Calls to Action on the Fifth Anniversary of the Death of Aaron Swartz (eff.org) 151
On the fifth anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz, EFF activist Elliot Harmon posted a remembrance:
When you look around the digital rights community, it's easy to find Aaron's fingerprints all over it. He and his organization Demand Progress worked closely with EFF to stop SOPA. Long before that, he played key roles in the development of RSS, RDF, and Creative Commons. He railed hard against the idea of government-funded scientific research being unavailable to the public, and his passion continues to motivate the open access community. Aaron inspired Lawrence Lessig to fight corruption in politics, eventually fueling Lessig's White House run... It's tempting to become pessimistic in the face of countless threats to free speech and privacy. But the story of the SOPA protests demonstrates that we can win in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
He shares a link to a video of Aaron's most inspiring talk, "How We Stopped SOPA," writing that "Aaron warned that SOPA wouldn't be the last time Hollywood attempted to use copyright law as an excuse to censor the Internet... 'The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared... We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.'"
On the anniversary of Aaron's death, his brother Ben Swartz, an engineer at Twitch, wrote about his own efforts to effect change in ways that would've made Aaron proud, while Aaron's mother urged calls to Congress to continue pushing for reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
And there were countless other remembrances on Twitter, including one fro Cory Doctorow, who tweeted a link to Lawrence Lessig's analysis of the prosecution. And Lessig himself marked the anniversary with several posts on Twitter. "None should rest," reads one, "for still, there is no peace."
He shares a link to a video of Aaron's most inspiring talk, "How We Stopped SOPA," writing that "Aaron warned that SOPA wouldn't be the last time Hollywood attempted to use copyright law as an excuse to censor the Internet... 'The enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared... We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.'"
On the anniversary of Aaron's death, his brother Ben Swartz, an engineer at Twitch, wrote about his own efforts to effect change in ways that would've made Aaron proud, while Aaron's mother urged calls to Congress to continue pushing for reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
And there were countless other remembrances on Twitter, including one fro Cory Doctorow, who tweeted a link to Lawrence Lessig's analysis of the prosecution. And Lessig himself marked the anniversary with several posts on Twitter. "None should rest," reads one, "for still, there is no peace."
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He was a coward and a thief. He's burning if hell right now if you believe in that sorta thing.
And you're alone and shivering under a bridge in midwinter, reviled by all. Which one is the loser here?
Re: Meanwhile On Reddit (Score:2)
He was a righteous man, and a hero to many. Whereas you are but a stain on the floor of a public restroom.
Once you control information... (Score:5, Insightful)
...you control the people.
Information wants to be free = people want to be free, this is what we fight for. Those who are in control, wants to have MORE control. You're always guilty unless proven innocent in the eyes of those who have everything to hide fro you. A thief thinks everyone steals.
Once information is free - those in power realize they must abide by those who hired them to do the job of government in the first place - we the people did, we are their entire purpose, not the other way around. Freedom of information means that no one is safe if they do wrong, because it becomes hard to hide from the general population, and that's the way it should me.
Freedom = to be free, free from tyranny and control.
Re: Once you control information... (Score:2)
Huh? Information freedom is not a Dimmocrat/Repuglican partisan issue. Go back to Reddit.
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Information wants to be free = people want to be free
Fine. Give us your real name, social security number, your bank information, and your credit card numbers. Someone will be along to free you of your money in a few moments.
Re: Once you control information... (Score:2)
EFF and other hi tech digital privacy fighters do not realize couple of a ver6 simple things.
They are not in power, that makes their movement a subject of Lenin's definition of revolutionary situation: it happens when three conditions are met: the ones in power can't rule as before, the ones oppressed can't live as before and, finally, presence of organized disciplined group of accltivists ("The Party")
None of these even close to reality.
The reality is that we live in the times when the government has maxim
Re: Once you control information... (Score:2)
Yet the United States is flirting with complete economic collapse, and China has very serious internal security, unity, and stability issues.
It's all propaganda now (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone else may have agendas and fail in their full diligence, but Fox fails INTENTIONALLY since its inception
If you claim Fox News is propaganda, without saying CNN is propaganda, MSNBC is propaganda, the NYT is propaganda, then how can we respect your hyper-partisan views?
Here's a hint: It's all propaganda now. Most journalism now is driving you to think a certain way, providing facts that fit a narrative and omitting ones that do not.
Until you realize that you yourself are just another tool of propaganda by denouncing a single source and implying the others are reliable.
P.S. Fox News was not any more designed as propaganda than any of the other news sources, it evolved like the rest of them to where we are now. To claim there is any difference between what Fox is doing and what CNN is doing is what I take exception at. You cannot label them differently.
