In honor of Aaron Swartz, the anti-copyright hacktivist and Reddit cofounder who died last week, academics have released over 1,500 copyrighted research articles online, tweeting links to the documents with the hastag #pdftribute.
"Open access is something he was and we are really passionate about," said Jessica Richman, an acquaintance of Swartz who co-founded Science Citizen, a non-profit that encourages scientists to include citizen science in their research.
"Imagine you're a musician and you have to pay someone to produce your music, and then your can't even access your own music unless you pay them again," she said.
"The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations," wrote Swartz. "Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier."
Swartz committed suicide as he was facing a prolonged land costly egal battle, $1 million in fines and up to 35 years in prison for allegedly downloading 4,8 million articles from the academic database JSTOR and releasing them to the public online for free.
While JSTOR declined to press charges against Swartz, the U.S. Department of Justice did anyway, and calls are already suggesting the removal U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz for "overzealousness" in pursuing the case.
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy," Swartz's family wrote in a statement published online. "It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach."
"It was too hard for him to ask for the help and make that part of his life go public," said Swartz's girlfriend Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. "One of the things he felt most difficult to fathom was asking people for money."
Swartz allegedly accessed the JSTOR database through MIT's network, and the university has said it will review the circumstances of the to determine if its actions were appropriate.
The online activist group Anonymous briefly hacked the MIT website, posting a tribute to Swartz.
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