Professor Samuelson’s article “Aaron Swartz: Opening access to knowledge”, open a variety of important points on morals and ethics that Aaron Swartz was attempting to face before ultimately taking his own life. His “theft” of articles from JSTOR is the act of a modern day Peter Pan. It ultimately raises a few questions and the ethics of information holding at the attempt to gain profit.
It is just to withhold knowledge from the public? Is it acceptable to repress the lower class, who aren’t able to access said knowledge without a platinum visa card? Knowledge is what improves a society; essentially its like an enzyme. It increases societies improvement,as a whole. It destroy’s the vicious cycle that chains the poor from achieving success. By crumbling this “information barrier”, this nasty mechanism designed to gain profits, we can remove the chains of repression from the poor andĀ marginalized and improve society as a whole.
I agree with your entry that society has been marked for profit. It should not be about the money because knowledge is to valuable for money and it must be shared with all if we want to progress as a whole as you stated. I agree with you that the poor population are the ones that are oppressed by these laws and business. Personally I believe that knowledge should not have a price to it and that it should all be available to the public, maybe then there would be less poverty but you and I know that its not in the governments best interest. It is better for them to keep intellectuality away from the people because knowledge is power.