MIT’s Embrace of Web Freedom Clashes With Hacking Case

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- the first university to require professors to make their work freely available after publication -- has posted class materials online for a decade. Last year it joined with Harvard to offer free courses on the Web. MIT’s faculty includes a hacker who was fined $10,000 for releasing a computer virus.

Yet when Aaron Swartz broke into an MIT network to download millions of research articles he intended to post publicly, he found himself in a tricky legal area that MIT itself hasn’t resolved. U.S. prosecutors indicted him on fraud charges. Swartz, who advocated that access to information shouldn’t be restricted to people who can afford it, faced as long as 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. The 26-year-old hanged himself in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment Jan. 11.