I found this to be very revealing of the disconnect between the new and old.
For instance, this bit here:
Would the librarians at Stanford sit idly by if someone backed up a semi and started shoveling hundreds of thousands of books into it? Sure, there's no evidence that you're planning to steal the books. Maybe you intend to return them all in two weeks. But come on. Are we really all expected to be that stupid?
Likewise, Swartz may say that he had no intention of putting his 4.8 million documents online, but come on. It's a pretty safe assumption, no? Swartz's suggestion that he just wanted to perform a research project is a wee bit improbable.
The difference here is that Swartz's actions still left original copies in place, he did not walk in and take the only possible copies of these articles, he just made new ones, which was within his rights as a campus library user. Now, he did cross matters a bit by breaking into the closet, I agree, but to conflate this with stealing the only copies existing at a library just highlights how out of touch the older generation is with the Shiny 'New' Digital Future.
Further nuggets by the blogger in question in the comments:
So you're saying that if a library has a dozen copies of a book, it's OK to steal one of them because there are plenty left for everyone else?
Yeah, he just doesn't get it.
*eye roll*
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