Have Questions For MIT's Aaron Swartz Review? 175
theodp writes "Explaining that it believes 'the most important questions are the ones that will come from the MIT community,' MIT announced that it won't be accepting questions from outsiders for its President-ordered 'review' of the events that preceded the suicide of Aaron Swartz. But if you feel the 25 questions asked thus far don't cover all the bases, how about posting additional ones in the comments where MIT'ers can see them and perhaps repost to the MIT site some that they feel deserve answers? Do it soon — MIT President Rafael Reif will be returning any day now from Davos, where he sat on a panel with Bill Gates, who coincidentally once found himself in hot water over unauthorized computer access. 'They weren't sure how mad they should be about it,' Gates explained in a 2010 interview, 'because we hadn't really caused any damage, but it wasn't a good thing. Computer hacking was literally just being invented at the time, and so fortunately we got off with a bit of a warning.'"
Related: text has been published of public domain advocate Carl Malamud's remarks at Swartz's memorial. Quoting: "Aaron wasn't a lone wolf, he was part of an army, and I had the honor of serving with him for a decade. Aaron was part of an army of citizens that believes democracy only works when the citizenry are informed, when we know about our rights—and our obligations."
Is MIT's publically funded research public ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is MIT's publically funded research public ? (Score:4, Informative)
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Sorry, but either your logic is broken or your head is deep within an asshole (perhaps your own). The Government funds research, meaning (possibly) your tax dollars pays for the materials, people, etc.. etc.. to produce something. Obviously this does not make those people working on the project available as items to the public. You don't have the right to make Johnny Scientist fold your laundry or tutor you in Science-y things.
What the tax payers that funded the project should have access too is: The re
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What steps has MIT taken to assure that publically funded research is published to the taxpaying public?
All NIH funded research is freely accessible to the public no more than 12 months after private publication. [nih.gov] NSF requires something similar-but-different: that the raw data be made available for no more than incremental cost. The same publishers who run the biological journals run the non-bio journals, so similar arrangements could be made, but NSF has not forced it. Of course, the NIH budget is something like 5x the NSF budget (which is, in turn, about 3x DARPA), so the NIH policy means that the great
sheesh (Score:3, Insightful)
When someone walks in off the street, enters a wiring closet, and plugs a computer into your network you call the cops. What is so hard to understand about that? Swartz wasn't a student, faculty, or a guest of MIT.
When someone repeatedly tries to get around the blocks you erect specifically for them and keeps screwing with your systems, you don't just suck it up and waste your time and money by continuing to play "whack a mole," you call the cops.
That's why we have laws on the books for dealing with people who pull stunts like Swartz. The penalties range from probation to years in jail to handle the spectrum of severity. Swartz's crime wasn't that severe and he had no record so he was facing the small end of potential sentence.
There was no issue with prosecuting the guy until victims found out that it was going to cause a lot of bad publicity. That's what this is all about. A bunch of folks with bully pulpits really liked the guy and are upset that he killed himself so they are looking for someone to blame.
Theres nobody to blame but Swartz. He is the one that pulled the stunt. He is the one that was very sick. Blaming the prosecutors, JSTOR, or MIT for Swartz's death is simply revolting.
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Swartz's crime wasn't that severe and he had no record so he was facing the small end of potential sentence.?
35 years in federal prison is the small end?
Theres nobody to blame but Swartz. He is the one that pulled the stunt. He is the one that was very sick. Blaming the prosecutors, JSTOR, or MIT for Swartz's death is simply revolting.
Anyone who thinks that 35 years is anywhere near to appropriate for what Swartz did is far, far sicker than Swartz. And far, far more dangerous too.
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I see you still haven't educated yourself on the federal sentencing guidelines or how criminal sentencing works in general. Nor have you read the interviews with Swartz attorneys where they explain he was being offered four months to plea guilty, the prosecutor was threatening to ask for seven years if they went to trial, and the defense's belief that the judge would give probation, which is a possibility under the sentencing guidelines for people like Swartz with no prior convictions. Quoting the press r
Re:sheesh (Score:4, Insightful)
Swartz had a right to a trial. It is disingenuous to claim that the punishment was proportional to the crime if he had to give up his right to a trial to receive that punishment. No, it's not disingenuous, it's an outright lie.
