EFF, Cory Doctorow, Others Speak in Commemoration of Aaron Swartz Day (aaronswartzday.org) 64
From AaronSwartzDay.com:
Aaron Swartz Day was founded, in 2013, after the death of Aaron Swartz, with these combined goals:
To draw attention to what happened to Aaron, in the hopes of stopping it from happening to anyone else.
- This includes clarifying that, although Aaron was a hacker, he didn't hack MIT.
To provide a yearly showcase of many of the projects that were started by Aaron before his death.
- SecureDrop
- Open Library
To provide a yearly showcase of new projects that were directly inspired by Aaron and his work.
A few Aaron-inspired examples from this year's event include:
- The Pursuance Project (by Barrett Brown & Steve Phillips)
- Open Archive (by Natalie Cadranel)
- Jason Leopold's Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) activism (article from 2013)
Happening right now is a livestream from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. PST of "intimate virtual talks," including a special presentation by members of Brazil's Aaron Swartz Institute starting in just a few minutes. You can also playback video for talks that happened earlier today.
Other speakers include:
To draw attention to what happened to Aaron, in the hopes of stopping it from happening to anyone else.
- This includes clarifying that, although Aaron was a hacker, he didn't hack MIT.
To provide a yearly showcase of many of the projects that were started by Aaron before his death.
- SecureDrop
- Open Library
To provide a yearly showcase of new projects that were directly inspired by Aaron and his work.
A few Aaron-inspired examples from this year's event include:
- The Pursuance Project (by Barrett Brown & Steve Phillips)
- Open Archive (by Natalie Cadranel)
- Jason Leopold's Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) activism (article from 2013)
Happening right now is a livestream from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. PST of "intimate virtual talks," including a special presentation by members of Brazil's Aaron Swartz Institute starting in just a few minutes. You can also playback video for talks that happened earlier today.
Other speakers include:
- Scifi novelist/technology activist Cory Doctorow (11 a.m.)
- Signal user support engineer/project manager Riya Abraham (11:30 a.m.)
- EFF executive director Cindy Cohn (12)
- EFF Certbot director of engineering Alexis Hancock (12:20)
- Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle (12:40)
- Anaconda CEO Peter Wang (1)
- The Freedom of the Press Foundation's Kevin O'Gorman (speaking on SecureDrop at 1:30)
Veterans Day (Score:3)
The should have picked a date that is not the same as a major national holiday.
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The choice of day is somewhat bizarre, given he was born on November 8 and died on January 11.
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The choice of day is somewhat bizarre, given he was born on November 8 and died on January 11.
Not a problem so long as the conference stream is made available on a public domain server. it is of course, isn't it?
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The should have picked a date that is not the same as a major national holiday.
You mean like how Veteran's day is on Armistice day? Fuck peace, bless our soldiers for volunteering to fight in wars for profit? If the date can sustain being both peace day and moar wars please day, it can handle being free access to scientific information day as well.
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Fuck yourself
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Armistice Day was already about remembering soldiers and civilians giving their lives in senseless wars, most of which occur for economic reasons.
We're all getting fucked. Me, you, even the people doing the fucking are hurting themselves.
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Which 20th and 21st century wars do you think happened for economic reasons? WWI? WWII, or its Second Sino-Japanese War adjunct? Chinese Civil War? Russian Civil War? Second Congo War? Korean? Afghanistan (Russian and/or US)? Vietnam? Mexican Revolution?
People start wars for a lot of reasons, but "the wrong people are in charge" and "their country should be part of ours" are far more common than economic reasons.
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WWI and WWII both had economic causes, though that's not why we remember them. In both cases it's the loss of life.
Vietnam was definitely economically motivated, though. And my father, who was in Korea as a Marine ATC, was of the opinion that Korea was as well. He was very clear that he didn't think I should join the military for a whole bunch of reasons, one of which was that he didn't think I would get along (I'm not very good at kowtowing to authority) and another of which was that he thought it was almo
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I would argue Korea and Vietnam were far more socio than economical. Both countries were backwater 3rd world nations at the time. Korea was arguably more driven by the Second Red Scare than anything. Vietnam was labeled a police action, but was also as much about curbing Russian expansionism and influence.
Tell me one thing Korea or Vietnam exported before the war. Both GDPs were stagnant. In fact, both countries (or parts of countries in Korea) opening up economically after their wars sent their GDPs soarin
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People start wars for a lot of reasons, but "the wrong people are in charge" and "their country should be part of ours" are far more common than economic reasons.
I agree that these are the most common ways that a war gets started. But wars get prolonged because defense contractors get addicted to the economic benefit that comes from building materiel then sending it to get destroyed in a foreign jungle/desert/ocean. Voters support this for two reasons. One, people work in the defense industry, whether it is directly in an arms factory, or indirectly doing R&D, maintenance etc. Two, the "sunk cost fallacy" but in the more gruesome sense of body count. We don't wa
Doesnâ(TM)t Doctorow have some choice opinion (Score:3)
That they, among other things, spawned and promote the culture that gives rise to unregulated behemoths? And foster the tech bro libertarianism that helped aaron reach is untimely demise?
