Seems like you might be somewhat confused on who are the communists, and who was attempting to promote intellectual property rights in this case.
Aaron Swartz, JSTOR, academic publication, and the public good.
Aaron Swartz was a Harvard University student who used his computer skills to collect a large number of scientific journal articles from JSTOR, the institution which controls the publication and release of most academic journals and which is also trying to achieve control of many historical publications. Many of those publications were scanned in the Google activity which is now stalled in litigation; I have seen no criminal charges brought by the Obama Department of Justice against the operatives who did the Google scans.
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Swartz had downloaded some 5 million academic journal articles. His contention was that
JSTOR collected money for access to academic journal content, but did not pay the authors or copyright holders, and made it prohibitively expensive for millions of potential readers to access results of publicly financed research. JSTOR is a non-profit corporation.
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Swartz’s death will undoubtedly spark new debates on intellectual property and the purpose of copyright. In particular, aggressive copyright protection of articles describing and reporting scientific activities largely funded by public or tax exempt sources, may not serve the constitutional purpose of copyright law:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Just because a thief steals something that you also think ought to be free, doesn’t mean he’s on your side, even if you happen to be both right in this particular case. We are not discussing intellectual property rights, we are discussing the man’s political views, which we understand (perhaps incorrectly) to have been radically Left. Read his blog which is still up. Here’s a lovely piece on Bush: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001119