire and mail fraud may be closely related in the law, or even the same law. In any case, it is theft, not only of materials, but bandwidth and service.
Wow, incredible. Just incredible.
Oh noes! It is so incredible.
sherrifffruitfly, I’m gonna see your BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! and raise you a HAHAHA HOHOHO HEEHEEHEE HAAHAAAAAAAAAH!!!
Poor Adam. I am so deeply sorry. BS
I changed the heading from mail to wire and computer fraud.
What they’re doing to poor Aaron Swartz? WORSE THAN SELMA!!!!
BRAVA!!!
As a free information radical, there’s a part of me that wants to have millions of academic journal articles stolen and uploaded onto the internet for anyone and everyone to read. Anonymous, piratebay, that sort of stuff. I just don’t believe in the ownership of information. It’s a lot more complicated than just that, I don’t completely reject the concept of copyright, it’s just outdated in the digital age.
Anyway, that said, if you’re going to put yourself out there as a “leader” of people and political change, you have to stay CLEAN or you undermine all you are working for. It means no fucking around, no drugs, no graft, nothing that can impugn your moral character and make those who share your beliefs embarrassed of you.
So, I’d never heard of this dude before today, but now I think he’s an asshat. Probably not how he’d wanted to get famous. And that’s the point.
The words that stuck out for me were that he is “pursuing a degree in ethics.” If this is the case, he should have been compelled to follow the established rules on retrieving information from the JSTOR database. I also think that one who presents him/herself as a “leader” should keep one’s nose clean of all corruption.
Is that some kind of joke?
As though it’s somehow incompatible with any coherent ethics to side with the public good of free information over the private good of copyright holders.
Was it unethical for Google back in the day to be scanning restricted-access news sites and publishing their headlines and snippets of body text in its news search engine? Rupert Murdoch certainly thought so. I’m betting you didn’t.
Anyone who’s tried to get their hands on journal articles, say, when living in a rural area and unaffiliated to an institution with database subscriptions, can vouch for just how obnoxious (nevermind how expensive) these restrictions can be.
This isn’t child pornography or voter database fraud, for goodness’ sake.
Johnny,
Apparently you don’t grasp the concept of the difference between “I need a few articles” and “I’m downloading the entire database.” What he did, besides taking something that cost money to create and maintain without paying for it, was to create a situation that denied it to others who were paying for it.
That he went around the restrictions – purposely, from all appearances – to do this, and made efforts to cover his tracks shows that he knew he was in the wrong.
Clearly.
Without a free database, people who don’t have the cash or the institutional credentials can’t get the few articles that they need. The question is whether the hack is right or wrong. The question is whether the social benefit of the company’s aggregation of these journals outweighs the costs imposed by limited access. A broader view would try to determine how we might publish peer-reviewed articles and make them universally accessible free of charge. Can it be done without a super-expensive subscription model like this? I don’t know. He seems to think so.
But that’s not what you are talking about. You’ve decided that because this hack might have been illegal or at least a violation of his network privileges at a private institution (and he seems to think so as well, given his concealment), it was necessarily unethical. Which is an absurd position.
It was not only unethical, it was illegal. Maybe you didn’t get the point. His actions caused servers to go down, and created as situation where an entire university’s users could not access that database. I used to be a sysadmin, and if someone had caused something like that to one of my servers, I would have physically harmed them. You’re talking about a lot of time (which costs money) in getting them back up and in diagnosing what went wrong.
You also seem to miss the point that he had legitimate access to the database for his particular use, but there were limits placed on the amount of use. That’s standard, since there are bandwidth and server restraints in order to assure that everyone can use it.
Now, from a straight-up research standpoint, I fail to see how downloading the entire database constitutes “legitimate use” or fulfills a “need.” I used massive databases in the past – including MedLine – and most of that was searching for a specific set of articles. I neither needed nor wanted the entire data set. So he was doing it “because he could,” not because of any particular need. If he was trying to make a point, well, then he has to be willing to pay that price for that.
Je.sus.
1. Its legal status does not bear directly on its ethical status.
2. I’m not saying he did it for himself.
3. Say the servers went down at one institution for a full week, and he got everything off of them then posted it online, for free, forever. If you think universal access to information is important, then you might be inclined to see that as a reasonable trade-off.
4. I don’t accept the premise that someone has to go to prison in order for civil disobedience to be legitimate. If it’s a good cause and you can achieve it by breaking the rules and not getting caught, one would think that would be a preferable outcome. Certainly they must know that it’s going to happen but they don’t have to jump for joy about it. And those who lecture that such protestors have to be willing to go to prison for their beliefs are giving their tacit support to the laws that put them there [that's my included response to Alan, then].
Hacking is ethical, then?
This man’s tax evasion proves him to be a scurrilous cheat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_david_thoreau
Dear johnny,
You appear to be making the case that what Swartz did was an act of civil disobedience.
Here’s the deal.
