[livius]

In the fall of 2010, Swartz downloaded millions of academic journal articles from the nonprofit online database JSTOR, which provides such articles free of charge to students and researchers

He may not have been to most people's taste here on FR, but the Feds were after him and he was facing decades in prison for "copyright violation" which consisted of downloading obscure content from inaccessible academic journals that nobody would pay for anyway and whose writers probably would have been glad of a bigger audience.

JSTOR is a horrible monopoly that has completely locked up academic journals and indeed many other sources. JSTOR is NOT free, and I don't know where the idiot writer got this impression. They charge something like $25 for an article from an otherwise unread academic journal. The money doesn't go to the authors, but to whoever runs JSTOR.

It's "free" if you're a student in an academic institution whose library has paid a fortune to subscribe to the service, but you're certainly paying in other ways.

I'd like to know who owns JSTOR. Al Gore, perhaps? It's obviously some group who is a friend of Bambi.

[Verginius Rufus]

If you are a faculty member at a college with a poor library, JSTOR can be very valuable--but it's sort of hit-and-miss as far as which journals are included and the last few years are not free. If you are a student at such a place, it can be helpful...but many students seem to take whatever pops up first rather than sorting out what is actually of value.

For those not associated with a college or university I'm sure your comments are largely correct--except that not ALL of the material is obscure or of no interest.