(I know this will be an unpopular post, so I'll preface this by saying that Swartz's transgressions didn't warrant multiple years in prison and the whole situation is a tragedy.)
MIT take note please.
I think they have - in Tufte's anecdote he mentions that the AT&T security person asked "why we went off the air after about three months." The implication is that between the security guy's technical interest and the fact that Tufte wasn't hacking the phone system anymore, there was no real reason to go after him.
In Swartz's case, after the first few time MIT/JSTOR detected his activity, all they did was to (try to) block Swartz's access to the system. If Swartz had given up, that may have been the end of it. There are parallels between Tufte and Swartz but there are also differences.
(again, I am in no way saying that Swartz deserved a long prison sentence or he deserved to die.)
The major difference that sticks out for me in your comparison is that free access to long distance calls is optional but free access to knowledge is not. A second difference is that it seemed there was a dialogue going, a dialogue during which if a similar one had happened between MIT and Aaron, MIT might have found out they were about to destroy something precious. AT&T, that well-known bastion of freedom and openness could do that. MIT apparently could not.
Finally I urge you to please watch Taren's video at the end of the linked article.
It's worth noting that for most of the twentieth century AT&T was a driving force for scientific and engineering innovation in the US, greater than most universities (though perhaps not MIT). Researchers there won seven Nobel prizes, and two Turing awards. On a more mundane note, Unix was invented there, as well as C and C++, and the photovoltaic cell.
No disrespect to AT&T's Bell Labs and its employees legendary achievements was meant or implied. I'm well aware of what they stood for. (my first unix wm was mgr...).
I think it was more than just touching, and I also think that it puts the lie to anybody that still wants to harp on the case not being the prime factor in Aarons life over the last two years as well as the reason why he choose to conclude it.
There are a number of very good questions in her address, questions that have no easy answer. Especially the ones about technology being used to improve the world, and the bit about 'magic'. After all, it really is close to magic, we wield all this power and we use it in the aggregate to sell advertising and gizmos. It's certainly food for thought for me.
I think this is a reasonable post and the distinctions are important. However, perhaps Tufte would argue that he (Tufte) knew what he was doing was illegal, especially if done in order to self-profit...and IIRC, other blue-boxers who had some profit-motive were not given such a light treatment when caught.
In contrast, from Aaron's point-of-view, what Aaron was doing was not explicitly illegal. From his admittedly skewed vantage point, he was only freeing what should be public...the FBI stalking of him after the PACER incident likely reaffirmed in his mind that information that is legally available for free will often be blocked by the powers-that-be, just because.
Of course, as we know now, his miscalculation was that JSTOR's archives were not (not all of them, anyway) in the same public status as the PACER documents.
I don't mean to start a new debate over whether Aaron was at fault for not thinking things through more...I'm just pointing out how Tufte could reasonably have empathy for Aaron despite the obvious differences in motive and execution of their schemes.
> Of course, as we know now, his miscalculation was that JSTOR's archives were not (not all of them, anyway) in the same public status as the PACER documents.
To my knowledge, no (if you mean a blog post in which he explicitly states it). I'm just inferring from the disbelief and shock he apparently experienced when prosecutors chose to follow through.
If you mean if there was evidence whether he was wrong about the legality of distributing JSTOR documents...there seems to be some confusion about it, but it doesn't seem that many of Aaron's most legally-mindful defenders have said that freeing JSTOR was just as non-criminal as freeing PACER.
It should be noted, that you can login to JSTOR and read much of the content freely now. Albeit - only three articles at a time in your "bookshelf".
I wouldn't find it at all surprising if the various universities/journals/research bodies figure out how to make this research, much (majority) of which has been paid for by the public, available to the public.
I am one of the most "pro-ip-protection/opposed to copyright infringement" people on HN, and look down on anyone who violates producers/authors rights on commercial content - but I firmly stand with Aaron on the "Make research knowledge free to everyone" side.
MIT take note please.