According to Ars Technica's interview with Swartz asking why he downloaded the JSTOR documents, he referenced his bio in the Demand Progress statement, which notes that "in conjunction with Shireen Barday, he downloaded and analyzed 441,170 law review articles to determine the source of their funding; the results were published in the Stanford Law Review. From 2010-11, he researched these topics as a Fellow at the Harvard Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption."
It found that there was extensive corruption in law journal publications which were often commissioned for specific upcoming cases.
That research work led to his position as Harvard Fellow continuing that specific work of analyzing large journal datasets to find corruption. That is why he downloaded the journals - to continue his research into analyzing large datasets to find connections that indicate corruption.
There can be no doubt that many people were unhappy about the corruption in the legal industry which he uncovered using his analysis methods. He was continuing that research on a broader scale, which he plainly indicates in his response to Ars Technica and is substantiated by his biographical, research and publication history.
As a Harvard Fellow, and as a MIT visitor, and as the son of a MIT employee visiting, he has the right to access those articles, and MIT paid for that access to JSTOR, which JSTOR had no legitimate right to withhold from a credentialed researcher with valid access. He only had to circumvent anything because JSTOR implemented access countermeasures which were contrary to their access agreement with MIT. His circumvention was only for the purpose of obtaining the access he was legally entitled to, and thus was valid.
The arguments that he was planning to redistribute articles are without merit and are nothing more than propaganda spread by the criminals at the Justice Department who targeted him for destruction. He was someone who had already revealed systematic corruption in their legal system and published about their corruption in Stanford Law Journal.
1. So I took a quick look at the study you cited. That article finds no such thing as "extensive corruption". It identifies a very real problem, in that many court decisions seem to indirectly rely on arguments made by non-peer reviewed "law review" articles published in venues with poor to no quality control. Some of these studies are funded by companies that have an interest in the results being in their favor, and thus present a vector for industry to subtly influence courts. It also highlights that courts are very aware of such influences, though they are imperfect in avoiding them.
But as far as the data goes, the study takes "punitive damages" as an example topic and finds, out of a sample set of thousands, only 14 potential culpable studies that were industry-funded. The author attempts to make a case that these studies were more influential than their numbers suggest, but the fact remains that they represent only about a couple of percent of the sample size.
At least as far as that study is concerned, it does highlight a real concern, but I could find no indication of "systematic" or "extensive", or indeed any real "corruption" in it.
2. Despite all the whitewashing folks try to do with respect to the Swartz, MIT, Harvard and access to JSTOR, it does not change the fact that he hid his face from the camera when sneaking into the closet where he hid his machine, and he ran from the authorities when they approached him. If he felt he truly was in the right, he did not need to act like a common criminal.
The belief that one is in the moral right does not imply the belief that one will not be punished for one's actions.
Trying to avoid being seen does not imply that one believes one's actions to be morally wrong. It may suggest that one is afraid of others knowing of one's actions.
In addition, one can be afraid of legal repercussions while believing that what one is doing is legal.
I don't know specifics about his actions, and you may have already taken these things into account, but I thought that these things were worth mentioning.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/reddit-founder-ar...
Here is the result of his research:
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-dama...
It found that there was extensive corruption in law journal publications which were often commissioned for specific upcoming cases.
That research work led to his position as Harvard Fellow continuing that specific work of analyzing large journal datasets to find corruption. That is why he downloaded the journals - to continue his research into analyzing large datasets to find connections that indicate corruption.
There can be no doubt that many people were unhappy about the corruption in the legal industry which he uncovered using his analysis methods. He was continuing that research on a broader scale, which he plainly indicates in his response to Ars Technica and is substantiated by his biographical, research and publication history.
As a Harvard Fellow, and as a MIT visitor, and as the son of a MIT employee visiting, he has the right to access those articles, and MIT paid for that access to JSTOR, which JSTOR had no legitimate right to withhold from a credentialed researcher with valid access. He only had to circumvent anything because JSTOR implemented access countermeasures which were contrary to their access agreement with MIT. His circumvention was only for the purpose of obtaining the access he was legally entitled to, and thus was valid.
The arguments that he was planning to redistribute articles are without merit and are nothing more than propaganda spread by the criminals at the Justice Department who targeted him for destruction. He was someone who had already revealed systematic corruption in their legal system and published about their corruption in Stanford Law Journal.