[microarchitect]

“This makes no sense,” said Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal; “it’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”

No it's not. It's like sneaking into the library at night and making photocopies of all the books. Then, upon getting caught, the perpetrator sneaks back into the library in a different disguise and continues to photocopy more books. Repeat this action of getting caught and sneaking back in a few more times and combine this with the fact that his downloading of documents affected JSTOR performance for other legitimate users of the archive and you get a sense of what he's really done.

How is this excusable?

I'm completely onboard with those who claim that we need some reform in scientific publishing, but Aaron's actions smack of low ethical standards to me, not to mention extremely poor judgement on his part.

EDIT: Hi downvoter! Can you please explain why you think I'm wrong?

[goombastic]

Not a downvoter, but the way governments are reacting to those demanding transparency is what I call draconian. This is no longer symmetric opposition, this is a way of terrorizing those who want a little more freedom. Faced with obstacles as the one Aaron faced, I would do the same. So sue me.

Disobedience is not the same as terrorism although they would like you to think so. Disproportionate punishments are what I term a terrorist act. Stop being such a conformist and stop using their language. Every time you test these boundaries and fight for it you will be fighting for your freedoms.

[microarchitect]

Fair enough. I agree with most of what you're saying here. I definitely believe that any punishment involving more than a fine and/or some community service would be disproportionate to the crime here.

What I didn't like was the statement portraying him as some kind of hero. I'm just pointing out that he's not. He didn't have a legal right to be using the documents, he shouldn't have been trying to download the documents using a guest account at MIT obtained by submitting false information, and he certainly shouldn't have tried to get back into the network after being banned multiple times.

If his goal was to put a lot of scientific papers into the public domain, I can think of many other ways he could have achieved this. So I'm also a bit puzzled by his approach here.

Stop being such a conformist and stop using their language.

This attack seems rather uncalled for.

Every time you test these boundaries and fight for it you will be fighting for your freedoms.

I can see where you're coming from on this, but I'm not entirely convinced that you're right.