To paraphrase Feynman, this might have some relevance to the situation:
"...he also worked with Shireen Barday at Stanford Law School to assess “problems with remunerated research” in law review articles (i.e., articles funded by corporations, sometimes to help them in ongoing legal battles), by downloading and analyzing over 400,000 law review articles to determine the source of their funding. The results were published in the Stanford Law Review."
I speculate that Pacer is more relevant: during a trial run of free public access to Pacer, Swartz is alleged to have mirrored almost 20% of the database; as (it is alleged) a result, the public trial of Pacer was shut down and an investigation launched into the security of the Pacer system.
One possible narrative inside the DoJ: we can't launch public trials of open access to databases, because this Aaron Swartz guy has decided that his Python code will have the final say in any policy decisions we make. But that's not for him to decide! And here he is again, taking the same approach, this time to a commercial database that produces 7 figure annual recurring revenues.
I don't agree with this mindset (:#>! :#>!) but I'd understand it.
"...he also worked with Shireen Barday at Stanford Law School to assess “problems with remunerated research” in law review articles (i.e., articles funded by corporations, sometimes to help them in ongoing legal battles), by downloading and analyzing over 400,000 law review articles to determine the source of their funding. The results were published in the Stanford Law Review."