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Sorry Kendall, you didn't read the link and didn't refute the fact that Fox News was deliberately conceived as a propaganda outlet from the inception. Facts bother you so much you run from them and play whataboutism to try to change the subject, and your only attack is the same as Trump's : Turn every accusation on the accusee. Unfortunately for you, CNN is far more factual than Fox, that's a studied and proven fact. Deal with it snowflake.
What matters is now, not then (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter to me what the origins may have been; it matters what things are.
I find it pretty stupid to judge the starting point of organizations that were founded decades ago against the more recent Fox News, which was formed when outlets were already turning partisan and was just a bit ahead of the curve.
I'm not dealing in whataboutism; I deal in simple hard truths. And that is that Fox News is no more partisan now than any major news outlet (except possibly the Wall St Journal).
I also find it tell
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If you claim Fox News is propaganda, without saying CNN is propaganda, MSNBC is propaganda, the NYT is propaganda, then how can we respect your hyper-partisan views?
By the way, pointing and yelling about something you are but accusing someone else of it doesn't make you any less so.
Fox news is utter junk, but not as bad as Breitbart.
Re: It's all propaganda now (Score:3)
Breitbart is openly very very political. But the quality of their writing is much higher than Fox News. The latter, like CNN and other bigmedia outlets on both sides of the left/right false divide, seems written for an audience of petulant toddlers.
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the quality of writing is a completely secondary concern to their blase treatment of facts and their shockingly poor record on corrections and clarifications.
Re: It's all propaganda now (Score:2)
If you want facts, why are you reading the news? There are so many good books available.
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If you want facts, why are you reading the news? There are so many good books available.
Books are not anything like as up to date as the news, books are not published on all aspects of the news and the only books publsihed with errata are technical books.
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Re: It's all propaganda now (Score:2)
By "center" you mean "authoritarian financialist consensus"?
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Ask yourself why the political left spent the last ~17 years screeching that anyone who doesn't believe the same stuff as them are "racists, sexists, homophobic, islamophobic" and have now moved onto labeling anyone who doesn't believe what they do, are "nazis"
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I don't like what Aaron did with that telecom room. That was sneaky and underhanded. However, universities using public tax money for research, then locking it away from tax payers behind paywalls is JUST as underhanded and sneaky. It is theft.
Re: Once you control information... (Score:2)
Suicide is honorable.
Re: Once you control information... (Score:1)
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." - Mao
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Remember this lack of due process (Score:5, Insightful)
When you think rape tribunals on college campuses are a good idea. Or accusing people of sex assault without trial ruins their careers.
Schwartz would have understood that. Knew what extreme ideology looked like.
Re:Remember this lack of due process (Score:4, Informative)
His refusal additionally makes sense in light of the fact that this was purposeful civil disobedience - all about making a point in the first place. Really, accepting any plea bargain would undermine that point, though his lawyer does say that they offered to accept a less severe bargain.
Again, the fact that all of this happened before trial is what the parent was talking about. "Due process" is perhaps a little nebulous, so you could say that he received some measure of that, but he never got his day in court and was never convicted.
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>The point behind Aaron's story is that he was ruined financially before he ever got to court, and the most lenient of the plea bargains that you mention required him to plead guilty to thirteen felonies and spend six months in jail.
The original indictment only specified 4 charges (1 count each for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, recklessly damaging a protected computer) and the US Attorney's office initially offered a 3 month stint in jail with a p
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Only an authoritarian dipshit would pretend pea deals are fair deals. If the p
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Because the worst Swartz was guilty of was trespassing. A six month sentence plus a felony record that would have saddled him for life was comple
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Or you could pull you head out of your authoritarian ass. A prosecutor hauls you in for a crime you didn't commit, and says if you don't take the plea deal he's going to send you to prison for decades. You will absolutely lose your job, your house, and custody of your kids. You really going to reject that plea deal, slick?
Didn't think so.
How WE stopped SOPA??! (Score:2, Insightful)
Please, you had Google, and other big money do the job. You're like those Taylor Camp hippies living "off the land" in Hawaii. Turns out they were collecting food stamps. You people stopped nothing! Popular movements without huge finance go nowhere. And besides, what have we gained? Sites are still being shut down and owners arrested everywhere. Bittorrent isn't working so well anymore. And Google is a filtering Nazi! Can't even find small clips. No, if you spent your time developing ad hoc real P2P network
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Re: Nothing but a common thief (Score:2)
Wait... "he got what was coming to him"? Are you saying the good people of Boston have errected a heroic statue of Schwartz in front of City Hall? I hadn't heard that, but it's good to know.