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No, 35 years was a very real possibility for Swartz. None of the promises the prosecutor made were binding. And the judge could decide to be an asshole if he wanted.
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No, 35 years was a very real possibility for Swartz.
It's not. It's a media figure concocted using a formula that has no relationship to how sentences are actually computed. He realistically faced up to 7 years in prison if tried and convicted. The offered plea bargains of 4 months and judge's discretion (max 6 months) is low if the prosecutor though they had any shot of getting close to 7 years. (Or, the prosecutor thought they had a fairly weak case. Given the evidence, I doubt that.)
And the judge could decide to be an asshole if he wanted.
Which Swartz's lawyers would eat up.
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The truth is that the US justice system's response to copyright violations is currently all over the place, and it is entirely reasonable to expect Aaron to have been sent to jail for most of his life.
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He was offered 6 months - likely in a minimum security summer camp, like Martha Stewart and other "white collar" criminals have served in.
Again, Swartz has a right to a trial. Could he exercise that right and receive 6 months? No? Then the 6 month offer is irrelevant.
Don't be disingenuous - he would've served 6 months
Not if he exercised his right to a trial. How is that so hard to understand?
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The "right to a trial" doesn't guarantee you "the right to a specific outcome that you want"
Obviously not. But when you exercise your right to a trial and lose, you shouldn't get 10 times the sentence. Guilty is guilty, and should receive the same sentence either way. Anything else is punishing people for exercising their rights. Plea bargains are barbaric.
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Nobodys said you aren't a snobby asshole, eager to tell others how they should be martyrs.
4 felony convictions that are batshit irrelevant to cooking or housekeeping, just as Michael Vick's felonies wer
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From a wiring closet? Wow. I want to put wi-fi routers all over the place. For when I go on lunch break.
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Here's the thing: breaking and entering wasn't the crime he was being charged with. If he had been charged with that, checking the Massachusetts sentencing guidelines, the worst he could have gotten was 12 months. More likely, he'd get a fine or probation.
The crime the federal prosector decided to charge him with was "unauthorized access of a computer system". However, MIT has an open-access network policy, allowing anyone to use their network, and he had a legal account with JSTOR through his status
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Theres nobody to blame but Swartz. He is the one that pulled the stunt. He is the one that was very sick. Blaming the prosecutors, JSTOR, or MIT for Swartz's death is simply revolting.
Lets say the teenager who lives next door, keeps entering your yard and swimming in your pool. You've done everything to prevent it, and finally give up and call the cops.After calling the cops, you talk to the father of the teenager. The father convinces you he will punish the kid, and it will stop. So you tell the cops, nevermind, you don't want to press charges.
But the DA decides to make an example of this teenager and attempts to sentence him to 20 years from multiple counts of trespassing. The DA con
As an MITian - Could MIT have saved his life? (Score:1)
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What divident should taxpayers expect when... (Score:5, Interesting)
How does public money support private industry? (Score:5, Insightful)
define "Automated Access" (Score:3, Insightful)
All access to computers is automated. I push a button or move a mouse it becomes that is interperted by the device interface which becomes a coded interaction moveing through layers of interface code to an application. The application then does something with the input given it. It is all automated. What happens depends on all the layers.
Browsers fetch all the data refered to on a "page" this can result in data fetches from 100's of places. I doubt any modern page is composed of data from a single fetch.
The "page" displayed by a browser is composed of data from many sources. Your browser does this automatically following a ruleset built into it. How is this structurally different from a automated fetcher which follows its own rule set and gets data from many sources? The difference is not the automation of multiple fetches, it is not the interaction with the human, the only different is the ruleset used to do the collecting of data.
My question is how do they describe how one automated rule set, say that used by a browser, is legal, while another ruleset, say that used by a sweeper is illegal? Both are fully automated fetch processes. They just have different rule-sets.
