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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

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Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#21

Post by tpmoney »

Ok and so what? We have been informed of an injustice, we are now angry. Now what? What do we want? Do we agree that the prosecution was unjust and wrong, celebrate that Meta is not being criminally prosecuted, lash out at the publishers filing the lawsuit and advocate for an official apology from the prosecutors and government that went after Aaron?

Or do we think that the prosecution was correct, apologize ourselves for any protests we might have voiced against the prosecution and demand similar prosecution of Meta and everyone who continues to torrent “Linux ISOs”?

Personally I agree that the prosecution was unjust, and so I find it to be a good thing that the stranglehold of excessive copyright is being weakened by the new AI moment. But that also why I find the sudden turn to copyright maximalism that seems to have taken over large parts of the tech industry so baffling. Why are we wasting our time pretending we want Meta prosecuted rather than spending our efforts ensuring that all these products that come out of this massive blending of human creative outputs are owned collectively by us all with no such recourse to the same copyright laws that they so valiantly shattered?

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#22

Post by inquirerGeneral »

milkytron wrote: post #3

The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him. There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in…

I feel like you just made the opposite case you actually made

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#23

Post by andy_ppp »

milkytron wrote: post #3

The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him. There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in…

Yes, you know why - it had nothing to do with copyright infringement - he was going to win the fight to get money out of politics.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#24

Post by darreninthenet »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #6
spelk wrote: post #2

In Commonwealth countries, it's possible to initiate a private prosecution (by a person who hasn't received criminal justice). These don't usually get very far, but I honestly wish these could be used to prosecute people who are treated differently for the same crime because of their status, or at least set a precedent that such activities are definitively okay.

In Australia at least, the Director of Public Prosecutions has the power to take over the matter, and they often do. They can then do one of two things. They can either continue running it if it’s in the interests of justice to do so (public interest, reasonable prospects of success etc), or they can shut it down, as they tend to do for sovereign citizen nonsense and the like.

Same in the UK

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#25

Post by Gigachad »

Razengan wrote: post #18
buran77 wrote: post #14

The US has normalized so much moral rot and legal breaches in the past few years, all in the interest of making more money... Rarely does a country degrade so much, so fast, and I'm afraid this isn't even the low mark.

The real shame is that the next "best" countries are.. China? and the European countries pushing for age verification and sweeping surveillance and apparently bent on destroying the freedoms that made them better than China & Russia.. God can we have an alien invasion already please

Age verification isn’t moral rot even if you disagree with it. The rot is the obvious corruption and legal system that only applies to average people which billionaires constantly violate.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#27

Post by [deleted] »

tpmoney wrote: post #21

Ok and so what? We have been informed of an injustice, we are now angry. Now what? What do we want? Do we agree that the prosecution was unjust and wrong, celebrate that Meta is not being criminally prosecuted, lash out at the publishers filing the lawsuit and advocate for an official apology from the prosecutors and government that went after Aaron? Or do we think that the prosecution was correct, apologize ourselve…

[deleted]

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#28

Post by ignoramous »

arionhardison wrote: post #8
milkytron wrote: post #3

The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him. There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in…

Maybe the real issue is selective outrage about legal injustice. I totally agree that this was wrong and he should not have been prosecuted but a large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk. If we were to finally stand up and say that justice for all…

> large part of the effort that dealt this injustice to him was facilitated by the fact that the vast majority of people willfully turn a blind eye when the same thing or worse happens to people are not of their ilk

Reminds me of Marx's 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt:

  Every industrial & commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps ... The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life ... regards himself as a member of the ruling nation & consequently becomes a tool of the English [ruling class] against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination [over his own self]. He cherishes religious, social, & national prejudices against the Irish worker ...

  The Irishman ... sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
  
  This antagonism is artificially kept alive & intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power.

  ... The antagonism between Englishmen & Irishmen ... enables the governments of [the US & England], whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_...

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#29

Post by IncreasePosts »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #7
milkytron wrote: post #3

The part that still bothers me so much about the US vs Swartz case is that JSTOR didn't pursue civil litigation against Aaron. It was the US government that pursued him. There was little for the government to lose in the case. In a case vs Meta, at the scale it has reached, it could have wide ranging economic implications limiting the investment in AI, which the US is absolutely not willing to pursue at this point in…

And even then, it wasn’t really about justice but more for the prosecutor, Carmen Ortiz’s career advancement. The case ultimately did not help her in her run for governor of MA.

How does prosecuting someone who downloaded articles in a broom closet help her career advancement?

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#30

Post by amiga386 »

spelk wrote: post #2

In Commonwealth countries, it's possible to initiate a private prosecution (by a person who hasn't received criminal justice). These don't usually get very far, but I honestly wish these could be used to prosecute people who are treated differently for the same crime because of their status, or at least set a precedent that such activities are definitively okay.

> In Commonwealth countries, it's possible to initiate a private prosecution (by a person who hasn't received criminal justice). These don't usually get very far

This is what happens when they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

> Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover illusory shortfalls caused by Horizon with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts, and bankruptcies led to stress, illness and family breakdowns, and were linked to at least thirteen suicides.

Hundreds of innocent people went to prison, were financially ruined, thirteen took their own life, because a well-funded entity found it easier to privately prosecute its contractors than to question its software vendor. And the court system let them do it.

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