He fell foul of the law again in 2011, after attaching a laptop computer inside the MIT network (easily achieved as, although not a member of MIT, he was, at 24, already a grand old man of computing) and downloading around 4 million journal articles from JSTOR, the access-protected academic document storage system.

FORBES: Open Data Activist Aaron Swartz Dies Aged 26: 'Uncompromising, Reckless and Delightful'

With the new system the organisation could turn off access to that document for every user, and I would be unable to open it.

BBC: Pencil and paper

The system proposed by Microsoft keeps the access rights for a document on a central server, so the permissions can be changed at a later date.

BBC: Pencil and paper