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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

#131

Post by AnthonyMouse »

GolfPopper wrote: post #121
jmward01 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfectly equal enforcement really isn't possible, but it should be the policy to enforce in proportion to active harm. The bigger the ongoing active harm, the quicker to react we should be. Some individual torrents a single movie? NBD. No matter the side of the argument you are on this should be ignored. A company intentionally throws content strikes causing legitimate harm to large numbers of content creators? That…

Finland links speeding fines to income. I'd like to see something that get far broader application. That prevents the wealthy or huge corporations from seeing lawbreaking as a business cost, without destroying a small business or individual who commits the same crime.

Proposals like this are how you get the billionaire paying their chauffeur's $50 fines so they can get everywhere faster while sticking some small business owner in an industry with feast or famine years with a $50,000 ticket for having a slightly miscalibrated speedometer.

Creating new arbitrage opportunities benefits the powerful, not the weak.

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

#132

Post by carbocation »

edoceo wrote: post #103
genghisjahn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the in-crowd the law protects but does not bind. For the out-crowd, the law binds but does not protect. Can’t remember where I read that but it has stuck with me.

Maybe from here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12517091-conservatism-consi...

It originated in a comment on a blog: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...

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

#133

Post by badlibrarian »

I don't like talking about this, but first hand knowledge is rarer by the day, and there are entire organizations profiting off this mythology. It's pissing me off. Aaron is not a data point to build stupid metaphors around. He was a bright and broken child.

Aaron attracted influential and creepy people and was ill-equipped to handle it. He was also working through a period of sexual awakening while being used by older people to advance their agendas. Little of it would meet contemporary standards of appropriate behavior given his physical and psychological state. I spent some time with him before this went down and was horrified by what I saw.

I was not in a position to help him address his mental health, nor in the right physical location to have positive influence, which is what was needed. Then he cracked under the pressure of this and nobody could get through. This was obvious to all involved at the time and that's the part of the prosecution that still makes no sense to me, from all institutions involved. They all have blood on their hands.

It's not hard to find continuing bad behavior by individuals near him at the time. I've given up on them being held accountable. Let the child rest.

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

#134

Post by giantg2 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #109
giantg2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe the real issue is selective outrage about legal injustice." The real issue is selective enforcement of the law. If it applied equally to everyone, then more people would be outraged as it affected them.

> If it applied equally to everyone, then more people would be outraged as it affected them. In order to do this you need to have laws that are designed to be reasonable for people to actually follow instead of laws that are designed to allow prosecutors to find a violation whenever they want to. Actually enforcing them would create pressure to do that, but it would also create pressure to go back to selective enforc…

"If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged"

It's unlikely people would have enough evidence of high enough quality to make that case. The prosecution will just say the evidence isn't enough.

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

#135

Post by Lerc »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #125

what's the point here? a wrong thing happening to Aaron doesn't mean we should make that same thing happen to Meta

It seems to be how people view things, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's like the outrage when wealthy people get off on charges. Usually it is because they have the resources to demand the justice that should be afforded to everyone. You shouldn't be outraged at the privileged being treated fairly. You should be outraged at the many many instances of the unprivileged being treated unfairly.

Rather than making others suffer to balance things out, removing suffering on the other side has the same effect.

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

#136

Post by 9x39 »

josh_p wrote: post #104
sillysaurusx wrote: post #60

He 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 filt…

Yes, he did that. He also settled the problem with jstor, returned the files as part of a civil settlement. This was overzealous prosecution after the affected party got their remedy.

MIT was another affected party, who reached out to the government for help.

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

#137

Post by AnthonyMouse »

irishcoffee wrote: post #87
cortesoft wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe his lawyer didn't explain all of that to him? An important role for an attorney in this situation is as a counselor, to explain the actual reality and the possibilities.

I have had the misfortune of hiring many attorneys for a variety of different legal issues. They’re almost always fucking useless.

The trouble with lawyers is that their quality varies tremendously but the client has very little ability to tell the difference until after it's too late.

In theory this is why they have to be licensed but in practice that consistently leads to the profession capturing the licensing board and using it for protecting the providers rather than the customers.

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

#138

Post by uda »

I get the sentiment "Aaron paid while Meta and its likes are getting away", but what will we gain by getting them to pay pennies? We still can't do what Meta is doing, legally, that is the problem

We need to repeal anti-circumvention laws, and yes, it means we might legally be able to do to Meta and its likes what they've been doing to all of us

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

#139

Post by DivingForGold »

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…

In many cases it's "all about the money" (and the lawyers). Take the case of Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors who was famously pursued by federal prosecutors as their ultimate "white whale" in a massive insider trading probe. Though his firm pleaded guilty and paid a record $1.8 billion fine, Cohen himself was never criminally charged or convicted. Yet two lower underlings were convicted and served time (the 2 fall guys).

An "Army of lawyers", no less than 6 top lawyers appeared in the courtroom that day representing Cohen (he did not appear), as a "shot across the bow" message to the US Government that Cohen was prepared to spend a vast sum of his wealth to defend himself and make it a huge undertaking for the government if they wished to proceed.

Lawyers present for Cohen:

Peter Nussbaum: SAC Capital's General Counsel, who entered the plea.

Theodore "Ted" Wells Jr.: Renowned partner from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Martin Klotz: Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Cohen's personal attorney.

Michael Schachter, Daniel Kramer, and Michael Gertzman: Senior litigation partners assisting the defense.

Because the defense consisted of prominent partners from multiple top-tier firms simultaneously, analysts famously calculated that the collective group was costing SAC Capital roughly $10,000 an hour (mere pocket change for a successful hedge fund guy).

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

#140

Post by Telaneo »

doctorwho42 wrote: post #53
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.

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...

> 'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked.

> 'Two ways', Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly'.

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