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What if he had composed a single page with references to all the documents. The page could have been local or anywhere in the world. Then used a regular web browser with the feature "open all referred pages". There would not even be a programmed access issue in the case, it would have been the ruleset/functionality of a normal web browser that he leveraged. There would be no malicious ruleset abuse. Just levaraging of the normal process.
This is the way the internet works. He broke nothing, he misused nothin
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Then after some time, he would've been cut off, which is what happened.
It's the part where you repeatedly and knowingly circumvent the measures they're using to cut you off where you really tread into dangerous territory.
Obvious questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't an external independent body be doing the reviewing (investigating)?
Isn't there a clear and obvious conflict of interest in you reviewing yourself?
Did anyone have less web security than MIT? (Score:2, Interesting)
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MIT made a choice to have an open wifi network, for use by guests. It wasn't open due to incompetence or ineptitude.
Gov funding? (Score:1)
Have any government funding/grants been tied (spoken or implied) to MITs continued charges agains Aaron Swartz?
Can someone from MIT please post this (Score:3, Interesting)
How about this:
The "wiring closet" where Aaron's laptop was connected to the switch, was also used by a homeless man to store his property.
If MIT knowingly permitted the homeless man to use the closet, why would MIT or the DOJ prosecute/persecute Aaron for similarly storing his laptop there?
If Aaron reasonably concluded that the use of the wiring closet was NOT off-limits, how did this not factor into the decision(s) by all parties involved in indicting Aaron? Did MIT not participate in review of the prosecution, or were the MIT or DOJ representatives unaware of the (unlocked and occupied) closet factor?
If the closet was unlocked, and used by non-MIT individuals with MITs knowledge and permission, how does connecting a laptop to a switch IN THE SAME CLOSET rise to the level of "unauthorized"?
If I am somewhere that I am allowed to be, and there is a network port or network switch in front of me, it is reasonable to conclude that connecting a laptop to that port or switch is permitted.
Any "authorized" or "unauthorized" would, at that point, be strictly a logical, rather than physical, issue - exactly the same as accessing a server over wifi.
And, given that the wifi usage was open, and wired connections did not require authentication, again, how did that rise to "unauthorized"?
Whose decision was it, and how was that decision validated?
Did the person making that decision do so in a manner that exceeded his/her authority, or in a manner inconsistent with PUBLISHED policies?
A published policy may hold more legal weight, than the interpretation of an individual if the two are in any manner inconsistent.
internal versus external hacks treated differently (Score:4, Interesting)
Biggest question that has not been asked: (Score:2, Flamebait)
What steps has MIT taken to to ensure that the something like this will never happen again?
And, in case there is any confusion, I am not referring to steps to protect data, but instead to keep a student from being persecuted by federal authorities with the full support of the university.
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What steps has MIT taken to to ensure that the something like this will never happen again?
And, in case there is any confusion, I am not referring to steps to protect data, but instead to keep a student from being persecuted by federal authorities with the full support of the university.
He was not an MIT student or affiliated with MIT in any capacity. MIT has no obligation to protect a physical and electronic trespasser.
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What steps has MIT taken to to ensure that the something like this will never happen again?
And, in case there is any confusion, I am not referring to steps to protect data, but instead to keep a student from being persecuted by federal authorities with the full support of the university.
He was not an MIT student or affiliated with MIT in any capacity. MIT has no obligation to protect a physical and electronic trespasser.
Okay, change the word student to person.
Slumber (Score:2)
Damage control? (Score:5, Interesting)
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1- publicly funded research should not copyright protected. Have a university-wide policy for that. Easily enforced by tenure and promotion committees.
2- to enable 1., get together with other top universities and start running a federation of open-access journals that are free to publish in and freely available to the public. Have your librarians run them.
My question: (Score:1)
Would you be supporting the DoJ to prosecute students who unlock their phones without carrier consent starting tomorrow?
14 days prison sentence and a felony on their record for the plea bargain. Sounds about fair right?
