[Wintamute]

JSTOR's database is scholarly articles going back about 500 years. These papers were written not-for-profit for the public good by academics and then peer reviewed (for free) by other academics. This represents our shared cultural knowledge, it belongs to everyone of us, and should be 100% freely available. And indeed much of it is in the public domain anyway since copyright has lapsed.

Whether the gate-keeper is nonprofit or not isn't really important. In point of fact, the entire system of journals charging fees for access to academic papers is outdated and broken, and is merely a parasitic relic from an age where it cost large sums of money to print and distribute paper-based media. Remember that universities pay a fee to access journals, and sometimes even pay a fee to have their papers published in journals, all the while generating and peer reviewing the content at their own expense.

In other words we can do better. And we should do better. By releasing JSTOR's content publicly Aaron was engaging in activism for the common good. You're welcome to your opinion that he deserved the book throwing at him and a $1M legal bill, but (in my opinion) you should think again.