Re: Doesnâ(TM)t Doctorow have some choice opi (Score:5, Interesting)
He didn't hack MIT (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. He didn't hack them. He installed unauthorized equipment in a location he didn't have authority to be in, deliberately circumvented attempts to block him from accessing JSTOR, and hardwired said unauthorized equipment into the MIT servers.
For all those who scream about making hackers pay, if illegal entry, illegal installation of equipment, and deliberately going around security restrictions aren't a crime, then what is? Do you allow anyone off the street to wander into your place of buisiness and hook up their equipment to your network and go aroud any security you have on your network?
Re:He didn't hack MIT (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: He didn't hack MIT (Score:1)
If I walked your lawn and police arrested me for trespassing then court prosecutes me despite you explicitedly telling them I'm welcome to it, should I be sent to jail? No sensible person would think so. But hey, this is America.
Re: He didn't hack MIT (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, a more correct analogy would be - you were initially told you were welcome to be on my lawn, but then you caused enough problems that I put up a fence and a sign stating you were no longer welcome. So you then you put on a disguise, hopped over the fence and continued causing additional problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
However the penalty the government wanted to impose was significantly harsher than the circumstances called for, though.
Re: He didn't hack MIT (Score:5, Informative)
He snuck past a locked door to install his laptop and hard drives. He also repeatedly hacked past the network blocks against his abuses, to access content that was available from the network drop in his office at Harvard.
He faced jail because of the extent of his abuses. He was trying to copy _all_ of JSTOR, and kept bringing down JSTOR servers doing it. This was far from the first time he'd pulled this sort of abuse stunt, so yes, it was time to convict him of a felony. He did indeed accumulate enough crimes to serve the 30 years he was threatened with due to the scale of his felonies. He refused to accept any felony charges or prison time for the scale of his abuses, he instead chose suicide. That's tragic, but not the fault of the FBI who investigated nor the prosecutors who were quite willing to accept lesser please.
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30 years for such a soft crime/crimes??? I would assume it's a penalty for someone who killed a person. For things he was accused of I would say few months at most would be a correct penalty.
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...And did so to release public-domain documents that the public should've already had, which were taxpayer funded, and MIT didn't want to press charges. Obama's AG trying to make a name for herself against "digital terrorism," Carmen Ortiz, doggedly pursued the case, flipping his ex, and drove him to suicide.
Re:He didn't hack MIT (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all of the journals are public domain. And he sought to copy the _index_, the organization of the documents. and he repeatedly crashed JSTOR servers while doing it. No, it was not "make the information free", it was "steal books off the library shelves and break the library doors on your way out" abuse of a non-profit service for millions.
His death is a tragedy, but "flipping his ex" was hardly abuse. He was caught entering the network closet where he'd connected his laptop and hard drives, there was no question of his guilt, and no one "drove him to suicide" except by insisting he except a felony conviction. He'd gotten away with his abuses before, with a slap on the wrist, and refused to accept responsibility. His death was from his own cowardice, not abuse.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
He didn't copy all of the journals, he copied the public domain journals. His intention was to release only public domain information that JSTOR was paywalling despite it being public domain and paid for by taxpayers. The fact that their servers crashed as he attempted to fix their immorality is not worthy of being pursued as a domestic terrorist by the attorney general. I noticed too you skipped over her behavior in this. Her pursuit of Swartz was relentless, dogged, sociopathic, and I can't imagine the le
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How many "slaps on the wrist" is one entitled before their crimes rise to the felonies they really are?
His repeated "slaps on the wrist" led him to believe he wasn't really doing anything wrong, so he persisted, and soon found out he was doing something wrong... and when confronted with that reality, chose to take his life. It's tragic, and it makes me question the logic of *repeated* slaps on the wrist (I et it with regard to first-time offenders, but...)
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To add more, the reason they were even prosecuting him under the CFAA for PUBLIC DOMAIN document sharing was because under the CFAA, he was committing an economic crime. Why? Because to get those documents outside of MIT, you had to pay some minimum wage intern to photocopy them for you, and therefore it was an economic crime under the CFAA under a subdivision created ENTIRELY FOR ATM TRANSACTIONS when it was created between 1984 and 1986 as a knee jerk reaction to the movie War Games (fully enacted in 1986
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As far as I'm concerned it was hacking.
But what it was not? Wrong.
We're talking about material that rightfully belongs to everyone, it's publicly funded. He was trying to get our information out from behind a paywall.
They decided to make an example of him exactly because they can't tolerate people getting what they deserve.
I remember a time when Slashdot would have been filled to the brim with people supporting our right to have the results of the studies we paid for without paying again. That was a better
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I remember a time when Slashdot would have been filled to the brim with people supporting our right to have the results of the studies we paid for without paying again. That was a better Slashdot.
One can support the principle that these studies should be freely available without supporting the idea that one should get a literal "get out of jail free" card for illegal actions in furtherance of that principle.
