COMM 352 - Blog #1 - Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz was a co-developer of RSS and a co-founder of Reddit; he helped "lead a campaign to defeat a law [SOPA] that would have made it easier to shut down websites accused of violating copyright protections"; and was also an advocate of free information.  It was because of his advocacy that, according to an article from the Associated Press, "he illegally gained access to millions of academic articles through the academic database JSTOR. He allegedly hid a computer in a computer utility closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloaded the articles before being caught by campus and local police in 2011" (Wagner & Dobnik, 2013). While I understand how Aaron Swartz's actions could be considered illegal by some, I do not agree that he should have been pursued as heavily and with as much intimidation.  Because he was doing this for the people and he had no malicious intent when doing this, I do not agree with the treatment of Aaron Swartz before his suicide and I don't agree that the same laws used "to go after digital bank robbers" should be the same laws used to prosecute people like Aaron Swartz.  In fact, I do agree that advocates like him should " be protected from the full force of laws used to prosecute thieves and gangsters" (Wagner & Dobnik, 2013).  The lack of accounting for the variety of different technological "crimes" within our legal system is clearly a problem, the case of Aaron Swartz is just one example, and this needs to change.