They could choose a better idol (Score:1, Flamebait)
He then ma
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He killed himself over three fucking months in some minimum security camp fed 'prison'? What a fucking PUSSY.
Re: Schwartz wasn't killed by stupid computer laws (Score:2)
Coerced false confessions FTW! Feed the Gulag!
Re:2018 and swartz (Score:4, Insightful)
year of the lunix desktop?
Year of suicide prevention. Aaron Schwartz unfortunately committed suicide. People who commit suicide mostly do so in order to end their own suffering. The reality however is that this does not lower the total amount of suffering in the world. Instead, their family and friends will inherent their suffering, thus any suicide will only increase the total amount of suffering in the world. Ergo: the act of suicide is probably the most egoistic act in the world: to end ones own perceived suffering resulting in an increased amount of suffering in others.
Suicide awareness is more important. The national suicide prevention hotline can be found at 1-800-273-8255.
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:1)
No one really believes he did that giving the continuing pattern of suicide amoung those fighting for privacy causes but good thing you folks at Three Letter stopped by to ambiguate.
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Aaron Swartz was a crook stealing computer time. He was facing conviction and was too much of a pussy to take it like a man,
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:1)
So what you're saying is, all real men support coerced false confession and state-sponsored rape?
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>to end ones own perceived suffering resulting in an increased amount of suffering in others.
"perceived?" Are you saying his suffering was not as real as his family's suffering? I am curious as to how you measure suffering, as you assert that the total amount of suffering does not go down. What instruments do you use? How are they calibrated?
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:2, Insightful)
Pls shut the fuck up you and shove your puritanical preaching up your asshole. My grandfather committed suicide after a long cancer bout because he just couldn't take it anymore even though the doctors wanted to keep him alive, to pad tgeir wallets another year or two. His wife and children were sad, but happy for him and relieved. He went through hell.
No one independent of my direct aid, and I mean no one, is entitled to my presence or that I live my life for them. It's my life, not yours.
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My grandfather committed suicide after a long cancer
Which is sad, and should have been unnecessary. Civilized countries offer alternative solutions in the form of euthanasia.
No one independent of my direct aid, and I mean no one, is entitled to my presence or that I live my life for them. It's my life, not yours.
And that's not what I'm saying. All I am saying is that instead of one person having a bad time, after a suicide a lot of people have to live with losing someone they love.
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:4, Insightful)
Euthanasia is nothing more than state sponsored suicide. To try to cloak it in anytbing else is to say suicide is ok.
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Euthanasia is nothing more than state sponsored suicide. To try to cloak it in anytbing else is to say suicide is ok.
This is not true at all. Euthanasia, by definition, has nothing to do with state sponsorship.
Let's take the human factor out of it. When a vet has to euthanize a dog...is the state paying for it? No. How about a horse? No? Dr. Kevorkian's patients...did the state pay for any of those? No? Hm. But they were all cases of euthanasia. Even if a country were to subsidize it (directly or indirectly) that does not change the meaning of the term, any more than a European country having state-sponsored col
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:5, Informative)
Your life is not your own but a gift from God whether you choose to believe that or not.
How would that make it not mine? When someone gives me a gift for Christmas, or my birthday, that gift is mine. If I want to pitch it into the fireplace, I'm free to do so. Nobody who gives a gift would insist that they still own it.
If your "god" thinks he still owns the things he gifts, he's a friggin sociopath.
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If your "god" thinks he still owns the things he gifts, he's a friggin sociopath.
Was that your first clue?
Politicians, corporate executives, and other dangerous sociopaths are looked upon so favorably in our culture because we have a long history of worshipping dangerous sociopaths.
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:2)
Politicians, corporate executives, and other dangerous sociopaths are looked upon so favorably in our culture because we have a long history of worshipping dangerous sociopaths.
No, that's stupid. You could equally argue that The Beatles and Beethoven are looked upon so favourably because we have a long history of worshipping sociopaths. The only difference being that, in that case, you would at least be accurately describing the perception of the vast majority of mankind, whereas in your example you're painting a silly strawman which may apply to some tiny fraxction of humanity. I know far more people who despise or, at best, mildly tolerate politicians and corporate executives
Re: 2018 and swartz (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fun distinction: If this was Reddit, your comment probably would have been removed for being "offensive."
Like how they removed all the comments for blood donation addresses after the Pulse Nightclub massacre. (Nothing says progressive, like censoring help for dying gay people!)
https://motherboard.vice.com/e... [vice.com]
Re: White privilege even in death! (Score:2)
Does the NGO pay you $0.25 per moronically racist post? Or have they raised it to $0.30 now?