The best state of affairs is that neither Aaron nor Meta nor anyone else should be targeted for scraping. It shouldn't be a crime. I understand the ire about the injustice, but I don't think the right situation is that because Aaron's case was wrongly pursued, we should somehow enforce that error in the name of consistency.
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
#52The 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…
JSTOR dropped civil litigation only after getting about $25k in the settlement from him.
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#53The 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.
It hasn't degraded in such a short time, this rot has been there for 30 odd years. Infrasture, systemic corruption to an unprecedented level (it's always there, but the scale is different), etc.
What happened 'so fast' was how fast they pulled off the mask. 10 years and it's practically off in its entirety...
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many days have you spent in jail or prison? I've done two, and it was weird coming out to freedom. Actual thought taking some of my first steps: "wait, if I want to be over there, I can just start walking?" The guards and fellow jailers were all quite reasonable, too. I can barely imagine facing a whole year. I can't imagine facing five. If there is a point to be made from what you're talking about, it's about ho…
One of the reasons so many people believe Swartz faced 35 years in prison is that any attempt to correct the record is met by responses like this. Ironically, you're doing the work of the prosecutors for them: this is the whole reason they quote these outlandish and implausible sentencing possibilities in their press releases.
By "responses like this" do you mean any form of criticism? What I am calling out is your purely positive statement that lacks any sort of normative judgement. It's the type of thing which helps normalize the status quo, regardless of whether the cudgel is 35 or 7 years.
Here is a comment that makes a similar point to yours, but in a constructive manner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49379992
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#55One of the reasons big companies still get away on things like these is because fines are pocket change to them and top level executives ever face a real prison sentence at all.
They have already done the legal work and the math in advance, and because the numbers are on their side they get away with it.
Is as simple as that.
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#56The 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…
It was Carmen Ortiz, not abstract "US Government".
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#57Arguments exist about how intellectual property needs to go anyway, but FB has always stolen from people, on many levels
And furthermore their trackers have always been the most malignant. Stories of "Facebook basically ddosed my site to train their LLMs"
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#58Aren’t the two cases fundamentally different?
If you’re going to leave a comment like this you need to at least outline your thinking as to why you feel they’re different.
not the OP but the heaviest charges against Swartz didn't stem from his IP infringement, it was wire fraud and computer fraud. He used a network access and MIT guest account he didn't have legal access to because he wasn't affiliated with the institution, which enabled the CFAA charges.
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#59"Rule of the law" is just a lame excuse to "the job of a lawyer is to sell privileges to rich people".
In some countries the excuse is lamer than in others. But, in the end, everywhere in the world money always speaks louder.
Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence
#60He wasn’t prosecuted for scraping. He trespassed into a room with a router, plugged his laptop into it, downloaded papers as quickly as possible, and then rotated his MAC address to dodge the bans that the admin was trying to place on him. That’s very different from downloading a webpage on the open internet.
I’m not saying he should or shouldn’t have been prosecuted, but there’s some kind of rose tinted glasses filter around what happened with Aaron, like he just was browsing the web and was suddenly prosecuted. He repeatedly broke in to a physical room and kept changing his MAC address to dodge bans. At least report it with its full context.