[Nifster]

The yob (sorry prayers for his family) felt like the rules didn’t apply to him because he was special and had a wider vision. The guy was a thief and couldn’t understand that when you do the crime you will do the time.

He took a coward’s way out and has left the usual devastation in his wake

[kiryandil]

It's hilarious reading comments from FR n00bs who obviously know NOTHING about the early history of Free Republic.

Ignorance writ large.

[kroll]

He took a coward’s way out and has left the usual devastation in his wake

It's always endearing when keyboard warriors with zero knowledge have such strong and brutal comments. Devastation? Seriously? Nobody was hurt, he didn't sell the articles and nobody lost money. He was making a point and a legitimate one. Being in academia, the problem of whether or not journals should be so expensive (prohibitive for individuals) is an important one and discussed by every scientist/mathematician and academic I know. The recent disputes between the Nature publishing group (the premier journals in all of science) and many of the prominent american universities over massive costs are well documented.

This is Not an intellectual property issue. This is not the same as pharmaceutical companies being upended by cheap generic drugs. The scientific content in journals is Not intellectual property. The authors do not get paid, the referees do not get paid and their research funding is unrelated to the journals while the scientific editors are essentially volunteers. But still journals are amazingly expensive. Why? Many of the journals (even the non-profits) have amazingly high margins. Why? In the past they were printing costs and the like but now most of the downloads are online. And if you are thinking about maintaining server costs etc, remember the traffic on journal publications isn't exactly high so bandwidth costs are tiny.

Such a level of bitterness and anger regarding something you are completely unaware is pretty unfortunate.