A Colombian student is facing a custodial sentence for sharing an academic article.
According to the EFF, graduate student Diego Gomez is facing four to eight years in prison for sharing an academic article on the Internet. He wasn’t making a personal profit from sharing the article—he simply intended for other scientists like him to be able to access and cite this scientific research.
A couple of years ago, he came across a paper that was especially useful to his field work and he later shared this research online on the site, Scribd. The author of the paper then filed a lawsuit over the “violation of [his] economic and related rights.” Under the allegations of this lawsuit, Gomez could be sent to prison for up to eight years and face crippling monetary fines.