Understanding the Complexities of Civil Disobedience for Cyberspace Protests in the Case of Aaron Swartz

In September 2012, United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz filed court documents in her prosecution of Aaron Swartz, which argued that Swartz's efforts to download academic articles from JSTOR, without JSTOR's consent, constituted a felony violation of federal laws. The facts of Aaron Swartz's prosecution are presented within the court documents. In brief, they state that while serving as a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics in 2010 and 2011 Aaron Swartz surreptitiously accessed the computer systems of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ("MIT") and downloaded millions of articles from JSTOR, a proprietary electronic database of academic periodicals, while eluding MIT and JSTOR efforts to locate and stop him. Swartz was ultimately apprehended by the MIT police and subsequently prosecuted by Ortiz, who eventually indicted him in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on 13 felony counts with a potential maximum penalty of 35 years. 1 The charges against Swartz accused him of violating federal laws on wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. 2 His case caught public attention, with an ensuing controversy over the nature of intellectual property and access to information that intensified when Ortiz proceeded with a criminal case against Swartz even after JSTOR declined to pursue its civil case against him. 3 Before his criminal case could proceed to trial, Swartz committed suicide in January 2013, after which the court dropped the prosecution.