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Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

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Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#81

Post by ska »

spijdar wrote: post #24
xadhominemx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaron already suffered from severe mental illness - law enforcement did not drive him to suicide. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal if he took a six month sentence in a low security facility, which he turned down before killing himself. 99.9% of people his age would not end up dead by their own hands in that situation.

I actually feel some sympathy for both positions here. On the one hand, it's such a "no brainer" to take such a light sentence for what is legally such a "serious crime". On the other hand, though, it feels ridiculous that Aaron would have been put in jail at all for what he did. I think it's fair to say he wasn't in a good place, but it's maybe a little tone deaf to say the grief of the trial and prosecution had no…

> On the one hand, it's such a "no brainer" to take such a light sentence for what is legally such a "serious crime".

This here is really the insidious nature of what the plea bargain system has evolved into.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#82

Post by maerF0x0 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #57
maerF0x0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if they knew so much else about him, maybe they should have been aware of his illness and appropriately (ie Justly) addressed the situation rather than making an example of him.

> maybe they should have been aware of his illness and appropriately (ie Justly) addressed the situation rather than making an example of him. While I don't think Aaron Swartz should've been prosecuted (or at least not charged with everything they did), this statement in general is not the job of the prosecutors. If it were, then many charges would have to be dropped/reduced in the case of people with mental illness…

your aside about "defense proper" is kind of the point, but extended to another branch of the justice system (ie policing) . I think we've seen a similar sentiment in 2020 over how many people are unhappy about how the police are going about their jobs.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#83

Post by amyjess »

jeltz wrote: post #76
FDSGSG wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is defending plea deals here. Aaron was offered an excellent deal, regardless of how indefensible plea deals might be in general.

No, he was offered a bad deal. Copyright violations very rarely result in prison for first time offenders. He also did a mild case of hacking which together might have resulted in a short sentence. But if he had gone to court I doubt he would have got more than 4-6 months, which is the same thing as the plea deal.

It wasn't because of a copyright violation. It was because after he was booted off MIT's network for violating their TOS, he went out of his way to find another way to get back on their network by unauthorized means and resume the same activity he got kicked off for.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#84

Post by boraoztunc »

mlok wrote: post #34
boraoztunc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ his blog: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/

And also on Peertube : https://sepiasearch.org/search?search=the%20internet%20own%2...

edited my comment after yours, and removed the YT link. thank you.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#85

Post by bebopcowboy »

cbozeman wrote: post #58
webXL wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaron seemed very opposed to large corporations and their control of information. The increase of control seems to be timed and in favor with the incoming administration. Government using business to do its bidding is very troubling, and I'm sure Aaron would have been very concerned about that. Remember, this increase of power can be wielded by the next populist leader and there are plenty of dark possibilities outsi…

I've often spoken with my more left-leaning friends about the need to try and find middle ground with my more right-leaning friends, and quickly. Donald Trump was an incompetent, by almost any measure you want to use. However, he shifted the Overton Window dramatically. When the Republican version of Barack Obama bursts onto the scene - someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to move effectively in the polit…

He won’t. They’ll just censor him

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#86

Post by Chris2048 »

xadhominemx wrote: post #15
cies wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence I reflect on this as murder by the state. It happened before (like Gary Webb), and sadly I'm afraid it will happen again. They (govt) seems more interested in big corp's needs than people's needs. This democracy-thing is a big lie, a facade. RIP Aaron.

He was offered a 6 month sentence in a low security prison. He could have served that sentence before the trial was even set to begin and resumed his life as programmer and activist. He was not murdered, he suffered from severe mentally illness.

It's easy to play down stuff like this without considering the later consequences of having a record..

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#87

Post by maerF0x0 »

xadhominemx wrote: post #44
maerF0x0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if they knew so much else about him, maybe they should have been aware of his illness and appropriately (ie Justly) addressed the situation rather than making an example of him.

So your argument is that depressed people should be able to avoid trial altogether? He wasn’t even in custody when he took his own life.

no, just that policing needs to be made a good deal less scary. Also, at least as I understand it peripherally, it can be sufficiently punitive just to lay chargers and force the other person to prove their innocence. This includes lost time from legitimate activities (school/work), lost wealth (lawyers, opportunity cost), and the emotional trauma of fighting a near unlimited resource state versus your own very limited resources to prove they're the ones who are acting unjustly.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#88

Post by Shared404 »

kortilla wrote: post #64
_jal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of people were not him. > law enforcement did not drive him to suicide People can keep repeating this, and it will still be false. LEO and Prosecutor action was the proximate cause of his actions. You can make moral arguments that, say, the prosecutor was Just Doing His Job, and I may even agree with you. But you and everyone else are simply wrong about cause and effect, and attempting to blur that tells me mor…

If you go down the path of blaming external factors for suicides it’s going to get messy pretty fast. How many suicides were because of Eminem songs? How many suicides were because of the lack of suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge? How many suicides are because of a break up? Whose fault was Epstein’s suicide? Robin William’s? R. Budd Dwyer?

> Whose fault was Epstein’s suicide?

You all know what I'm going to say here.

As for the rest, it's a fine line. There are obviously individual variances in how much it would take to push someone over the edge, I can certainly see how nine felonies would be enough in the case of Aaron's example.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

sudosysgen wrote: post #73
cbozeman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often spoken with my more left-leaning friends about the need to try and find middle ground with my more right-leaning friends, and quickly. Donald Trump was an incompetent, by almost any measure you want to use. However, he shifted the Overton Window dramatically. When the Republican version of Barack Obama bursts onto the scene - someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to move effectively in the polit…

I agree. As someone pretty far on the left I was shook by the banning of Donald Trump, and this trend of censorship makes me really, really, really scared. If you're anything but a very centrist Democrat, this should scare the crap out of you.

The actual Left has been a target of private censorship and public suppression even when the Right got a free pass for so long that, as someone on the Left, I’m not at all scared that some private censorship is happening to violent extremists on the Right (mildly surprised, but not scared.)

Though “you should be scared because what has been happening to the Left longer, and much more severely, than to the Right might happen to you” is a pretty common propaganda theme directed at the Left by the Right recently.

Unlike the Right, which has had an existence of extreme privilege where even the KKK got a pass on government scrutiny because it was valued loyal organization around the same time that the second big round of government institutionalized anti-Communist hysteria, the Left has been built around organizations to route around establishment suppression for over a century.

And most people to the left of center-right neoliberal Democrats are quite aware of that.

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