Rohan Gulati ’14: Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit, a developer of RSS feeds, and activist, galvanized the tech community to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). His tragic suicide on January 11th calls into serious question the lengths that prosecutors took against him, the arcane nature of laws surrounding computers and copyright, and most importantly, the absurdity of academic paywalls.
Over three-months, Swartz accessed the popular digital library JSTOR and downloaded millions of articles by connecting his computer directly to the MIT network in a restricted closet. Interestingly, the apparent victim of this crime, JSTOR, did not pursue charges after Swartz agreed to hand over his hard drive and ensure that the material had not been distributed, transferred, or copied.
However, prosecutors Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann charged Swartz under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for unlawful and unauthorized access to MIT’s computers, a felony offense. They zealously increased the number of charges from four to thirteen, one for each “unauthorized” access.
The best deal the prosecutors offered Swartz required him to plead guilty to all thirteen charges, which would entail a minimum of six months of jail time. If he didn’t accept that, he would have had to face a lengthy trial and if convicted, up to 35 years in jail.
Ortiz and Heymann ruthlessly pursued this case, insinuating that Swartz, who had dedicated his life towards the public good, was somehow motivated financially by downloading articles to which he had legal access. Their actions were not motivated by some sense of justice; rather, they were brought about by their desire to secure a harsh conviction, and thus further their careers.
The CFAA, passed in 1984, is an outdated and broad law that prohibits “unauthorized” access to a computer. Unfortunately, the concept of authorization is rather vague. According to Alex Stamos, an expert witness who testified at Swartz’s trial, “the JSTOR website allowed an unlimited of downloads by anybody on MIT’s 18.x Class-A network,” which is what Swartz was using at the time. MIT had a notoriously lax network policy of which Swartz took advantage; his actions did not merit such a severe punishment.
In addition, the closet at MIT that Swartz accessed was unlocked – a homeless man was using it to store his belongings. The CFAA treats all unauthorized access the same; it does not differentiate based on intent.
As such, someone trying to hack into a bank’s database and someone accessing scholarly articles are treated the exact same way. This law must be amended to account for the varying degrees of what constitutes unauthorized access.
Swartz was most likely downloading millions of articles from JSTOR because he wanted to give the general public access to information. When a subscription is purchased on JSTOR to articles, none of that money goes towards those who published or reviewed those same articles.
Instead, the database makes all of the money. These expensive paywalls prevent the free flow of information and thus stifle intellectual growth. Furthermore, articles “protected” by subscription databases have limited exposure; not as many scholars can read those articles. Swartz called this the “private theft of public culture.”
The only reason scholars still attempt to get their work published on a database like JSTOR is for the prestige. Universities should finish Swartz’s task and work towards freeing information from academic paywalls. This would not only save an estimated more than $10 billion dollars, but also achieve the laudable goal of democratizing information.
Examining the role of prosecutorial overreach in this case, changing the unspecific language of the CFAA, and granting the public access to academic articles would serve to honor Aaron Swartz, an individual who made it his priority to help the general public, no matter what the cost.

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