The death of the internet activist Aaron Swartz at the age of 26 has rightly evoked tributes to his creativity and selflessness. Swartz, who faced jail for illegally downloading millions of academic papers from an electronic library, committed suicide last week.
Five years ago, Swartz signed a “guerrilla open access manifesto” in which he complained of “the world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage” being “digitised and locked up by a handful of private corporations” such as Reed Elsevier. He advised computer hackers to “take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world”.
In 2010, he disguised his identity and exploited the electronic network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to download most of the database of Jstor, a non-profit group that digitises academic journals and articles. He did not share or sell the material – he later handed it back – but prosecutors took the manifesto seriously and charged him with fraud.