A long-awaited report released Tuesday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that it made mistakes but engaged in no wrongdoing in the case of Aaron Swartz, a renowned programmer and charismatic technology activist who committed suicide in January while facing a federal trial on charges of hacking into the institute’s computer network.

 Mr. Swartz was arrested in January 2011 after having downloaded more than four million scholarly articles from the subscription-based online archive JSTOR; to gain access to M.I.T.'s network, he entered an unlocked closet in the basement of a campus building.

Mr. Swartz had long argued for public access to many kinds of important documents hidden behind walls of copyright. What he intended to do with the documents has not been established, but he was a co-author of a “guerrilla open-access manifesto” that stated, “We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.”

The criminal case drew worldwide attention, in part because Mr. Swartz was just 26 years old at the time of his death and because the maximum possible sentence, initially said to be more than 30 years, suggested prosecutorial bullying to critics of the case and illustrated the disparity between punishment for high-tech crimes and other offenses. (Negotiations had taken place for a sentence of less than a year but were no longer under way at the time of Mr. Swartz’s death.)

The report states that in Mr. Swartz’s case “M.I.T. missed an opportunity to demonstrate the leadership that we pride ourselves on,” based on its reputation as an institution known “for promoting open access to online information, and for dealing wisely with the risks of computer abuse.”

In a letter to students and faculty and staff members, the institute’s president, L. Rafael Reif applauded the “careful account” that he said set “the record straight by dispelling widely circulated myths.” The report, he said, “makes clear that M.I.T. did not ‘target’ Aaron Swartz, we did not seek federal prosecution, punishment or jail time, and we did not oppose a plea bargain.”

He also said he read the report “with a tremendous sense of sorrow” over the pain to Mr. Swartz’s family and friends, and to the Internet community, which “lost an exceptional leader.”

“Even those of us who never knew him,” he wrote, “mourn the loss of someone so young and so brilliant.”

The 180-page report was written by a panel led by Hal Abelson, a professor of computer science and a well-regarded activist on the open-access issues championed by Mr. Swartz. The panel interviewed about 50 people and reviewed 10,000 pages of documents.

It will almost certainly not satisfy those who have argued that M.I.T. could have done much more to end the prosecution of a young man whose promise was great and whose actions caused no damage to the institution’s computer network or to the database of scholarly articles. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Mr. Swartz’s partner at the time of his death, called the report a “whitewash.”

Robert Swartz, Mr. Swartz’s father, said Professor Abelson had “done a good job collecting and presenting the facts,” but he had no compliments for M.I.T. or its role. “M.I.T. claimed it was neutral,” he said, “and it was not — and besides, should have advocated on Aaron’s behalf.”

The report, he said, “is an important step in understanding what went wrong in the handling of Aaron’s case.”

He said that what happens next would show whether an institution devoted to learning has learned anything from the tragedy.

“What’s important is M.I.T.'s response to the report,” he said, adding that he looks forward to working with Mr. Reif “to drive real structural change at the university to make sure that this kind of tragedy never happens again.”

 nytimes