Aren't these the people that failed to defend Aaron Swartz?
MIT is not one uniform entity.
Would you say it's an "autonomous collective?"
MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
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Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#72We're always going to remember Aaron Swartz...
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first word in the award: Disobedience.
That's just stupid. The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society. Unless there is an Aaron Schwartz foundation or something, nominate people who are still doing work.
He has parents. It's the least they deserve in form of apology.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#74Seems like a great way to catch a nasty case of conspiracy to commit a felony. The reason the Nobel committee can give an award to a political prisoner in another country is that they are in another country.
> The recipient must have taken a personal risk in order to affect positive change for greater society. There are plenty of ways to disobey without breaking the law.
What exactly can people disobey that not the Law?
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd vote for Swartz or Snowden any day. But IMO voting for Swartz would serve mostly to shame MIT. Voting for someone else might make a difference to a live person.
MIT needs to be shamed publicly, regularly and continuously until they publicly apologize for their shameful behavior. Giving this award to Swartz, and giving the money to his parents, along with a public statement of remorse and a public commitment to behaving more honorably in the future, would be an excellent way for them to do this.
If MIT were a person, sure. But it is a large organization with members holding multiple competing views. If one group is trying to do something good, do not shame them for another groups deeds, use them.
I'm not saying that this prize corrects the injustice done. It's an orthogonal option to do good. My 2c.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#76Todays radical act of disobedience for me was disabling JavaScript on this site. Quelle surprise, it promptly broke and was all black, despite being literally a form.
It looks like Typeform which depends pretty heavily on interactivity, like for keyboard shortcuts. It's somewhat surprising they wouldn't have a no JS fallback but on the other hand the experience would be markedly worse than those with JS on.
Note it's all black. It doesn't even have a "there'd be stuff here with JS on" text.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#77I've nominated Alexandra Elbakyan of sci-hub and encourage everyone else to do the same. I'd also be happy if Aaron Swartz won!
I just did the same. Aaron is equally deserving, but this award will be put to better use by a living person.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#78Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#79MIT was complicit in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz for seemingly qualifying activities.
From what I heard, MIT Media Lab is a bit of a free electron in the MIT behemoth.
Re: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first word in the award: Disobedience.
That's just stupid. The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society. Unless there is an Aaron Schwartz foundation or something, nominate people who are still doing work.
This isn't about Aaron. It's about the next person who downloads too much free stuff doing it emboldened by the thought that MIT will have their back when the feds come knocking. If only because not doing so costs MIT 250 thousand dollars.
That would be a much bigger contribution to society than any one person walking away with this award.