Aaron Swartz was 24 years old and already an internet legend. 🧑💻
He had helped create RSS at 14, participated in the birth of Reddit, and in 2010 climbed into an MIT wiring closet to connect a laptop using a false identity. His goal: to download nearly 70 GB of academic articles from JSTOR, almost 4,8 million documents paid for with public funds, so he could distribute them for free. The avalanche of downloads was so large that it crashed the servers.
He returned everything, promised not to disclose anything, and JSTOR agreed not to pursue the case. But federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz charged him anyway with wire fraud and computer fraud, with a possible sentence of up to 35 years in prison and 1 million dollars in fines. “Stealing is stealing”, she said. His friends compared the prosecution to imprisoning someone for taking too many books from a library.
The case never went to trial. Aaron Swartz died in January 2013, at the age of 26, leaving behind a story that continues to spark debate about access to knowledge and the limits of computer crime laws.