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Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

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Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#131

Post by jsprogrammer »

raldi wrote: post #116
wolfgke wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Among other things, that's burglary. And locking away scientific papers of research that was funded with public money behind paywalls is burglary of the public.

I can't imagine a way that's even figuratively true. The crime of burglary is about being somewhere that you're not supposed to; perhaps you meant to say it's like larceny of the public. But even then, it's a very tenuous connection you're trying to draw. These companies were not taking anything away from the public; they made the effort to digitize, process, and catalog documents, which is no small task. And they se…

>or otherwise placed new locks around them that hadn't existed beforehand

How is creating network and identity based locks around the papers not placing new locks?

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#132

Post by nerfhammer »

lsc wrote: post #126
gnaritas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would that come to mind when none of it is true? Firstly, Aaron is responsible for his own death, it was suicide. Secondly, it's the zealous prosecutor you should be mad at, MIT is not to blame here; Aaron broke many laws and they were well within their rights to have him arrested. Good intentions aside, what Aaron did was illegal and he deserved to be arrested for it; what he didn't deserve was more than pro…

While you certainly have a point, MITs actions in this case, and in the case of Star Simpson show what looks to me (as an outsider who really wants to go to an elite college) like MIT doesn't stand behind their students the way that I would expect an elite college to stand behind their students. I mean, maybe that's just the way it is; maybe being a student at an elite institution just doesn't come with the level of…

aaronsw was not a student at MIT.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#133

Post by raldi »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #131
raldi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a way that's even figuratively true. The crime of burglary is about being somewhere that you're not supposed to; perhaps you meant to say it's like larceny of the public. But even then, it's a very tenuous connection you're trying to draw. These companies were not taking anything away from the public; they made the effort to digitize, process, and catalog documents, which is no small task. And they se…

>or otherwise placed new locks around them that hadn't existed beforehand How is creating network and identity based locks around the papers not placing new locks?

The "them" in the sentence you quoted refers to "the original public records".

The locks you refer to were around the new, value-added work: the digitized, processed, cataloged version of the papers they had made by adding value to the original public-domain documents. The locks were not applied to the original documents.

It's like the difference between storing a touched-up version you made of an Apollo 11 photo in a vault, and stealing the original photo negative from NASA and putting that in a vault.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#134

Post by nitrogen »

ryanlol wrote: post #119
quanticle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. He absolutely did break the law. I, personally don't dispute that, nor do I think that that's a controversial fact here. The trouble that I and many other commenters here have with what happened to Aaron Swartz is the gross disproportionality of the punishment he was facing. For downloading academic…

> he was facing a punishment that could have gone to literally millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison. This is really not how the court system works. Also, by killing himself before being sentenced he kind of ruined that argument anyway.

This is really not how the court system works.

Big, intimidating numbers are definitely one of the tactics used by prosecutors to coerce a plea.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#135

Post by tzs »

wolfgke wrote: post #72
raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For downloading academic papers, he was facing [...] You left out the part where he snuck into a server closet and tampered with the network equipment. Among other things, that's burglary.

> Among other things, that's burglary. And locking away scientific papers of research that was funded with public money behind paywalls is burglary of the public.

JSTOR doesn't lock content away. They make deals with existing journals to take content that is not available online and make it available online. Any access restrictions JSTOR imposes come from the content owners, not JSTOR.

JSTOR has also convinced most of these journals, even ones with restrictive access policies, to let JSTOR make their content available for free to the public at many libraries and schools, including ones that do not have subscriptions to the underlying journals. Because of JSTOR, many second tier colleges, community colleges, and even high schools have free access to vast journal libraries that they would not have otherwise had access to. They also do a lot to bring cheap or free access to vast journal libraries to schools and libraries in developing countries.

JSTOR has probably expanded free public access to scientific research more than any other group or organization.

Sure, it would be nice if everything were open access so you could just legally get it all on the net for free, but many journals aren't willing to do that yet, and in the meantime JSTOR provides a way for most of the public to get that content at the cost of having to visit a library or school that offers public JSTOR.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#136

Post by nitrogen »

raldi wrote: post #118
ericd wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard stories from my days at MIT of people doing much worse things in server closets. The MIT community's view on these things is vastly different from the federal government's, and there's a large and shocking disconnect when those laws are applied to what's normally fairly accepted (if not explicitly, then implicitly condoned) behavior in the community.

