Guernica / John Summers and George Scialabba: Statement in Support of Aaron Swartz

" This is a bogus indictment over a fictitious crime. What explains it? Politics, for one thing. The real purpose of the indictment is to terrorize advocates for open access at a time when corporations and their allies in government feel themselves under siege by hackers. “Stealing is stealing” is phrase-making designed to confuse the legal and moral distinctions between the kind of cyber-crime everyone should oppose, such as stealing credit card and social security numbers, and efforts, like Aaron’s, to make knowledge more accessible to the educated public....The U.S. Attorney should withdraw the indictment, apologize to Aaron and his family, and busy her office with real criminals...."