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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

#151

Post by 9x39 »

pdonis wrote: post #144
gertop wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep shifting the goal posts... He did something illegal, repeatedly, he got caught, he got offered a lenient plea deal of a few months. Those are the facts. Yet somehow y'all turn it into: he was harassed, his family's life was threatened, he was going to get life in prison.

> He did something illegal Read the book Three Felonies A Day. The law is so bloated now that we all do illegal things all the time, we can't help it. What Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers that should be in the public domain to begin with, because we paid for the research already with our tax money. The fact that such information is considered "proprietary" and JSTOR and other companies…

> Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers

That's the root, but I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. The federal involvement persisted even after JSTOR and the state quit, and they had him served on a plate with MIT's help.

You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out.

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

#152

Post by qingcharles »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137
irishcoffee wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whoever can create an objective way to determine the quality of legal representation is onto a real winner.

I find it near impossible, even as someone with a lot of legal knowledge, to tell whether a lawyer I hire is going to advocate zealously and correctly and comprehensively on my part once I hand over my retainer. They all talk a great game.

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

#153

Post by pdonis »

hk1337 wrote: post #122
PenguinCoder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information should be free.

Agreed, to an extent, but that doesn't mean you can breach any barrier someone has in place preventing access, take it, and make it publicly available.

The information Swartz was downloading was scientific papers that we, the public, have already paid for with our tax dollars. The crime here is that the government allows JSTOR and other private companies to still hold those papers behind paywalls instead of releasing them into the public domain as they should have been.

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

#154

Post by AnthonyMouse »

9x39 wrote: post #106
Quarrelsome wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the sentences that US courts dream up around digital offences are absolutely obscene and seem to only exist as a means of coercion. However because they're still technically real and it feels disgusting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._... The prosecution offered 6 months in low security in a plea deal. He had been mass downloading and evading them at MIT for months until he had MIT and FBI involved and was finally caught on camera. I bring this up because A. maximum exposure to charges are rarely applied but makes great headlines for outrage and B. the plea deal seems reasonable to someon…

> The prosecution offered 6 months in low security in a plea deal.

That's the racket. Getting any jailtime for "mass downloading" is a severe penalty, but that gets turned into the carrot because the stick is so unreasonably disproportionate.

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

#155

Post by pdonis »

MattDamonSpace wrote: post #79
PenguinCoder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information should be free.

“People who generate valuable information should be uncompensated”

The scientists who wrote the papers that Swartz downloaded were compensated, with the public's tax dollars. That should mean that we the public should now have free access to what we paid for. Unfortunately the government prefers to let private companies keep those papers behind paywalls.

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

#156

Post by pkaye »

quickthrowman wrote: post #96
amiga386 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For some insane reason I am unable to comprehend, the UK government still allows Fujitsu to bid on government software contracts, despite being responsible for all of the false imprisonments, trauma, and tragedy you laid you in your post. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/fujitsu-allowed-bid-govern...

I have a feeling Fujitsu took the blame for mistakes done by the Post Office in order to get future contracts. The contracts are padded to pay fines and damages.

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

#157

Post by pdonis »

mcv wrote: post #73

I recently came to the conclusion that it was never about copyright. It's about corporate control, about punishing contempt for business model. Aaron Swartz was punished because he disrespected a business model. All the kids sued by the MAFIAA were punished because they disrespected a business model. Copyright was merely the mechanism to make it stick. But AI companies and Meta can disrespect copyright all they want,…

> Aaron Swartz was punished because he disrespected a business model.

Exactly. And what's more, it's a business model, keeping behind paywalls scientific papers that we the public have already paid for once with our tax dollars, that shouldn't even exist in the first place.

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

#158

Post by Varelion »

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…

Luigi Mangione

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

#159

Post by qingcharles »

nextaccountic wrote: post #93
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…

So what's the maximum penalty for trespassing? The prosecution was looking for a disproportionate sentence About technical countermeasures to evade blocking.. you realize that everybody that does scraping at a large scale employs those, right? Including Meta Specially nowadays where large swaths of the web is behind captchas

If it was charged as trespassing, not something higher like burglary, then the level of his trespass was probably the lowest misdemeanor. Usually trespass is a sliding scale starting with a warning not to return.

Being that it was on a campus, they can sometimes use that as an aggravating factor. I remember one case where a homeless person had a key for a vending machine and took out $30 in quarters, but since the land the vending machine was on was owned by a university he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. One of the few cases that got reversed for a constitutionally exceptional sentence.

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

#160

Post by qingcharles »

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.

Some areas of the USA still allow it too, but it's rare.
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