Co-Founder of Reddit Indicted for Stealing from MIT

July 20, 2011 · by John Ponio

Co-founder of reddit.com(co-founder is disputed) Aaron Swartz was indicted today for allegedly stealing over four million files from MIT. The files were either files from MIT or from JTOR, which is a collection of scientific journals. He faces 35 years in prison and a million dollar fine if convicted. The overview of offenses, taken from the indictment, is as follows:

Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to: a. break into a restricted computer wiring closet at MIT; b. access MIT’s network without authorization from a switch within that closet; c. connect to JSTOR’s archive of digitized journal articles through MIT’scomputer network; d. use this access to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive onto hiscomputers and computer hard drives; e. avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying,measures which were directed at users generally and at Swartz’s illicit conduct specifically; and f. elude detection and identification;all with the purpose of distributing a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one ormore file-sharing sites.