He definitely makes many great connections to the larger picture. The problem is that he gets many of the ideological details wrong, which is really unfortunate as it leads to potential misjudgments of Swaartz's cause.
Specifically,
1. Swaartz did have legal access to all of these files. There was no "theft" involved (Byrne's statement, "Swartz stole the material, pure and simple", is a hefty misunderstanding). He was, however, exploiting a loophole. He also violated the website's terms of service and trespassed at MIT.
2. Byrne seems to be implying that Swaartz should have admitted he was wrong and accepted jail time or being a martyr. But at no time was Swaartz ever offerred a punishment within three orders of magnitude of any that fit the crime. Should Rosa Parks have plead guilty to carjacking?
3. Byrne seems to think that all of the articles in repositories like JSTOR are "proprietary". In fact, a huge number are not. They have expired copyrights and are public domain; this was a large part of Swaartz's cause. To JSTOR's great credit, they have been expanding access to these articles since Swaartz's arrest, so in that respect his civil disobedience got the message across.
4. Byrne treats academic research somewhat as a monetizable commodity, like music. But not only do academics not see a penny on publications, but more importantly, members of subscribing institutions already have free and unlimited access to read any of these articles. It is just individuals not connected to big universities who have to pay large amounts (and this hurts the authors, who want people to read their work). The justification for charging for access to papers is not to monetize them, but that it costs upkeep to host and organize them. But of course, a P2P distribution of torrents would go a long way toward solving this problem for free, making both the authors and readers happier (but not the middleman).
Specifically,
1. Swaartz did have legal access to all of these files. There was no "theft" involved (Byrne's statement, "Swartz stole the material, pure and simple", is a hefty misunderstanding). He was, however, exploiting a loophole. He also violated the website's terms of service and trespassed at MIT.
2. Byrne seems to be implying that Swaartz should have admitted he was wrong and accepted jail time or being a martyr. But at no time was Swaartz ever offerred a punishment within three orders of magnitude of any that fit the crime. Should Rosa Parks have plead guilty to carjacking?
3. Byrne seems to think that all of the articles in repositories like JSTOR are "proprietary". In fact, a huge number are not. They have expired copyrights and are public domain; this was a large part of Swaartz's cause. To JSTOR's great credit, they have been expanding access to these articles since Swaartz's arrest, so in that respect his civil disobedience got the message across.
4. Byrne treats academic research somewhat as a monetizable commodity, like music. But not only do academics not see a penny on publications, but more importantly, members of subscribing institutions already have free and unlimited access to read any of these articles. It is just individuals not connected to big universities who have to pay large amounts (and this hurts the authors, who want people to read their work). The justification for charging for access to papers is not to monetize them, but that it costs upkeep to host and organize them. But of course, a P2P distribution of torrents would go a long way toward solving this problem for free, making both the authors and readers happier (but not the middleman).