Sadly He Did Not Succeed

Wired

Well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz was arrested Tuesday, charged with violating federal hacking laws for downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database service that MIT had given him access to. If convicted, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.Swartz, the 24-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. Swartz, who was aware of the investigation, turned himself in Tuesday.My $0.02? People should thank this guy rather than jail him. Dont Feds have better things to do than chasing someone who is trying to free stuff / research that was produced mostly by public funds to begin with?I wonder what the public would think, vote on, if freeing research was put on a referendum. Public officials or lawmakers deciding on this and that does not count because we all know representative system does not mean democracy.Paywalls around knowledge is wrong, unproductive and just plain immoral.