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<p><!-- Make sure you modify the 4Cast title in this section -->
<span style="font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial;
line-height: 110%;">OPLIN 4Cast #317: Deadly
information</span><br>
<!-- Make sure you modify the date of the 4Cast in this section -->
<span style="font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal;
color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-style: italic;
font-family: arial;">January 16th, 2013</span></p>
<!-- Begin copy of Web Source here -->
<p style="text-align: justify;font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;">Aaron
Swartz' suicide last week was connected in
unfortunate ways to the library world. He was
being prosecuted by the United States Attorney's
Office for the District of Massachusetts for
putting a computer in a wiring closet in a library
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
setting it up to automatically download scholarly
articles from the library's JSTOR subscription
database. After Mr. Swartz was charged with a
crime, JSTOR declined to press their own charges
and wrote over the weekend that, "The case is one
that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into
from the outset, since JSTOR's mission is to
foster widespread access to the world's body of
scholarly knowledge." But federal prosecutors
persisted, charging Mr. Swartz with felonies under
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which could have
resulted in up to 35 years in prison.<br>
<br>
OPLIN is an agency of the state government of
Ohio, and as such, we have often experienced
government policies and procedures that overlook
common sense and doggedly enforce the letter of
the law at the expense of the spirit of the law.
Such narrow-minded bureaucracy often crushes
innovation. Sometimes it crushes innovative
people. When applied to laws that seek to limit
access to information on the Internet, it also has
the potential to crush the very idea that is the
foundation of the public library: that information
should be freely shared with the public.
</p>
<div> </div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/technology/aaron-swartz-a-data-crusader-and-now-a-cause.html">A
data crusader, a defendant and now, a cause</a>
(New York Times/Noam Cohen) "The belief that
information is power and should be shared freely
- which Mr. Swartz described <a
href="http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt">in
a treatise</a> in 2008 - is under considerable
legal assault. The immediate reaction among
those sympathetic to Mr. Swartz has been anger
and a vow to soldier on. Young people
interviewed on Sunday spoke of the government's
power to intimidate."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully">Prosecutor
as bully</a> (Lessig Blog, v2/Lawrence Lessig)
"From the beginning, the government worked as
hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did
in the most extreme and absurd way. The
'property' Aaron had 'stolen,' we were told, was
worth 'millions of dollars' - with the hint, and
then the suggestion, that his aim must have been
to profit from his crime. But anyone who says
that there is money to be made in a stash of <em>ACADEMIC
ARTICLES</em> is either an idiot or a liar. It
was clear what this was not, yet our government
continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11
terrorists red-handed."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-american-hero/">Aaron
Swartz, American hero</a> (Washington Post
Wonkblog/Tim Lee) "Swartz took an aggressive,
perhaps even reckless, course in his promotion
of public access to information. The federal
courts lock public documents behind a paywall on
a Web site called PACER. When the judiciary
announced a pilot program to provide free PACER
access to users at certain public libraries,
Swartz saw an opportunity. Using credentials
from one of the libraries, he used an automated
program to rapidly "scrape" documents from the
PACER site. He got more than 2 million before
the courts noticed what was happening and shut
down the libraries program."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html">RIP,
Aaron Swartz</a> (Boing Boing/Cory Doctorow)
"He also founded a group called <a
href="http://demandprogress.org/">DemandProgress</a>,
which used his technological savvy, money and
passion to leverage victories in huge public
policy fights. DemandProgress's work was one of
the decisive factors in last year's victory over
SOPA/PIPA, and that was only the start of his
ambition."</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;"> </div>
<p style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><small><strong><em>Tribute
fact:</em></strong></small><br>
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;">A Twitter
campaign under the hashtag <a
href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414241,00.asp">#pdftribute</a>
had as many as 500 tweets per hour over the
weekend, as Twitter users posted links to PDFs of
scholarly articles in tribute to Mr. Swartz.
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;"> </div>
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