The case I am going to be ethically analyzing is about the hack on JSTOR (a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources) which hacktivist Aaron Swartz did as an act of civil disobedience in order to raise awareness about the commercialization of Education and its negative effects in our societies. He was a prodigy programmer and political activist, who was involved in many innovative projects like Reddit, Creative Commons, web feed format RRS, the website framework web.py, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and many more important developments. The guardian describes him as “The internet activist who paid the ultimate price for his combination of genius and conscience”.
This a a very important case to analyze because it shows how we are currently living in a political system that has significantly inversed society values: economic values are first and moral values are last. My opinion after some research of different associated facts is under development but essentially I think that it was an unfair treatment and the authorities bullied a young genius (with a history of depression) whose only motive was to raise awareness about how the commercialization of Education has become a limitation to the development of imperative ideas that would help us attain social and scientific progress.
https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt
This is a great case! I'm glad that you found the GOAM--analyzing it is going to be a key part of your case. Because of the argument of the GOAM, I recommend looking at thinkers on civil disobedience (we read a few earlier this semester, like Rawls and King) to contextualize your argument.
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