Eating Their Cake and Having It Too (Score:4, Insightful)
For me, the main thing I want MIT to do is to take a clear institutional position on the following points:
1. Do they believe that Aaron Swartz was indeed guilty of the felony counts he was charged with?
This question is important because it deals with the plea bargain. Swartz should only have taken the plea bargain if he was indeed guilty, legally. If not, the correct thing to do was stand trial and contest the case in court. The prosecutor, and her husband, tout the plea bargain as though that dispenses of the 35-50 year prison sentence, but if the charges were "trumped up" then it would be morally wrong to expect someone to accept a plea bargain to dispense with them.
In this case, "We don't know" is the same position as "No," because only if they believed he was definitely guilty, should he have taken the plea bargain. Plea bargains are only for guilty people, not innocent or possibly innocent ones.
I don't expect MIT to give a clear answer to this, but I can dream.
(This also doesn't determine whether Swartz should indeed have taken the plea bargain. That depends on whether he, himself, thought he was legally guilty or not, and we can't ask him about that. )
2. The next question goes beyond the legal dimension and to the moral dimension:
Does MIT, as an institution, believe that Swartz's crimes morally merited 35-50 years in a Federal Prison?
This has nothing to do with the letter of the law as written. MIT can take the position that these are good laws well applied and that if Swartz were found guilty a lengthy prison sentence was indeed appropriate. Or they can take the position that these were bad laws or that they were badly applied. In other words, they can take the position that he was morally in the right, but legally he was in trouble.
It also has nothing to do with what he would likely actually have gotten if he had been found guilty. Presumably the judge would have given a lighter sentence, but I believe the judge could have given him the entire 35-50 years. It was a possible outcome of a trial, therefore that's the baseline. The reason why I put "35-50" is because I've heard those numbers from different sources, some give a max of 35 and some give a max of 50. If MIT likes they can even say, "We believe Swartz deserved 35 years in prison but that 50 would be too much," as ridiculous as I consider that position to be.
Oh, and I encourage them to explain what punishment Swartz morally deserved for what he did, what kind of prison time, community service, fines or probation they think would be just. Obviously, they had the chance, before Swartz solved the problem with his belt, to take a position as the case was ongoing. I'd like them to take a clear and unambiguous position, now.
This is important. MIT is revered as having a "freewheeling" culture. This culture has enabled it to attract top talent from all over. People considering it as a school have the right to know it's moral position on the use of laws to prosecute "hacking" like what Aaron was doing.
Oh, I've quoted Aaron's family in my signature. MIT probably thinks that quote is unfair. Answering these questions would help to determine that.
MIT - help mod the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? (Score:2)
The MIT name has a lot of 'brand', in industry, in academia, and even with some Congress People. If MIT could help start a movement to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to make it less draconian and Stalinistic, would it do it?
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Shut up. He is a hero and we should not only insist he not face consequences, but we should reward him. If Aaron had hacked my PC to get my financial records, I would have thanked him and sent him a nice key lime pie. You sir are a communist or a capitalist and shouldn't be trusted.
Re:My Question (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup. Basically you have a child who was socialized to believe that as long as he felt he was right, his actions are justified and would not carry consequences. Even if he is morally right with his belief that this information SHOULD be free (not saying he is), he either has to comply with the laws or be willing to suffer the consequences to sand up for his beliefs.
Aaron is not a hero. Faced with adversity, he took the coward's way out.
Re:My Question / Suicide is not for cowards (Score:3, Interesting)
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Oh dear God, are you serious? Suicide is bravery? I will echo the AC's sentiment when I say that you and the mod who voted you up should seek professional help.
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Oh dear God, are you serious? Suicide is bravery?
Clinging to a life with zero quality, no matter the cost is bravery?
Are you serious?
Protip: It isn't. Terror is not the prime motivator for bravery.
And before anyone starts with the, "selfish!" bullshit: Who's really selfish? The person who chooses the time, place and circumstances of their demise, or the whining bitches who are only concerned with how they themselves feel?
