Public.resource.org's touching tribute to Aaron Swartz

JSTOR is a non-profit organization that allows digital access to articles that were previously inaccessible to anyone regardless of your will to pay. They allow full-text search across their millions of articles and are undoubtedly employing a number of programmers and designers.

They've just recently started doing the same with books, a process that is undoubtedly costly.

Is it so wild and crazy to expect that they be able to cover operating costs? If no one purchased articles from them, they'd never be able to continue scanning and processing new ones and have branched into books.

Over the last year, JSTOR has tried to slowly provide more free access to individuals. Alumni are soon going to be able to access their articles for free. Registered researches as well. And any individual can access three free articles every two weeks.

Websites such as this say to me: "How dare JSTOR have the audacity to attempt to fund their continued operations?"

Finally, let me point out that I do not think Aaron Schwartz should have been antagonized and potentially sentenced to 50 years. That kind of sentence is absolutely ridiculous.