This article carefully avoids any analysis of the reasons why MIT chose to persecute Aaron Swartz. Here's a quick take on the actual situation, off the top of my head:
"The Darker Side of MIT and the Academic Publishing Industry"
While the Internet has been hailed from its inception as a tool that would open up access to information for the whole world, the reality has not matched that expectation. Much of the most important and useful information generated by scientists, engineers, historians and others remains hidden behind paywalls and is not accessible to the vast majority of people, regardless of whether they have access to the Internet or not.
The reason is that academic research - the vast majority of it financed heavily by federal science agencies, i.e. the taxpayer - remains under the control of a small group of academic publishing houses, who earn exorbitant fees for licensing access to universities and other institutions. For example, if you want to manufacturer an antibiotic, you'd want access to the complete research record - the initial discovery of the antibiotic, the detailed production technology (found perhaps in the methods sections of papers published in the 1970s and 1980s, say), more modern biotech methods of production of said antibiotic (papers from the 1990s and 2000s), etc.
Given the obvious benefit to all (except the parasites collecting the fees) of providing that information to anyone with Internet access, it's at first glance hard to understand why MIT - one of America's leading federally-financed research institues - chose to persecute Aaron Swartz for downloading the jstor archive, instead of merely warning him not to do it again. Clearly the MIT administration wanted to make an example of Swartz - the question is, why?
The most rational explanation involves the corporatization of academic research in the USA in general, which began in the 1980s with passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to exclusively license inventions created with taxpayer dollars to private entities, rather than the prior situation, in which anyone could obtain such a license. This 'public-private' partnership situation has corrupted American academics, placing the profitability of research well ahead of the accuracy and reliability of research.
As part of this sea change in American academia, the control of information has become more important than the prior academic norm, which was the open sharing of information (widely understood to increase the pace of scientific discovery). Now, many corporations have simply outsourced their R&D divisions to the murky public-private academic sector, utilizing financing provided by NIH or other federal agencies, while retaining control of the results of academic research (*and paying off the cooperating professors and administators by buying the academic start-up operations and giving them stocks in their larger corporations). This can be seen today in the highly profitable COVID vaccine and treatment business, in which initial academic research (such mRNA technology) was co-opted by the private sector under said exclusive licensing agreements (and note how open-sourcing the patents globally is continually blocked by pharma sector lobbying efforts).
Hence, MIT - an institution which, along with the University of California, spearheaded the transition to corporate-controlled academic research, wanted to make an example of Aaron Swartz to warn other researchers that if they tried to open-source information - thereby harming corporate profit opportunities - that they would be severely punished.
Well, at least there's scibhub, although their coverage is still spotty.
> it's at first glance hard to understand why MIT - one of America's leading federally-financed research institues - chose to persecute Aaron Swartz for downloading the jstor archive
It didn't. Read the Abelson report (which has been discussed ad nauseam in past HN threads). MIT did not want Swartz prosecuted, and told the prosecutor that. The prosecutor chose to go after Swartz anyway. MIT's error was that they didn't push back harder on the prosecutor (for example, by making a clearer public statement along the lines of the one JSTOR made, that since the stolen data was returned, no further action was necessary or desired).
> Clearly the MIT administration wanted to make an example of Swartz
No, it didn't. It just made an error of judgment (described above). It had nothing against Swartz and was not trying to make an example of him. The Federal prosecutor was the one trying to do that.
"With regard to substance, MIT would make no statements, whether in
support or in opposition, about the government’s decision to prosecute
Aaron Swartz"
Am I missing something? Been a while since I read the report in full.
"While MIT did not conform precisely to this rule, in this sense of similar responses MIT—broadly speaking—did not side with the prosecution, nor did it side with the defense. In consequence of the differences in the powers, timing, and goals of the two parties in the case, neutrality in responses was not consistent with neutrality in outcomes, and MIT was not neutral in outcomes."
I agree that MIT was not trying to make an example out of him. But it wasn't that "they didn't push back harder on the prosecutor", it was that they didn't push back at all. The Ableson report correctly criticizes MIT for this.
> it wasn't that "they didn't push back harder on the prosecutor", it was that they didn't push back at all
It's been a while since I read the report too, thanks for linking to it.
I had thought there was more detail in the report about the private conversations between MIT's Office of General Counsel and the prosecutors, referred to on p. 52, where it says that after a June 21, 2011 discussion, "OGC inferred that further presentations of MIT’s opinions were unlikely to have an effect on the prosecution: the views of both potential victims had already been taken into account". My understanding during previous discussions here (which was quite a while ago) had been that OGC did push back in private conversations with the prosecutor (and the "further presentations" in what I just quoted also can be read that way), but the prosecutor was not receptive, and the June 21 conversation was basically the end of MIT's private attempts to influence the prosecutor. However, since the report does not give any more details about that, I might have gotten that impression from other sources around that time. Clearly, even if MIT did make such attempts, they weren't successful, and could not have been all that emphatic.
