Man charged with MIT break-in, theft of four million documents

By adamg on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 1:30pm

The Times reports Aaron Swartz, 24, was indicted today on charged he broke into an MIT wiring closet - physically breaking in, with his own hands - then using a network connection there to grab copies of documents from JSTOR, which sells online access to academic publications.

Swartz is a co-founder of Reddit, a geeky social network with an active Boston community.

Innocent, etc.

Neighborhoods:

Topics:

Free tagging:

Ad:

Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Just to be fair

By Kaz on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 2:24pm.

The press likes calling him "a co-founder" but Alexis (one of the 2 actual co-founders) has pointed out before that he formed Reddit with Steve. Then they bought Aaron's company, infogami, and that's when he joined Reddit (already founded).

If you ask Aaron or the press, he's a co-founder of Reddit. If you ask Alexis or Steve, he's not...also, he hasn't been a part of Reddit for some time now because they fired him.

Downloading like a boss when a wild MIT cop appeared

By Lanny Budd on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 2:56pm.

I feel a rage comic coming.

BPL?

By Lunchbox on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 3:20pm.

I'm pretty sure anyone with a Boston Public Library card can access JSTOR for free

http://ezproxy.bpl.org/login?url=http://www.jstor....

Sooo, what was this guy stealing? Why? Why break into MIT to get something you can DL for free from home??

Maybe because MIT stuff tends

By anon on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 3:22pm.

Maybe because MIT stuff tends to work. When has Boston done anything that worked well?

Through BPL you can access

By NotWhitey on Tue, 07/19/2011 - 4:01pm.

Through BPL you can access one article at a time. I imagine he was doing a dump of the entire archive.

yeah, he was probably trying

By Kathode on Wed, 07/20/2011 - 9:43am.

to get the whole archive. But if he had some position at Harvard, why couldn't he use Harvard's resources which he had access to, to do the same thing?

Doot..doot...doo-doo...

By Kaz on Wed, 07/20/2011 - 10:37am.

Because sitting in your office singing the theme song to Mission Impossible while you download the files you want is a sign of madness. Singing it while you break into MIT using a bike helmet for a mask under the name Gary Host (G. Host...ghost...) is a sign of being a badass.