As N.C. State students, we have access to academic journals and databases such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science and JSTOR through our libraries. Because we are so privileged, it may be hard to imagine that some people actually want to read The Quarterly Journal of Speech for reasons that are not “I have to write a research paper.”
The Jan. 11 death of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz has brought awareness to the open access movement, which advocates for unrestricted access to peer-reviewed research online. The 26-year-old faced up to 35 years in prison for allegedly gaining access to millions of academic articles through the academic database JSTOR.
His family said his apparent suicide was “the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.” Many people, including Danah Boyd of Wired feel as though federal agents brought Swartz to trial simply to make an example of him.
Though JSTOR identifies itself as a not-for-profit service, the company still needs money. Spokeswoman Heidi McGregor described it as “incredibly difficult and expensive work. You have to source the publications. It also means going out and licensing and tracking down the copyright holders for all these things, and getting them to agree to give you the rights to bring the stuff online and who you can make it accessible to and doing that in a way they find conducive with their own objectives.”
So learning requires money, and earning money requires success and success requires knowledge. This cycle led Swartz to write his “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” in 2008 which stated, “Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves … We need to take information, where it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.”
Ideally, academic journals should be open to the public, seeing as much of the research within the journals is funded by taxpayer revenue. Realistically, this is just not possible due to the fact that academic databases, like JSTOR, require some revenue to review and publish the academic articles. Although the idea of the open access movement is farfetched in today’s society, Aaron Swartz created awareness for a movement that, if the logistics are worked out, could potentially increase the intelligence of people worldwide.
In July 2011, U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said, “Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away.” I would disagree.
What Swartz stole was much more valuable than any material item one could have stolen. However, it is made clear in his “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” that he stole for no personal gain, for no juvenile thrill-seeking. He stole to spread knowledge, and seeing as we attend a research university, it would be hypocritical of us to propose that this objective is not good-natured.
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