Re:My Question / Suicide is not for cowards (Score:4, Insightful)
Clinging to a life with zero quality? Aren't you being a bit dramatic about Aaron? Seriously? Or are you mistaking my argument for saying that suicide is NEVER good? If so, you need to learn about context.
Re:My Question / Suicide is not for cowards (Score:5, Interesting)
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He was originally faced with 6 months. The 30 years was not a realistic sentence.
If he couldn't handle being incarcerated, then perhaps he should have complied with the first request to stop accessing the network.
He is no hero. Sorry.
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According to your logic, any street protester should be ready for 2 years of daily waterboarding from the FBI.
CIA. I know I'm being a pedant, but I think blame should be placed on the right party.
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No, but sacrifice is.
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If the term "bravery" gets your panties in a bunch, let's put it this way: it takes a lot more guts to kill yourself than it does to surrender to authority. If you have trouble accepting this, you're probably lacking in the imagination department.
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And it takes more to fight. Killing yourself because the fight is hard and are sure you are going to loose is not an act of bravery. It is an act of spite or cowardice.
Civil disobedience often involves going to jail. If you cannot deal with the persecution involved with challenging authority, don't do it. Our actions have consequences. Some are just, some not. If you want to challenge injustice, you have to be willing to put yourself through it first.
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I tend to agree. It takes bravery to stare into the void and then decide to throw yourself into it, but that opinion seems to 'offend' these people (yeah whatever).
Let's be honest; 'Blah blah bullshit coward's way out blah blah Martin Luther King said Words blah blah total coward blah blah blah what a pansy he probably loved cocks up his bum as well...' is just a thinly veiled way of crowing over someone's suicide. So I'm confident that these posters dislike him because of his association with this or that,
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<<Faced with adversity, he took the coward's way out.>> A coward would simply go along with it and rot in jail and come out a bitter old man.
It seems to me Aaron is one of those very few who are very brilliant and has point of view not many of us are aware of. I've not followed this case in detail, it seems the prosecutor was out for blood and Aaron faced with onslaught of DOJ on a grand scale (can be extremely scary for a young person), and having nobody to go to for advice (who can you do refer to when you are the smartest person). Was he bipolar or on the edge? Many bipolars are phenomenally brilliant but can't cope in a world of idiots.
Thi
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Oh christ, when I'm looking to kill myself, please don't come to my aid.
Re:My Question (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe he was a hero. Not for this.
However, upon consideration, I don't think he was a coward either. What happened is that with his clinical depression he couldn't handle the stresses of civil disobedience (ie. jail time if caught). It was probably not a good idea to involve himself because of his condition, but I imagine he probably had little idea of exactly what sort of pain he would call down on himself.
It is sad that this happened, but he might have just as easily ended up committing suicide later anyway. Depression is a real condition, and cowardice really doesn't come into it, any more than PTSD is cowardice.
This should be a wake up call to those who believe that civil disobedience is some sort of get of of jail free card. It isn't. It is a statement and an exposition of the injustices of a situation. In that event, one must expect, at the very least, to have injustice visited upon them when fighting it.
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I like your post and think it is the best put synopsis of the situation, including my own.
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He did what he thought was right regardless of the depression, and that takes guts and determination. He presumably thought he could take whatever the authorities threw at him, and either underestimated it (the prosecutor was piling on disproportionate pressure, AFAIK), or his ability to resist. In any case, I have to admire him
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He is a hero precisely because most of us don't do that, and wouldn't do that. The knight who slays a dragon is a hero for doing what must be done for the good of all, when others do not or cannot.
But Aaron was not a very successful hero. Many of JSTOR's documents ar
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Quite possibly. The immense uncertainty itself could have easily taken a greater toll in the short term than the actual long term prospect of 6 months or 12 months or 24 months in jail.
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Faced with adversity, he took the coward's way out
With all due respect, you're a sick fuck, and represent everything that's wrong with America these days. Most of the rest of us are actually sick of sociopaths like you, and of the damage people like you do, and it won't be long until everyone rises up against the sociopaths.
