Mr. Swartz is not a run-of-the-mill hacking suspect. He has been known for his computer work since he was 14, when he was involved in developing the software behind RSS feeds, which distribute content over the Internet. At the time the investigation began, he was a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, though he was later placed on leave.

Mr. Swartz did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. His lawyer would not comment other than to note that Mr. Swartz had pleaded not guilty to the indictment, which “puts everything in it in dispute.”

It should be emphasized, however, that Mr. Swartz was not trying to profit from his activities. He has been a fierce advocate of redistributing information, so much so that in 2008 he promoted a Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto (no longer available online) that said it was imperative to “take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.”

We are not talking about the latest X-Men movie or Lady Gaga album. Rather it is the research contained in specialized scientific journals with subscriptions that can cost thousands of dollars; institutions can pay tens of thousands of dollars to Jstor. which stands for Journal Storage, for a subscription that bundles these publications online.

That money, Jstor says, is needed to collect and distribute the material and, at times, subsidize institutions that cannot afford it. Founded in 1995, Jstor started with 10 journals available to a few American universities and has since expanded to include about 325,000 journal issues available at more than 7,000 institutions.