Swartz had something else in mind it seems; just taking
the law into his own hands
I think this is really one of the core reasons so many hackers disagree with this lawyer mindset. A hacker or an entrepreneur is someone who breaks rules to create something. Innovation and consensus are antonyms, not synonyms. Innovation does not happen by committee. If you wait for a "democratic process" that is bought and rigged by the copyright maximalists, you will wait forever. The bold actions of individuals are the only way anything has ever changed for the better.
As for the fetishization of "democracy" in Kerr's post, sometimes elections produce good outcomes. But often the wisdom of crowds isn't so wise; I'd hate to have the value of the gravitational constant or the next CEO of Google determined by public plebiscite. And many times, perhaps most times, the crowd votes after someone bold has already moved and shown the way. That's what Swartz was doing. What is legal and what is moral are not the same thing, and all those who argue "it's bad, but it was the law" are the moral inverses of Swartz: "it's good even if it's not the law".
As for the fetishization of "democracy" in Kerr's post, sometimes elections produce good outcomes. But often the wisdom of crowds isn't so wise; I'd hate to have the value of the gravitational constant or the next CEO of Google determined by public plebiscite. And many times, perhaps most times, the crowd votes after someone bold has already moved and shown the way. That's what Swartz was doing. What is legal and what is moral are not the same thing, and all those who argue "it's bad, but it was the law" are the moral inverses of Swartz: "it's good even if it's not the law".