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Yup, it is. I wouldn't have said a word if folks weren't trying to turn him into a hero and if folks weren't crying about folks enforcing the law.
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Pretty sure those people saw him as a hero before he committed suicide. Commiting suicide only made him a martyr.
The whole spiel about the folks "doing their job" is utter BS. If these folks felt so strongly about the law, they should be prosecuting every person who unlocks a phone without carrier authorization and they most definetly should be going after those teenagers who drugged their parents for extended internet access. But going after those people wouldn't offer the same level of "prestige" as it wo
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I am not sure that is true. You will never see my name in the news, but I have spent and continue to spend a significant part of my life investing in those that others would not. I don't care to be famous, but for those around me I want to make a positive impact.
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MLK was fortunate he lived in a country where and at a time when the rule of law was respected.
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Yea he was fortunate up until the time he got assassinated...
I think history pretty much invalidates you assertion.
That is not the only legitimate approach (Score:3)
I have argued before that this is only one kind of civil disobedience. The context of MLK's quote and actions is important: he is laying out a strategy and criticizing the actions of his opponents.
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He did nothing wrong. He put some info out that was already public. Nothing, absolutely nothing wrong. And keep in mind he didnt get to trial. We dont really know if he wouldve won or not.
The thing is, if my parents told me they would have to sell their house to help pay for my legal fees because a butthurt-cause-of-wikileaks Obama prosecutor sees Voldemort in any computer-literate person doing what is right without hurting anyone or actually breaking any reasonable law, I would probably consider suicide as
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Please don't propagate this fairytale meme. MLK said a lot of good things, but this is ridiculous. If you're going to break an unjust law, always make sure that you cannot get caught. This is important, so I'll repeat it. Do not get caught. Unjust laws must be broken again, and again, and again. You cannot do that if you're in prison. Only those who aren't c
Re:My Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Hm. This seems to be modded insughtful. It's full of hyperbole.
Why should we feel sorry for a criminal who
Firstly he wasn't a criminal until ried in a court of law.
Secondly you say criminal like it's automatically a bad thing. Criminality is orthogonal from morality. They line up more than 50% of the time in a sane society, but there is nothing wrong with being a criminal. You've probably committed 5 felonies today unwittingly.
who chose to commit suicide rather than accept a a six month plea bargain for breaking and entering and accessing systems he shouldn't be accessing?
Plea bargaining is a fundementally broken system. So, basically, the prosecutor and police lie to load up as many false and inflated accusations as possible in order to bully someone into accepting something else. Basically, by accepting he would be tacitly admitting that the prosecutors were right. He chose to take the moral high ground, and you call *that* cowardly?
I mean our heroes are allowed to do whatever they want without consequence, right?
What's that even supposed to mean?
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1) It was modded down to -1 at one point.
2) He stopped the trial by killing himself
3) The facts that are substantiated demonstrate quite clearly that the accusations are not made up. Even what Aaron proudly admitted to state that he is at least substantially guilty of what he was being accused of.
4) It meant exactly what it said - there is a group who thinks Aaron should have been allowed to do whatever the hell he wanted and it is the authorities who are the bad guys. And this group is quite vocal.
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Criminality is not the same thing as morality. I agree with you there.
But criminality is also not the same thing as court conviction. A person who commits crimes is a criminal even if he is never convicted or never caught. A court trial is just the best way we know to determine whether crimes have been committed.
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Those who criticize Aaron as illegal or wrong should realize that journal paywalls effectively exclude about 99% of the human race from much of the world's recent science, medicine, and academic scholarship. The authors and peer reviewers almost never get any part of this ill-acquired revenue that mainly feeds excessive corporate profits. Most of the creators want their work to be accessible to more people, but usually cannot make this happen.
And there is a good alternative available -- bundling publication
We're all Felons, Baby... (Score:2)
Re:My Question (Score:4, Informative)
Plus YEARS of probation.
Loss of the right to vote or carry a weapon.
Labeled as a felon for life.....
Yeah, it was just six months, what was his problem?
