It wasn ' t even a bug . MIT has subscriber access to all the journals . Aaron wrote a script and ran it on a laptop in a closet on campus . Downloaded a vast number of papers and was supposedly preparing to release them for free . His basic tenet was that information wants to be free . JSTOR locks information in journals with exorbitant subscription fees , way beyond the reach of individuals . If those papers were released just once , they would be available freely forever . I didn ' t know Aaron , but I know several people who were close to him . They are very certain that he legitimately committed suicide . He was despondent about a 35 year sentence with no Net access . When his father says the government murdered his son , he means that the ridiculously overblown prosecution drove his to suicide .