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Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

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Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#161

Post by CRConrad »

marincounty wrote: post #155

I don't mind argumentative. I look back on the people who changed a bad/given situation, and they raised that hand. The true bad asses walked, or got even. I have a question about Aaron Schwartz. Would he even be on Hacker News? Would he put up with the political correctness. Would he put up with "arse kissing"? Would he put up with a moderator who emailed him? I say this in light of an email I received from a modera…

"2. Anyways email me again Hacker News. It's going into a file. Why on earth would you think it's legally permissible to email me. It's considered spam--right?"

Wow. So many misconceptions... Is there even _any part_ of the above that is correct?!?

Your e-mail is just like your physical mail-box: Anyone can mail you something any time. That's what it's FOR.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#162

Post by briandear »

rubberstamp wrote: post #147
cglace wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

if my tv was bought with public money, yes

So I can go into a welfare recipient's house and take the food out of their house? Can I go into a military post and take some rifles?

Such a ridiculous logic.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#163

Post by briandear »

Chathamization wrote: post #105
dlandis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well oftentimes colleges can and will exercise discretion when it comes to having a student arrested and they will perform their own internal inquiry to determine whether an offense warrants arrest and prosecution. That's just the way it goes. Colleges should do the right thing for their students and protect them when appropriate because all kids do stupid things. MIT would have known pretty well what type of prosecu…

That's a very good point. It's pretty common when a sexual assault happens for the school to handle it internally rather than notify the authorities. Apparently, this is the case at MIT, and 1 in 6 female students have reported being sexually assaulted[1]. When a school sends police after someone for downloading academic files, and yet decides to not send the police after sex offenders (dealing with them internally a…

Swartz wasn't a MIT student and thus 'dealing with it internally' was not an available option. What would they do, put him in detention?

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#164

Post by briandear »

cinquemb wrote: post #62
bitmapbrother wrote: post #31

I'm still disgusted by the behavior of the MIT officials in all of this. Whenever I see or hear 'MIT' the first thing that comes to mind is: "that's the school that was responsible for the death of Aaron".

Whenever I visit MIT to work with some researchers there I always manage to sneak in an Aaron reference and love watching their faces. People can justify what happened by citing that he broke the Law™, but this is still a sore thing for many on the campus, that I think those who want to, shouldn't miss the beat to rub salt in MIT's wounds, especially because of the history around hacking at MIT. People won't think tw…

How professional of you.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#165

Post by lostlogin »

baddox wrote: post #138
mason240 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't preventing jury trials done to save money?

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#167

Post by 746F7475 »

ryanlol wrote: post #154
suprgeek wrote: post #130

MIT Failed him - spectacularly so. If they had declared that they had no wish to see him in prison and used their (considerable) influence he would be alive. Instead, this political, vindictive creature http://wgbhnews.org/post/carmen-ortiz-spotlight-under-fire and her nasty acolytes in search of a high profile "Scalp" pushed him over the edge. A terrible waste and a horrible use (misuse) of prosecutorial discretion.

>he would be alive. How do you know? Aaron had been talking about suicide years before this, maybe we should just blame reddit? Edit: Why the downvotes? Fact is that we don't know why Aaron killed himself, but we do know that he had a prior history of depression and in 2007 posted what seemed very much like a suicide note. Frankly, making claims like "If x had (not) done y he'd still be alive" and presenting them as…

Well, there are always the tinfoil-hat-theories

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#168

Post by rubberstamp »

briandear wrote: post #162
rubberstamp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if my tv was bought with public money, yes

So I can go into a welfare recipient's house and take the food out of their house? Can I go into a military post and take some rifles? Such a ridiculous logic.

I realize the ridiculousness of comment I made, but I wasn't originally talking about tv.

Aaron has made possible free access to many documents that were being charged for access, but they are actually documents that should be in public domain.

JSTOR is journal store which contains journals published by researchers all over the world. JSTOR access is licensed. There is no open access and the access fees are not cheap for something that is digitalized. Does JSTOR compensate the original article publisher? Aaron Swartz was only trying to make this archive public. He could've used an alternative way to achieve that goal. But does he actually deserve 30 to 50 years in prison and a million in fine for what he did?

I wouldn't have had a problem with it if those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis were given an appropriate punishment, say 500 years in jail time and fined at least a few billions.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#169

Post by ryanlol »

rubberstamp wrote: post #168
briandear wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can go into a welfare recipient's house and take the food out of their house? Can I go into a military post and take some rifles? Such a ridiculous logic.

I realize the ridiculousness of comment I made, but I wasn't originally talking about tv. Aaron has made possible free access to many documents that were being charged for access, but they are actually documents that should be in public domain. JSTOR is journal store which contains journals published by researchers all over the world. JSTOR access is licensed. There is no open access and the access fees are not cheap…

>but were actually documents that should be in public domain.

But they are?

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#170

Post by ryanlol »

mirimir wrote: post #156
cinquemb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think projects like sci-hub are definitely a step in that direction, and the more projects that leverage the legal arbitrage and technical capabilities that exist today the better. I'd be interested in trying to help someone who lives outside of the US figure out how to come up with something similar but for all the data that is trapped behind the facebooks and the like. I did something like this before, but I got…

Sci-Hub is gone.

I used it a couple of hours ago, sci-hub.io
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