[Isabelle Tubbs]

A couple years ago Aaron Swartz decided to pull off a technological heist. Using his programming gifts and internet knowledge, he understood how to navigate through MIT’s campus network and complete large downloads. He had the means to do so from his knowledge of the internet and his previous experience with download huge amounts of files (Zimmerman, n.d.). Swartz’s motive for downloading JSTOR’s 4.8 million files was to upload them onto the internet because he believed others should access it for free (Zimmerman, n.d.). Swartz had the opportunity to do this task because of the way MIT’s security was implemented. To them, it simply looked like a suspicious amount of downloads on their system, they only thing they could eventually do was to to block most IP addresses to prevent more files from being downloaded (JSTOR, 2013). This is not an ideal protection mechanism because it hinders users’ productivity, but it eventually became necessary. Because of this, they made attempts to restore system use while also maintaining strong authentication, but even their systems could not detect some of the large downloads (JSTOR, 2013). If their system had been stronger, Swartz would have had less opportunity to do all of this.

References
JSTOR. (2013, July 30). JSTOR Evidence in United States vs. Aaron Swartz. https://docs.jstor.org/summary.html
Zimmerman, T. (n.d.). ‘Hacktivist or Thief?’: What the Aaron Swartz Case Means to the Open Access Movement. Conference on College Composition & Communication. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/committees/ip/ipreports/swartzcase?/