In my opinion Aaron Swartz motive or motives for downloading so many scholarly journals from JSTOR (a digital library of scholarly articles), is clear. He wanted to make the information and knowledge that is obviously hoarded knowledge and information available for a price.Well that is my thought; obviously there is more to the story, Only to be told by the decease.
JSTOR is available free of charge to users if they use a communal subscription like the local libraries or college library to my understanding but, the college/universities and library still pays a fee for access to the database.
It was victimless crime, and his demise was very sad. As a student I would like to have access to information without paying hefty fees. Students already pay so much for text books; and sometimes additional information is need and that’s where these scholarly journals comes in. Stealing is wrong punishable by law ; but that extensive punishment Aaron received was unacceptable and I think they made an example out of him.
He could easily have had a student give him access to the database; instead he went the other way which I think was more to make a political statement after thinking about it throughly. Additionally, looking at the bigger picture plagiarism would come into play if these journals are open for public use without the fee but, there are strict copywriter laws that should protect the authors. This is a really hard subject to talk about because there are so many things to take into consideration when discussing this touchy subject of knowledge and information available for free, plagiarism and copywriting laws all have to come into play with what Aaron Swartz did.