[RobertClark]

I feel no pity for him. He is being portrayed as some sort of hero. He is basically a communist who believed that if it exists everybody is entitled to it. So he stole millions of copyrighted research documents that cost many of millions of dollars to produce. MIT was hoping to recoup some of the cost by charging folks to get access to them. He was caught red-handed. Actually, not a bad outcome.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment, as I am very familiar with this case and the exploit he utilized to download the data from JSTOR.

Being that the overwhelming majority of the data and journals that he downloaded and intended to make available for public use were funded by grants from the government (ie taxpayers), would the rightful owner of said material not be the American public? Do you willingly give your tax funds to the government to utilize in proprietary research? Does that not pi$$ you off, as it does me?

[MestaMachine]

A LOT of people are jumping to a whole lot of unfounded conclusions here.
To ALL:
Familiarize yourself with this case the feds brought before you condemn this kid. HE fought them and he won. You don’t win with this administration. And if by some miracle you do, you will pay the heaviest price they can possibly extract from you.
Aaron Swartz spearheaded just such a miracle and the price was just too high for him to pay.
First of all, he was NOT, as they erroneously say, a ‘co-founder’ of reddit. We are being subjected to a torrent of misinformation designed to do what the government ALWAYS soes when it has overstepped, and that is to confound and confuse issues and bury the truth using its press footsoldiers.
LOOK for the truth. Aaron Swartz was as untypical as any genious ever was. Do not attempt to stick him into some neat little niche he where he does not belong.

[KevinB]

If the grants fully funded the research and production of the articles - no MIT resources were used and there was no expectation by the government of any repayment - my view could be different.