(2011-07-19) Swartz Arrested Jstor Mit Article Spider

Aaron Swartz was arrested and indicted for downloading millions of academic articles from JSTOR via an MIT account. Has not never distributed those documents to anyone else.

See related history 2009-10-05-SwartzPacerInvestigation.

This triggered Greg Maxwell to distribute the old PhilosophicalTransactions of the Royal Society Of London. I've had these files for a long time, but I've been afraid that if I published them I would be subject to unjust legal harassment by those who profit from controlling access to these works. I now feel that I've been making the wrong decision.

Jul22: Andrew looks at JSTOR's finances.

Aug03 summary by MariaBustillos.

Sept'2011: JSTOR are making journal content on JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere, freely available to the public for reading and downloading. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals, representing approximately 6% of the total content on JSTOR.

Sept'2012: Whoever's pushing this case must really dislike Swartz and/or his activities. A "Superseding Indictment" (pdf) has been filed, raising the number of felony counts from four to thirteen. Seth Finkelstein at Infothought has a brief rundown of the new charges.

Jan09'2013: The archives of more than 1,200 journals are now available for limited free reading by the public, JSTOR announced today. Anyone can sign up for a JSTOR account and read up to three articles for free every two weeks.

Jan12'2013: 2013-01-12-SwartzSuicide