Harvard fellow charged with hacking into JSTOR

A Harvard University fellow who was studying ethics was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic articles.

Aaron Swartz, 24, of Cambridge, was accused of stealing the documents from JSTOR, a popular research subscription service that offers digitized copies of more than 1000 academic journals and documents, some dating back to the 17th century.

In an indictment released on Tuesday, prosecutors say Swartz stole 4.8 million articles between September 2010 and January after breaking into a computer wiring closet on MIT's campus. Swartz, then a student at the Harvard's Centre for Ethics, downloaded so many documents during one October day that some of JSTOR's computer servers crashed, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say Swartz intended to distribute the articles on file-sharing websites.