If you ever see this phrase: 'public-private' partnership, you can be assured that the losses/costs will be public while the gains/profit will be private.
public-private partnership is one of the pillars of neoliberal win-win politics. At least this is how it's being sold. However, it's one of the biggest clues that regardless of who you vote for in America (left or right), the shareholders will always be taken care of..
Hasn’t it always been corporate interests in academia? Stanford was a joke when it was founded, MIT was being petitioned into becoming a tech school. Patrons of sciences have always been funded by private interests, there isn’t any corruption.
> This 'public-private' partnership situation has corrupted American academics, placing the profitability of research well ahead of the accuracy and reliability of research.
Private profitability research is no different. I don’t understand what you mean by losing accuracy, for some research corporate hardware or copyrighted work is required or the best choice.
I thought they gave the ability for other pharma to make the mRNA drugs that require incredible investment, to make it seem open.
Most of the information we mentioned is out there now. But it’s much more fun watching tiktoks and liking posts.
As I noted, it's really Bayh-Dole exclusive licensing that's the problem. Make all exclusively licensed federally financed patents held by academic institutions available to anyone who wants to utilize them via a no-fee license, that's the fix.
Prior to that, if academics wanted to get involved in industry and make some money thereby, the route to take was called consulting, which seems fine with me, as long as conflicts of interest are stated honestly.
I’m reading the law and I don’t see that issue. All the issues are from the requirements of the FDA, making it patent free solves nothing, unless you’re talking about another industry, the cases are all from healthcare patents from the wiki. This isn’t new or something unusual, most of the issues are in healthcare and the requirements to produce them are not going to be fixed by removing patents.
Academic papers do submit sponsorships and conflicts of interest, and there’s also the case of academia wanting cutting edge equipment from private companies and doing deals with them. This is much more honest than the smoking research, the federal government has an interest in maintaining patent law, it has no incentive to give free access to no fee licensing. There’s lots of laws with access to healthcare information, which requires industry knowledge where the information is freely given to corporations to do research on, which would not be allowed federally. The researchers are not usually working because they’re interested in making their research public information, and while post grads are funded by government, they are free to develop royalty free information, they choose not to and the government wants to partially fund corporations. I don’t see the problem, people want to make money and they want to do cutting edge research.
I see academia and research papers as advertising rather than a patent minefield. There are plenty of people who want to work for the common good, but the government wants to fund private entities to produce products, government contracts is what the US does instead of its own production.
I see computer science papers with non of these issues under the current law.
"The Darker Side of MIT and the Academic Publishing Industry"
While the Internet has been hailed from its inception as a tool that would open up access to information for the whole world, the reality has not matched that expectation. Much of the most important and useful information generated by scientists, engineers, historians and others remains hidden behind paywalls and is not accessible to the vast majority of people, regardless of whether they have access to the Internet or not.
The reason is that academic research - the vast majority of it financed heavily by federal science agencies, i.e. the taxpayer - remains under the control of a small group of academic publishing houses, who earn exorbitant fees for licensing access to universities and other institutions. For example, if you want to manufacturer an antibiotic, you'd want access to the complete research record - the initial discovery of the antibiotic, the detailed production technology (found perhaps in the methods sections of papers published in the 1970s and 1980s, say), more modern biotech methods of production of said antibiotic (papers from the 1990s and 2000s), etc.
Given the obvious benefit to all (except the parasites collecting the fees) of providing that information to anyone with Internet access, it's at first glance hard to understand why MIT - one of America's leading federally-financed research institues - chose to persecute Aaron Swartz for downloading the jstor archive, instead of merely warning him not to do it again. Clearly the MIT administration wanted to make an example of Swartz - the question is, why?
The most rational explanation involves the corporatization of academic research in the USA in general, which began in the 1980s with passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to exclusively license inventions created with taxpayer dollars to private entities, rather than the prior situation, in which anyone could obtain such a license. This 'public-private' partnership situation has corrupted American academics, placing the profitability of research well ahead of the accuracy and reliability of research.
As part of this sea change in American academia, the control of information has become more important than the prior academic norm, which was the open sharing of information (widely understood to increase the pace of scientific discovery). Now, many corporations have simply outsourced their R&D divisions to the murky public-private academic sector, utilizing financing provided by NIH or other federal agencies, while retaining control of the results of academic research (*and paying off the cooperating professors and administators by buying the academic start-up operations and giving them stocks in their larger corporations). This can be seen today in the highly profitable COVID vaccine and treatment business, in which initial academic research (such mRNA technology) was co-opted by the private sector under said exclusive licensing agreements (and note how open-sourcing the patents globally is continually blocked by pharma sector lobbying efforts).
Hence, MIT - an institution which, along with the University of California, spearheaded the transition to corporate-controlled academic research, wanted to make an example of Aaron Swartz to warn other researchers that if they tried to open-source information - thereby harming corporate profit opportunities - that they would be severely punished.
Well, at least there's scibhub, although their coverage is still spotty.