Government formally drops charges against Aaron Swartz (ars technica)

Indeed there is progress— but please take care to not overstate it: You're talking about a _brand new_ program allows page-at-a-time access to works which are five years old and older, only in a subset of journals, only under a draconian terms of service, and subject to a substantial and easily hit rate-limit. You could, though somewhat uncharitably, call this a sales technique more than a real improvement to access. Though it is a real improvement, if a disappointing one.

Allowing the industry to move at its convince and by its own terms— if it even moves at all— is the kind of opportunity afforded by such harshness in the interest of preserving prohibitions which would otherwise be so easily eroded because of their fragility and obvious, to many, wrongness for society.