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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

#271

Post by necovek »

tpmoney wrote: post #219
calvinmorrison wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is limited liability. I don't think companies should shield stockholder, shareholders, or owners from any liability

While this sounds good in theory, I suspect the actual result would be much worse for justice in most cases. With the corporation acting as its own legal entity, if you are wronged, you sue and obtain justice from the corporation. If instead you needed to sue each and every shareholder to obtain their share of the liabilities, you'd likely spend many more years in court as each individual owner argues why they aren't…

I think you missed the point: you can still take damages from the corporation, but if corporation cannot provide them (bankrupcy), owners are held liable for them instead. This is how non-LLC companies are treated.

The instrument of Limited Liability exists to encourage business formation and risk taking for small businesses to kick off.

The way large corporations and rich individuals would structure their projects into a number of corporation-owned LLCs is an obvious gap being addressed in law systems throughout the world.

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

#272

Post by deaux »

salawat wrote: post #143
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to say things like that you have to give examples.

You just created a large, TBTF corp's veto. Pass a law or have a law passed a corp TBTF doesn't want? Break it and force the Government's hand to strike it down.

TBTF is not a thing. It's all in your mind. Evergrande and Country Garden would've been classified TBTF in the minds of many USians, yet they failed.

The dead comment below by AnthonyMouse already pointed out that even in your scenario there's no difference with the status quo anyway. It's insane that it's dead and reeks of astroturfing, as nothing about it is worth flagging.

> Isn't that the other way around? The law already can't be enforced against the TBTF corporation, so what do they care if it stays on the books? But now you can't enforce it against someone else or they can point to you not enforcing it against them.

> Except that's the point. The government would now have to do that or they lose the law. If it's a good law then they don't want to lose it, but if it's a good law then they should be enforcing it against them.

> And, of course, the correct way to deal with this is to break the TBTF corporations into many smaller pieces so that stops being a problem.

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

#273

Post by thomasjeff1 »

derekdahmer wrote: post #259
jacquesm wrote: post #243

Because he planned to make the data public, Meta just wants to use it to enrich its shareholders. See also: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and every other big player in this space besides.

Meta has opened sourced almost all of their models trained on this data.

With added filters (censorship)

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

#274

Post by jackgolding »

badlibrarian wrote: post #133

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 old…

RE: I was not in a position to help him address his mental health,...

I just had a friend commit suicide last week and have been feeling the same, if only I was there. Another friend (a mental health nurse) shared this:

"Fortunately or unfortunately I don't think we can hold ourselves responsible responsible for the decisions of others"

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

#276

Post by sillysaurusx »

thomasjeff1 wrote: post #263
sillysaurusx wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is meant as some kind of "gotcha," but the legal system doesn't work that way. He wasn't rotating his MAC address as a default practice. He changed the last byte of his MAC only when he noticed he was banned from the network. Intent matters. Plugging your laptop into a router you normally don't have access to, with intent to download a large number of private articles, means something. And it mea…

From your sourced link. > JSTOR,founded in 1995, was and continued to be a United States-based, not-for-profit organization that provides an online system for archiving and providing access to academic journal. If it was online, could any one have access to it? So why him downloading them was breaking the law?

It was free for MIT students but paid for everyone else, I believe. That's why he needed to jack into MIT's network.

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

#277

Post by s1artibartfast »

pdonis wrote: post #228
s1artibartfast wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are jumping between the reality you would like and the reality that exists. It is fine to want for something to be different, but that doesn't change the facts of how they are. It's fine to advocate future papers be made public. I think it is antisocial and delusional to say past papers belong to the public just because that's what you would have wanted. The word for this is expostfacto recontractin…

> It seems like you are jumping between the reality you would like and the reality that exists. No, you did that, by responding to my post where I said "should" as though I were trying to describe how things are instead of how they ought to be. > I think it is antisocial and delusional to say past papers belong to the public just because that's what you would have wanted. I didn't say that. You need to work on your r…

> No, you did that, by responding to my post where I said "should" as though I were trying to describe how things are instead of how they ought to be.

I dont really want to get into a tit for tat, but for clarification, you said several times that the public had paid for the papers. Researchers were not paid to create open access papers. You even said it was criminal that they weren't.

> didn't say that. You need to work on your reading comprehension.

rude...

> Can you give some?

I gave a few. The government may want the technology in production and dont care at all about any public disclosure. all the researchers they care about will have journal access either way.

One I didn't mention is that researchers want the freedom to publish as they choose. The government is happy to trade this away as part of the grant process.

The point I was trying to illustrate is that there is no reason to think open access is a non-negotiable or top priority from the government (or public good) perspective. All things being equal, it is nice to have.

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

#278

Post by charcircuit »

jmward01 wrote: post #210
charcircuit wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US speeding can lead to your license being removed and then you can't drive at all. Speeding is not just a fine.

Again, this is a wealth tax. Rich get driven around and don't loose their jobs for loosing their license. Try being poor though and having this happen. Edit: should have said 'poor tax'

Being poor is no excuse for breaking the law. If you can't afford having your license revoked then don't do things that can get your license revoked.

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

#279

Post by alex1138 »

searealist wrote: post #248
shadowgovt wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, I feel like people really gloss over, perhaps because it is uncomfortable to think about... He took his own life. There is no doubt the government put him in an uncomfortable position, but his story is a gross and tragic outlier. It's hard to draw any patterned conclusions from it, especially because we'll never know how the case would have worked out had Swartz not exited the judicial process.

Aaron had a history of depression and suicidal ideation that long predates his prosecution. Also: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2013/01/noam-chomsk...

He did. But it in no way excuses the way they treated him

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

#280

Post by khazhoux »

93po wrote: post #269
badlibrarian wrote: post #133

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 old…

I strongly dislike this comment because it's the type of thing some anonynmous person can post online with no credibility or accountability and massively mischaracterize a situation to downplay the very awful things that people did to Aaron and instead place more of the blame on him. We saw the same shit happen constantly with Julian Assange.

Most of us are here anonymously, no? Personally, I choose to trust that my fellow HNers are (by and large) real people speaking in good faith. Otherwise, I'm wasting my time reading any comment thread here at all.
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