U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz said that Aaron Swartz broke into a restricted area of M.I.T. and entered a computer wiring closet. Mr. Swartz apparently then accessed the M.I.T. computer network and stole millions of documents from JSTOR. He had already hacked into the computer system and auto-downloaded millions of copyright documents.
Swartz, a political activist now but most famous for co-founding news link service Reddit (owned by Conde Nast), didn't give any details on why he did it - yet but the indictment says he intended to distribute the copyrighted files on file-sharing services. It can't be because he cares about freedom of the Internet. A guy who took in millions selling his start-up to an evil corporate behemoth in mid-town Manhattan would never be a hypocrite like that.
Indictment here
Reddit Co-Founder Charged With Data Theft by Nick Bilton, NY Times
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