I remember seeing later that he posted here begging for help because the cost of the defense for a federal crime (even though he’d likely win) was 1.5M, and the first comment was someone being nasty to him.
I remember the emails from MIT that showed the IT department going after him, and then when caught MIT choosing to do nothing rather than help.
Even JSTOR backed down rather than move forward.
It still makes me angry and MIT’s reputation was seriously harmed in my eyes because of it.
Journals blocking access to publicly funded research by extorting desperate academics for prestige is what’s wrong. It’s a broken system due to bad incentives that’s worse for everyone except the journals that enrich themselves on the back of publicly funded research, by locking it away and charging enormous rent.
The punishment was disproportionate to a crime that, while possibly illegal, was on the morally right side of a broken incentive structure. He didn’t even get the chance to put the articles up, he downloaded them from a network he had rightful access to. His main crime was leaving a laptop running in an open closet, and downloading more than they wanted.
Maybe the worst part was after his suicide reading comments here about how you can only blame the person who committed suicide since no one else is responsible for the ultimate act.
If you choose not to see a causal link between the pressure of this prosecution and his death, I think that says more about your own motivated reasoning than it does about reality.
The DOJ threw the book at him in part because he wrote a manifesto called "Guerilla Open Access". It wasn't deemed a one-off offense, but possibly part of a "plan". Still complete bullshit what they did.
Somebody else had posted his request for help here, but the comments are as I remembered them (though the comment that was first at the time is now the second thread).
I absolutely have concerns with the operation of the federal justice system. As Leesig rightly pointed out, the role of a modern federal prosecutor is to terrify the accused and bully them into accepting a plea deal, and that behavior does not effectively serve the interests of justice.
But the radically anti-copyright position expressed here is much less common than you're assuming, and I just can't get on board with it. The solution to exploitative journals gatekeeping access is better journals, not stealing their articles.
I'm not really anti-copyright, though the timeline should be dramatically reduced back to something similar to its original 14 years with registration (maybe less).
The goal of copyright was to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the benefit of the public, giving limited time monopolies to creators is a means to that end. It was meant as an incentive to create, not some way to perpetually enrich creators (or corporations that buy the rights) forever at the expense of the public.
It's been distorted to basically give creators/companies rights forever automatically (and even retroactively) by continuing to extend it each time it comes up for expiration. It now serves to do the opposite of its intended goal by limiting the ability for people to create things because they could be violating copyright.
I think the issue here is not the existence of copyright itself, but how it's being applied to publicly funded research because of an existing incentive structure where universities and academics are locked in a battle for prestige that's doled out by these journals that then control access.
If the public is funding the research then the public should have access to the research.
I remember the emails from MIT that showed the IT department going after him, and then when caught MIT choosing to do nothing rather than help.
Even JSTOR backed down rather than move forward.
It still makes me angry and MIT’s reputation was seriously harmed in my eyes because of it.
Journals blocking access to publicly funded research by extorting desperate academics for prestige is what’s wrong. It’s a broken system due to bad incentives that’s worse for everyone except the journals that enrich themselves on the back of publicly funded research, by locking it away and charging enormous rent.
The punishment was disproportionate to a crime that, while possibly illegal, was on the morally right side of a broken incentive structure. He didn’t even get the chance to put the articles up, he downloaded them from a network he had rightful access to. His main crime was leaving a laptop running in an open closet, and downloading more than they wanted.
Luckily Sci-Hub continued his work.
The legal thing and the right thing are often not the same: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
Maybe the worst part was after his suicide reading comments here about how you can only blame the person who committed suicide since no one else is responsible for the ultimate act.
If you choose not to see a causal link between the pressure of this prosecution and his death, I think that says more about your own motivated reasoning than it does about reality.
This was a failure of our community.