Ethical Post SCAP

For this project I choose to write about the internet activist Aaron Swartz. The situation he was presented with started when he turned his attention to JSTOR, a digital library of academic articles. He devised a method of downloading large numbers of articles from JSTOR, using a computer hidden in a closet at MIT. The school eventually caught him red handed in the act when he came into the closet to change a hard drive. He was arrested in January 2011.

The claims on him were as follows: He was arraigned by the Court on two state charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. On November 17, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a Middlesex County Superior Court grand jury on state charges of breaking and entering with intent, grand larceny, and unauthorized access to a computer network.  On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines. By the nd of the case he had 13-count indictment and was facing prosecution for alleged computer crimes.

One argument was that no one actually knew what he intended to do with the JSTOR after he would have downloaded the catalog. Some think he was planning on releasing it to the public because he believed it should be free. Another argument is that there were not actually any set guidelines to follow back then for these types of crimes so he definitely was put into a loosing position. He was being overcharged for all of these crimes. The pressure of this case was so much for him that he hanged himself on January 11th 2013.

The prosecutors did offer Aaron a plea to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected that deal, opting instead for a trial in which prosecutors would have been forced to justify their pursuit of Swartz. This case was so unfair to him and the principle here is that if the government wants to take you down they can. Everything that happened in this case was not handled properly. It was only after his death that certain laws were revised that would have actually relieved  Aaron of 10 of his 13 counts  of felony.