He committed no crime. He checked out too many library books. That should have stayed between him and the library (JSTOR) The library even asked the prosecutors to NOT pursue charges. So, yes, you are a troll. There was nothing insightful or intelligent about your rhetorical question. Here is a question for you.
Where were you when they were teaching concepts like compassion and fairness?
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Aaron knew what he was doing was a crime. That's why he bought a "ghost laptop" to use for his plan instead of his personal one. That's why he went to MIT and used their access to JSTOR instead of just using his regular access at Harvard. That's why he provided a false name when he registered on MITs wireless network instead of his own. That's why he covered his face with his bike helmet when he went to retrieve his laptop. That's why he ran when he saw the cops.
Every day, wife beaters are prosecuted d
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Law and Disorder (Score:2)
How about they bring back 'Law and Order' with a few twists to make it more honest?
1. They add a 'Final Act' to each show where the accused - innocent or not - goes out and files for bankruptcy.
2. They have a running dollar total in th
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Interesting point I should have made. Thank you for doing so.
Another thing Aaron would have likely lost is his right to use a computer. At least for a while.
For many geeks that might as well be a lack of air. I haven't read that his sentence would include that,
but past charges like this have carried sentences that included serious restrictions on computer
and even phone usage. The more I think abo
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Re:My Question (Score:4, Insightful)
>> Why should we feel sorry for a criminal who chose to commit suicide rather than accept a a six month plea bargain for breaking and entering and accessing systems he shouldn't be accessing?
>> Oh, and please mod me down. I am seriously trolling here, and it couldn't possibly be a legitimate question. I mean our heroes are allowed to do whatever they want without consequence, right?
Part of the reason he commited suicide is probably because... on this world, the likes of you.. exist. Sometimes it's really hard to deal with that fact.
If he's gonna be branded a coward, it's only because he couldn't or didn't want to it anymore. This what he did is seriously wrong, but not from your standard stupid moral ideas, it's because the society in which we all live provide environment in which people could become desperate enough to do suicides.
So you're the criminal, Mr. AC, and all the other people that shaped this reality to be ... this. What it is now.
Where people with good intentions, not selfish, with a vision passion and will, end up comitting suicide.
And eventually, history will remember people like you to be no more then traitors of life and justice. For now, enjoy your "5 minutes" and go f y' self.
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Why should we feel sorry for a criminal who chose to commit suicide rather than accept a a six month plea bargain for breaking and entering and accessing systems he shouldn't be accessing?
Your question has nothing to do with this discussion, as Aaron Swartz wasn't a criminal. A criminal is someone who's been convicted of a crime. He wasn't.
He was accused under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of "stealing" documents he had legal access to. Had this gone to court, I have no doubt that he would have been found not guilty.
Get your facts straight, turn in your geek card, and get off of slashdot, moron.
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Perhaps I didn't state my objection to the OPs comments accurately, then, because our differences are not just semantic.
I do not believe any crime occurred. I think he was falsely accused of committing crimes that he in fact did not commit. I believe his actions were entirely legal.
The question of "Why should we feel sorry for him?" is to me crystal clear: We should feel sorry for him because he was the victim of a grave injustice.
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From the details given by most of the articles detailing the events leading up to his arrest, I would have to disagree with your assertion.
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Notice how you're calling him a criminal, when he hasn't been convicted of anything? Do you feel bad about that, or do you think this was a cut and dry case and he was clearly guilty of _______ (what was he charged with, anyway? breaking into the wiring closet, sure, but wire fraud? what the hell is that? how is downloading JSTOR articles wire fraud? please, enlighten me, since you seem to know he's guilty of that already.)
You make it sound like the easiest thing in the world, admitting guilt to a crime in
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He had a lawfully acquired account on the system he was downloading from. He had a lawfully acquired account on the network he was using. He didn't "break and enter" anything - at most, he may have violated rules on the amount of downloading permitted. Neither JSTOR (the company from which he was downloading) nor MIT (the university whose network he was using to do the downloading) asked for charges to be pressed - the prosecutor decided to do that on his own.
In point of fact, we don't know what theory
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Petition (Score:2)
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