This wasn't implicitly or explicitly condoned. MIT had detected what Aaron was doing, and deployed countermeasures. Aaron defeated those countermeasures; MIT deployed tougher ones, and Aaron escalated again by breaking into the server closet and patching his laptop directly into the network switch, knowing it was the only way to bypass the considerable efforts MIT was making to protect itself. This was no, "Oops, I d…

Are you basing this on statements from MIT, from the government, from the indictment...?

I ask because, though I've never been near MIT, everything I read about it suggests that every one of these steps is seen as part of the game expected to be played by a few curious students now and then.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#137

Post by cglace »

rubberstamp wrote: post #102
wolfgke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not angry. But I am disappointed to the point I think we need serious reform. This means a call to action. Aaron can't do this an anymore since he was driven into suicide by the criminal prosecution of his country, he can't do it anymore. So: Don't call for action - act instead!

I remember reading on arstechnica about Aaron. US justice system has so much inconsistencies. Punishment for copyright cases being harsher than the ones for Actual crimes being one of them. Lets not forget that he is being called criminal because he broke a law, a silly thing signed into law probably because someone lobbyed so hard for it. He is no actual criminal. He didn't feel the articles he downloaded from serve…

> He is no actual criminal. He didn't feel the articles he downloaded from servers should be kept private.

That is a horrible argument. should I just be able to take your tv because I think it shouldn't be locked up in your house?

I'm not saying I agree with the papers being locked up. Not believing in a law does not make you innocent. Many people think they don't have to pay their taxes and they all go to jail.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#138

Post by baddox »

mason240 wrote: post #92
mindslight wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly shows the proliferation of ridiculous criminal laws. How many of these "99.9 percent" of "just" cases are simply just persecuting someone for an invented victimless "crime"? If the questionable legality of walking across an empty street doesn't perfectly illustrate how our minds have been warped by a draconian sense of "justice", I don't know what could.

You stepping in front of my car, going through my windshield, and hurting me, is not victimless.

So let a jury decide guilt or innocence, based on information such as whether there was a moving car within range of the pedestrian's crossing. The point of plea bargains isn't to save the government money. It's to prevent jury trials.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#139

Post by nitrogen »

ryanlol wrote: post #121
jstoiko wrote: post #20

"Sign the Petition for Better Oversight for Federal Attorney Misconduct" http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy#takeaction

Can you please explain why the Swartz case is a particularly good example of federal attorney misconduct?

Type "Aaron Swartz" into the search box at the bottom of any HN page to read ample arguments on either side of that question.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#140

Post by raldi »

nitrogen wrote: post #136
raldi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't implicitly or explicitly condoned. MIT had detected what Aaron was doing, and deployed countermeasures. Aaron defeated those countermeasures; MIT deployed tougher ones, and Aaron escalated again by breaking into the server closet and patching his laptop directly into the network switch, knowing it was the only way to bypass the considerable efforts MIT was making to protect itself. This was no, "Oops, I d…

Are you basing this on statements from MIT, from the government, from the indictment...? I ask because, though I've never been near MIT, everything I read about it suggests that every one of these steps is seen as part of the game expected to be played by a few curious students now and then.

Some quotes from the official MIT report: http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd...

Typically, when an excessive use case is reported that is determined to originate from within MIT’s network, the Libraries report this to either the MIT Information Services and Technology (IS&T) network security team or MIT’s “Stopit” group, which deals with inappropriate behavior that occurs electronically. The Stopit group’s general response is to send the offender a warning email message. This is almost always all that is needed to get people’s attention and have them stop whatever it was they were doing that caused the problem.

[...]

This time, the requests and downloads stimulated a cascade of failures that brought down multiple JSTOR servers. Half the servers in one data center failed, and JSTOR engineers feared that the entire service might go down worldwide.

[...]

Also on October 12, the Director of the MIT Libraries reported to MIT’s Academic Council that a cyber-attack of the JSTOR database had caused a weekend shutdown of JSTOR to the entire campus.

Now take a look at the "MIT Hacker Ethic", particularly bulletpoint #2: http://hacks.mit.edu/misc/ethics.html

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