Online activist Aaron Swartz indicted for data theft from M.I.T.

An online activist was charged Thursday in Boston over allegations he hacked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and stole more than 4 million articles from the academic archive JSTOR.

The charges against Aaron Swartz, 24, include computer fraud, wire fraud, criminal forfeiture and obtaining information from a protected computer, according to the New York Times. Swartz had been noted as a co-founder of the social news site Reddit - but this has been disputed by the sites founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman.

Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.

Massachusetts U.S. Attoey Carmen Ortiz said, 'Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars,” the Times reports.

Swartz is also the founder and director of Demand Progress, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for progressive policy online.

The group's executive director, David Segal, responded to Swartz's arrest with an online statement.

'This makes no sense,” he said. 'It's like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”

Segal said Swartz had cleared up the matter with JSTOR and that the archive 'asked the govement not to prosecute.”