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One can support the principle that these studies should be freely available without supporting the idea that one should get a literal "get out of jail free" card for illegal actions in furtherance of that principle.
Can one, though? I seriously don't think one can, though perhaps with some provisos about not doing more harm than you're attempting to prevent.
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Maybe he could have had some lesser punishment like community service.
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He could access the info from his desktop, why was he in a server closet? Oh yeah, because he knew it was a crime and didn't want to get caught...
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He could access the info from his desktop, why was he in a server closet? Oh yeah, because he knew it was a crime and didn't want to get caught...
As always, you missed the point of the comment. At this point I've come to suspect you're not doing it on purpose... How many severe head injuries have you had? Or have you just been eating delicious paint chips?
Perspective (Score:2)
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He chose the easier, if not easy way out. Presumably he reviewed his options and decided to take his life rather than spend decades in prison.
Or are you thinking Aaron went chose suicide because it was harder?
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Sci Hub? (Score:2)
The wider issue is prosecutorial abuse. (Score:5, Informative)
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Indeed. Yes, what he did was wrong, but not that wrong. Say, worth 100h of community service or the like. That prosecutor did something a lot more wrong.
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Talk about handing people real power with zero accountability. When had that ever lead to a good outcome?
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This wasn't his first such offense, and he was disabling JSTOR servers in the process. The state sought to send a warning to make an example of him: it was time for him to get a felony conviction because he kept doing this sort of abuse.
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Yes, he came very very close to disabling the entire MIT access to all electronic journals.
Didn't succeed, but not for lack of trying.
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I think you mean "access to JSTOR hosted copies of journals"? And the index, which is the invaluable tool for finding content? JSTOR was as cautious and reasonable as they could be, to avoid blocking any permitted users.
https://docs.jstor.org/summary... [jstor.org]
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But 130 years for wire fraud for downloading the archives?
It boils down to "These activities cost money, and we charge fees to cover these costs." - JSTOR
Wire Fraud, you say? Read the provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act written entirely for ATMs. Oh, and guess what - I committed a felony under it by replying to this message, since I'm not using my real name here and am on a secure site! You could probably hit me up for a financial transaction too, since the site has advertising. The wording of tha
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The US Attorney's office was prosecuting for more than 30 years of charges, not 130. Where are you getting that number? 130 may have been the most brutal sentencing possible for the number and variety of distinct felony counts he'd committed. A warning to others is the point of harsh sentencing, and this was the most recent of a string of cases where he'd abused access to try to copy large public repositories and had his wrist slapped. He'd insisted on continuing his crimes, he'd earned much harsher sentenc
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Ahh, I see where they added another nine charges to the original 4. The accumulated charges after those additions still amount to only 35 years, according to the Wikipedia notes. Where is your number from.
No mention of Reddit (Score:3)
“The deal was announced today by Kourosh Karimkhany, General Manager of Wired Digital; the four founders of Reddit: Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Swartz, and Chris Slowe; and Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, the venture firm that provided funding for Reddit.”
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Yeah, because the uncomfortable fact would have to be that aaron swartz did all the work to build reddit, then decided to stop engaging with the company when it became clear, that the other founders didn't share his vision of free speech absolutism. Also ohanian and huffman were failing in Ycombinator, until swartz came in and saved the day.
Mental health (Score:3)
If you want things like this to end prrrhaps you should understand that mental health was a stronger contributor to this than anything else. The continued choice to ignore this is offensive.
How foolish can we be? (Score:5, Informative)
Aaron Swartz death was tragic, but he was in no way abused by the FBI nor by prosecutors. He refused to accept responsibility for his actions, and he abused his privileges as a Harvard staff member to use MIT's facilities to commit his crimes. If he was so assured of his morality, he could and should have plugged his laptop into the jack in his own office and faced consequences at Harvard. Instead, he chose to effectively steal the services provided by JSTOR, a non-profit company that is extremely generous with its services and subscriptions, to try to run his own "free" service with no concrete plan to replenish or restock the content and services he stole. The thousands of journals organized by JSTOR cost money to publish, and his theft would deny them the fees they use to pay editors and publish their work. It's exactly the kind of theft that copyright was designed to prevent.
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As a project to preserve and make the world's historical scientific knowledge accessible to all human beings, it fails. The world is much bigger than the population of students and faculty who happen to frequent large
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JSTOR is still _very_ generous with its low fees, its astonishing breadth of content, and its long habit of turning a blind eye to subscription violations. The annual rate for an individual is $200, and their fees for licenses and universities are _very_ low for the content provided. Since JSTOR is purchasing and republishing copies of _all_ the journals, they really can't go lower without stealing journals themselves.
Won't matter (Score:1)
The dark side always loses. (Score:2)
Unfortunately he embraced the dark side. And we all know what happens to the dark side, don't we.
It's a real shame he was driven away from more civilized concepts. He had a lot to give and cut it short. Brilliance and dumb stuff are a hair's breadth apart.
{o.o}