[hobbyhacker]

I've read the piece carefully and the thing that stands out for me most is the bit about the data being 'property'.

It is argued that since JSTOR claims property rights with a tangential link to another case where someone downloaded a chunk of software that was in wide distribution and used that to their defense which was invalidated is reason enough to establish that this data was the property of JSTOR and that any unauthorized download is therefore a breach of the law.

This is interesting because as far as I can see the whole of Aaron's argument revolved around this data being public property all along by virtue of the research being publicly funded and the fact that many authors of these papers can't legally distribute their own work.

If the law can't distinguish between unjust claims of property and a complete lack of public interest on the one side and the good intentions of an individual on the other then you can stick to the 'letter of the law' but that means the law is no longer functional.

I also keep reading about 13 counts, and here there are only 4, is there any reason for the discrepancy or is this commentary based on the pre-September expansion of the charges?