#op even deleted the og post cuz it knows it was wrong but tumblr doesnt really delete things

[homo-house]

And I highly recommend actually reading primary sources instead of combing through wikipedia because literally half of what you said is factually wrong

JSTOR DID NOT HAVE SWARTZ ARRESTED

JSTOR DID NOT CALL THE COPS ON HIM NEITHER DID THEY ENCOURAGE MIT TO DO SO

THEY DID NOT "OVERREACT" TO A "BUMP" - He was downloading so much, so fast the requests were CLOGGING THEIR SERVERS and risking RENDERING THEM INCAPABLE OF OFFERING PROPER SERVICE

JSTOR DID NOT "DECIDE TO PUNISH HIM". THEY LITERALLY ONLY ASKED HE RETURNED THE DATA AND NEVER AT ANY POINT PRESSED ANY CHARGES. They literally dropped the matter entirely after he turned in the data and only cooperated with the prosecutors because they were subpoenaed

THERE WERE NO JSTOR CHARGES TO BE DROPPED IN THE FIRST PLACE

JSTOR DID NOT HAVE SWARTZ ARRESTED OR PRESS CHARGES

THIS IS LITERALLY ALL THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA'S FAULT The case is literally called "United States v. Swartz"

Please for the love of god Swartz is rightfully an icon and deserves to have his legacy respected and remembered and I am completely behind his good intentions but he did it in a way that not only caught JSTOR's attention incredibly fast but also put their infrastructure at risk of being rendered useless to other users which literally gave JSTOR no choice but to investigate? Had he literally put a throttle on the download/request speed it might've even gone unnoticed.

What you said about JSTOR and MIT collaborating and just calling it done???? THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENED????? THE INVESTIGATION WAS CONDUCTED INTERNALLY BY JSTOR AND THEY ONLY BROUGHT MIT IN BECAUSE THEY HAD REACHED THE END OF THEIR ROPE AND THEIR SERVERS CONTINUED TO BE STRAINED

You didn't even get the investigation part right they didn't "ask around" they set up a camera to find him out

I am not saying he deserved it, he did not!!!! This man should be alive and well and had a lot to contribute and I fully support the idea that knowledge be free and accessible and think the IP laws in place are bullshit and have to go down, but spreading misinformation and blaming innocent actors instead of THE REAL CULPRIT, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE PROSECUTORS ORTIZ AND HEYMANN. By not blaming the real culprits you are doing them a favor, but you will get absolutely nothing from blaming JSTOR???

ok so tumblr also really needs this reminder based on some posts ive seen around lately, the "babygirlification" of JSTOR is bad. like Bad Bad. did you all just collectively forget history? did you alll just forget they have blood on their hands? just because they publish science stuff in an ever so slightly more ethical way than springer and are a little silly on social media sometimes? JSTOR killed aaron swartz (wikipedia). in his fight for freedom of information he downloaded papers off of jstor (with acedemic access from MIT) to share and make freely accessible (as all information should be), for this he was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. he was facing up to 50 years in prison and a 1 million USD fee for a simple act of downloading files he lawfully had access to. with this court case the US government drove one of the most important online activists and programmers (he is behind so much stuff you all take for granted) into suicide in the name of JSTOR.

JSTOR isn't the cool girl on the block. this isnt a call to boycott them (though please learn how to use things such as sci-hub and fight for open science and freedom of information in general please <3), but please dont glorify them as some sort of cutesy platform.