The JSTOR incident shone a light on the practices of JSTOR and journal publishers in general and highlighted just how restricted access is for the general public to research we have all either fully or partly paid for and we fully expect to be in the public domain.
Further, it created a martyr for the movement of open-sourcing articles and to be quite frank about it, the journal owners are now very afraid of their monopolies crumbling to this movement. They knew this day would come, but the speed with which this is gathering pace is terrifying.
I disagree. There is no single incident that caused everyone to love Open Access. Instead, over the last years librarians and activists have been slowly but steadily been making progress in this regard - without breaking the law or contracts.
No, I think it's just that you personally were more exposed to this debate because of that incident. The debate and the uprising have been going on ever since Patrick Brown and Michael Eisen started a petition in 2001 which eventually resulted in PLoS. Many people have been slow to follow them, for many reasons, but the movement has been growing ever since.
I agree that Aaron Swartz's actions have brought more attention to the issues, but I think MIT would object to you calling him "that MIT guy", since he was a fellow at Harvard, not MIT, at the time that he allegedly stuck his laptop in MIT's wiring closet; and the Institute has apparently at least cooperated in his prosecution, if not actively encouraged it.
Further, it created a martyr for the movement of open-sourcing articles and to be quite frank about it, the journal owners are now very afraid of their monopolies crumbling to this movement. They knew this day would come, but the speed with which this is gathering pace is terrifying.