His wording is loose (ie freely labelling Swartz' offenses "theft"), but he works his way to a pretty good handle on JSTOR's business model over the ensuing paragraphs. A lot of comments seem to reflexively interpret this as a musician defending outmoded conceptions of intellectual property - that's there, but he also does a thoughtful job of counterbalancing - but the heart of it is placing Swartz, Wikileaks et al in the context of other civil disobedience movements.
I read it somewhat differently. The following paragraphs demonstrate some awareness of the fact that researchers are rarely paid for their writings, or at least that he is willing to believe it when researchers take the time to say so. On the other hand, this is his summary of his view of the problem with academic publishing:
"While I can empathize both with academics who might either want to monetize their research or those who might want to make it freely available to all—the choice, ideally, should be the authors'"
His view of the problem, it seems, centers on the authors of academic articles. He continues that line of reasoning further down:
"Information, like that contained in these papers, is what scholars use to inspire themselves and it often serves a foundation for their own research"
"There is a big difference in my opinion between using someone else’s work as inspiration and as a stepping-stone and using that work—or work that incorporates that work—as a way to make money"
"I can certainly see the point that much academic data, when freely available, can have a greater chance to spur insights and creativity from researchers and scientists around the world than if it is locked up behind paywalls. Withholding cancer research from academics who can’t afford access because a big pharmaceutical company "owns" the data doesn't seem like a very morally defensible position—even if it is what the law might say is perfectly legal."
The basis of his ideas about whether or not Aaron was doing the right thing or engaging in civil disobedience is strongly tied to his notion of what problem Aaron was trying to address. His background in the music industry clearly influences his interpretation of that problem, given the strong, author-centric view of copyright that he expresses. He misses the entire point of Aaron's actions: to make the knowledge conveyed by the articles available to everyone, regardless of what people do with it. Aaron was not trying to draw attention to the plight of researchers or the unfairness of the flow of money; Aaron was trying to ensure that knowledge would not be restricted to an elite class (one that is almost an aristocracy) by using the technology we now have available to us, the Internet.
What Byrne misses, and where his argument goes off course, is that copyrights have never been about funding research. The purpose of copyright in academic research is to fund the distribution of those articles; the research itself is paid for by other means. Before the Internet, expensive industrial equipment was needed to distribute scientific writing on a mass scale, and copyright helped to ensure that the required industry would remain profitable (or at least that it could break even). Journals are a way for scientists to share their findings with others, which is necessary for both the progress of science (which Byrne correctly points out in his article) as well as for science to be beneficial to humanity (which Byrne misses: cancer research is useless if medical doctors, drug manufacturers, and the general public never learn about the results of the research). In today's world, we have a much more efficient way for scientists to communicate their findings, yet the continued application of copyright has prevented that system from being used effectively. Byrne misses that point, likely because his concept of why researchers publish their articles is based on his own experience as a musician and his concept of why musicians record and publish their music.
Byrne gets the information-dissemination idea, though:
'But who then decides what data “deserves” to be stolen and “liberated”? '
He's arguing that the authors (academic researchers) should be the ones practicing disobedience. Lawfully allowing a third agent to later 'liberate' the material from its domain is a slippery slope. By that rational, personal correspondences, IPR, stealth-mode ML algo.s, and sexts are all fair game for liberation.
Information, of itself, is not beholden to be free. Information without context is noise. In academic publishing, the context includes -- I'm guessing -- authors' tenureships (the primary source of income and job security). In music publishing, the context is attribution, since without their oeuvre, a musician is just a busker.
"Lawfully allowing a third agent to later 'liberate' the material from its domain is a slippery slope"
Yet copyright law in the United States has always required an expiration date on copyrights. I say this with confidence because anything else would have violated our constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
So in fact, the law as it exists today already allows a "third agent" to liberate material that was once copyrighted. Of course, unlike the original copyright act that allowed copyrights for 14 years, today's copyright laws do not allow work to enter the public domain for multiple generations: the lifetime of the author, and then decades after that. We are not on a "slippery slope" that will lead to violations of personal privacy; in fact, much like we now have technology that obviates the need for academic publishers, we also have technology to protect our personal correspondence from third parties (public key cryptography), and much like the law hampering our ability to actually use the technology that would spread knowledge better than academic publishers, the law thwarted the efforts to deploy public key cryptosystems.
