News Briefs
News Briefs
Economy Hardware
Economy Hardware in Central Square has reopened after nearly a year of renovation. The store, which underwent reconstruction last December, was set to open in the spring but was initially delayed until October and finally opened today. Economy Hardware has been in Cambridge for over 60 years, store owner Larry Friedman told The Tech in January. Some of their original space is now being used by Cambridge Community Television. They are located at 438 Mass. Ave. and also have locations in Boston and Brookline.
Swartz arraigned
Aaron H. Swartz, the former Harvard Ethics fellow who was arrested in August for downloading 4.8 million JSTOR documents via MIT’s network with the intent to upload them to file-sharing sites, was arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court on Wednesday. He plead not guilty.
Swartz has been charged with breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, unauthorized access to a computer data network, and larceny for over $250. The Middlesex Superior Court clerk has also ordered Swartz to surrender his passport.
JSTOR is an electronic archive of academic journals. Swartz is alleged to have hidden a laptop in the 16-004t network closet and plugged it into the network there, running “keepgrabbing.py” and “keepgrabbing2.py.”
According to an agreement between the defense and prosecution, Swartz will not have access to his five hard drives and the millions of JSTOR items contained on them for the purposes of preparing a defense, but he and his counsel will be able to review forensic copies of the data at the Secret Service’s Boston office.
Swartz and his team will also be permitted to read — but not keep — several email threads about weaknesses in MIT and JSTOR’s network. He can also examine police reports containing the name of a student who identified him from a photo spread, along with a witness who has been “charged but not convicted in state court in a matter arising out of a personal relationship,” said the agreement. Swartz will be in court again on Jan. 3 for a pretrial conference.
—Jessica J. Pourian