Explicit in the conduct of an act of civil disobedience is the possibility that you may face legal consequences for your actions. Thoreau got that: Rosa Parks got that: MLK, you’ll recall, wrote a letter from the Birmingham JAIL. If Mr. Swartz wants to join the pantheon of brave practioners of civil disobedience, he will have to accept the consequences.
Obviously, NONE of us are surprised.
And, I’ll raise everyone’s BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH with
a BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA …
Yes.We.Can. … DO.More.Together!
Based on what I’ve read on Reddit, this guy is a huge idiot who’s had this coming for a long time.
To hear Johnny tell it, if you are poor and/or rural, you deserve to have access to these items.
Considering the cost involved by the university, for computer databases, curation and care, and many other costs, this is not only a matter of information. The people at the University don’t work for free, and the items are their property.
If we should all just get what we need based on if it’s the right thing to do, or because “we should have access”, then I want to run down and get a new Buick, because I need it to drive 140 miles round trip to the doctor’s office.
This is theft, and fraud, and it is illegal to do this for several good reasons. All should have access, but if that is not feasible, the answer is not to steal them and make your own library. Theft, not liberation.
Theft, not progressivism.
Hate to break it to Johnny, but here in the boonies, which is where I live, we have things like libraries. They give us free access to the Internet and we can get all sorts of books and articles through them. No need to hack into someone’s system, I just have to put a request in through my local librarian. Tsk.
Information may “want to be free,” but the people at JSTOR (which I understand is a nonprofit) who put the time in to scan those journals and keep the servers up for the benefit of scholars and other users don’t have free housing, food, and other necessities provided to them as compensation for their efforts. And I agree that if one is going to position oneself as a practitioner of civil disobedience in the Thoreau model, then one should accept the legal consequences.
Exactly. It cost money to create that database, scanning in the journals and developing the query system. It costs money to keep it up. Servers are not cheap. Bandwidth costs money. Computer techs cost money. All of which is a “non-free” overhead which goes along with this.
And if I’m reading the article correctly, his antics made it impossible for other users at MIT to access the database at times. But hey, why should those bourgeois assholes want to do their work in a timely fashion when there’s a REVOLUTION going on, MAN? Clearly, they do not clear the bar for those “ordinary people” that Demand Progress represents.
Seriously, if the dude wants to have free information, let HIM do the mothereffing work of finding the journals, cataloging them, scanning them, maintaining the database, etc. He can set up his own free alternative to JSTOR if that is the goal.
“Swartz, a student at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics…”
I think I just had an irony embolism.
Anyone notice how this has gotten exactly zero play at Kos and the other main liberal websites?
“Say the servers went down at one institution for a full week, and he got everything off of them then posted it online, for free, forever. If you think universal access to information is important, then you might be inclined to see that as a reasonable trade-off.”
If you think universal access to information is important, then you might be inclined to collect it, catalog it, scan it, and create the infrastructure to disseminate it yourself or with a collective of like-minded individuals before you rip off people who put in all the hard work. I don’t know what JSTOR pays, but if its salaries are in line with most nonprofits, no one is getting rich over there for the services they render. Not all “institutions” are Big Bad Corporate Meanies Out to Screw the Little Guy — they have reasonable costs that they need to meet, including paying living wages to the people who do the work (and living wages are a good thing, yes?)
As someone else noted, what he’s done isn’t too different than somebody ripping off the co-op grocery down the street in order to make a donation to Food Not Bombs.
And I think putting him in jail would be a ridiculous outcome — but I too am tired of people being shocked to discover that there are civil penalties inherent in civil disobedience. Indeed, the point of going to jail for your beliefs is to give even more credence and attention to your cause. It’s why the early suffragists were willing to be arrested and force-fed, for one example.
Right on, Kerry. I am flummoxed that all the ‘power to the people’ guys are such lazy glibertarian assholes. Information should be free? In what universe? As Robert said below, actual people put lots of time and energy and effort into creating this content. In the real world, people get paid for doing this kind of shit. As a writer, I would be furious if someone stole my work or used it without clearance from me.
This is just bush-league bullshittery.
IPR is a big button issue for me. Anyone who believes that content creators deserve no compensation or protection for their work have pretty clearly never had their pockets hurt by thievery. If you want access to the information, you do not steal it. Period. The same way you don’t rob a bank if you want money and you don’t murder a coworker if you want to decrease competition for a promotion.
Where is the ethics in saying that all writers deserve to have their work given away for free to anyone who asks, preventing them from earning a living from their skill? Would you like someone to come to your job and say you’re working for free for the rest of your life because your job is now owned by the public? It’s the same thing.
From a tweet by Shoq this morning:
http://soldoutsandsellouts.net/2011/07/03/pccc-rips-off-colbertsuper-pac/
Yea he was the co-founder of Reddit, not PCCC. The co -founders of PCCC were Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor? Doesnt make what he did, right, but it seems the facts are a little off here