Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator sets public domain academic articles free | Ars Technica

On Monday afternoon, a group of online archivists released the "Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator." The initiative is a JavaScript-based bookmarklet that lets Internet users "liberate" an article, already in the public domain, from the online academic archive JSTOR. By running the script—which is limited to once per browser—a public domain academic article is downloaded to the user’s computer, then uploaded back to ArchiveTeam in a small act of protest against JSTOR's restrictive policies.

Swartz, who tragically committed suicide on January 11, 2013, was arrested and charged back in 2009 for having downloaded a massive cache of documents from the website. He faced criminal charges that could have lead to potentially months or years in a prison as a result (they were only dropped this morning). JSTOR did not immediately respond to requests for comment concerning this new tool. However, over the weekend, the organization did acknowledge it was "deeply saddened" over the Swartz tragedy.

"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," the organization wrote in an unsigned, undated statement. "At the same time, as one of the largest archives of scholarly literature in the world, we must be careful stewards of the information entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content. To that end, Aaron returned the data he had in his possession and JSTOR settled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011."

"If you are scared about violating a TOS, then don't violate TOS."

Jason Scott, of ArchiveTeam, developed the piece of code to provide a way for Swartz’ supporters to engage in a small act of digital civil disobedience. He said his organization had planned this tool last year, but decided not to release it so as not to interfere with then-pending Swartz’ case.

"I would be really sad if I was indicted and sent to jail for this," he told Ars, noting that all the documents he and his supporters were "liberating" were already in the public domain. Scott argued that JSTOR had no right to impose additional restrictions on how these public domain articles were accessed, or what they were used for.

"It is to remind people of the threshold [Swartz] crossed, he would do things that were a little bit questionable, for good reasons," Scott added. "He would make leaps that were a little farther beyond and he did it during his young life. If it brings a little attention to him and how he lived in the world, [then that’s a good thing]. Even if it's a very tiny [act of protest]—that's not meant to destroy or damage JSTOR or anything like that."

JSTOR’s terms of service [TOS], for example, explicitly prohibit any "attempt to override, circumvent, or disable any encryption features or software protections employed in the JSTOR Platform;" and "undertake coordinated or systematic activity between or among two or more individuals and/or entities that, in the aggregate, constitutes downloading and/or distributing a significant portion of the Content," among other prohibitions.

"We absolutely don't recommend that people do this—don't do it," Scott said. "If you don’t want to do this, don't do it. If you are scared about violating a TOS, then don't violate TOS."