Allaxys Communications --- Transponder V --- Allaxys Forum 1
Aktuell im WWW => Webwanderers illustres Kabinett: Fundstuecke, Raritaeten und Exoten => Topic started by: Thymian on October 03, 2013, 03:46:24 PM
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MOTHER JONES
October 3, 2013
THIS WEEK'S MUST-READ
Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.)
On a frigid day in January 2011, a surveillance camera captured footage of Aaron Swartz sneaking into a wiring closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the previous several months, Swartz-internet prodigy, RSS co-inventor, Reddit co-creator, and a fellow at the Center for Ethics at Harvard-had stolen nearly 5 million academic articles.
Swartz had intended to place the pilfered papers on file-sharing networks, free for the taking. Instead, he was arrested and charged with multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Facing decades in federal prison, the 26-year-old, who'd struggled with depression for years, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment in January.
In the days following the suicide, commentators angrily pointed fingers at federal prosecutors and MIT for pursuing Swartz. But Michael Eisen, a respected fruit fly geneticist at the University of California-Berkeley, reserved a portion of the blame for his peers. Noting how sympathetic scientists had memorialized Swartz by posting free copies of their articles online, he wrote on his popular blog,
"It is a tragic irony that the only reason Swartz had to break the law to fulfill his quest to liberate human knowledge was that the same academic community that rose up to support his cause after he died had routinely betrayed it while he was alive."
[READ MORE]
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[READ MORE]:
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/09/michael-eisen-plos-open-access-aaron-swartz