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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

#361

Post by badlibrarian »

nicbou wrote: post #327
rsingel wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This really isn’t the tone you should adopt on this forum

His profile says he wrote for Wired, so I'm inclined to cut him some slack. He spent 4,000 words and six Pantone colors talking about SMS for logins, but never found time to write that powerful, 40 year old men were flying a 14 year old around the country without his parents present, so maybe not.

Sickly Jewish kid has his childhood stolen, gets radicalized, hangs himself is a much more painful story to read. More importantly, it demands actual answers. No wonder it never got told. It's not exactly Brighton Beach Memoirs.

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

#362

Post by deaux »

frm88 wrote: post #328
deaux wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

Off topic: 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. If you see such a comment, you can vouch for it (small menu point next to flag) and revive it. I did that now because I agree with your assessment - of late I do this very often be…

I do this and did it in this case, but I've never seen it make a difference.

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

#364

Post by josh_p »

9x39 wrote: post #329
protocolture wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please sir, we lost entire megabytes of bandwidth as someone accessed free resources on the internet, we are such an aggreieved party.

Amusing, but a long string of rogue cyber intrusions coupled with Jstor blocking MIT altogether a few times isn’t something to ignore. Hard to imagine just ignoring the risks and potential of that unknown. MIT and Jstor had a bunch of incident response going on, and it isn’t a leap to consider Jstor would cut them off for good if the situation went unresolved.

Why do you seem so desperate to characterize Aaron as some amoral super-spy hacker? His ethics are well known. He took issue with Jstor's business model of gatekeeping tax-payer-funded research behind another pay wall, stole some articles, got caught, settled with jstor and MIT. Life could have gone on.

The OP's blog post is about how the law isn't applied equally in the United States. Aaron was an individual and an easy target for the overzealous prosecutor. Meta's a faceless corporation, guilty in the court of public opinion, and they don't even get a timely investigation because they have the money to tie up the broken legal system indefinitely.

Aaron was an example - if you're small enough, you will be caught, tried, and punished in whatever way we see fit to prove that the justice system "works". If you're a billionaire, do whatever you want wink wink.

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

#365

Post by rand593843 »

thousand_nights wrote: post #208
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…

> He was a bright and broken child i wasn't there and i didn't know him, but talking about a 26 year old man like this makes it seem like you're just taking away his autonomy

broken child?

Citation please

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

#366

Post by forestry »

simonh wrote: post #321
Xcelerate wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged then the prosecution either has to charge them too or that law is struck down I’ve often thought this about laws involving speed limits. When 95% of the people driving in a major downtown area are technically breaking the law, what is the purpose of the law but to target whoever you like then? Either enforce it unilaterally or come up…

Going after every possible case would be staggeringly expensive for marginal gain, the cost society would massively exceed the benefits. Yes the system as it is that relies on discretion, but there’s always discretion involved, and we rely on separation of powers, public pressure, etc to act to try and correct excesses. Of course that is not guaranteed to work, and won’t work perfectly, but no system will. Societies…

It’s all well and good until the person who has that discretion comes after you personally.

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

#367

Post by DANmode »

foldr wrote: post #331
DANmode wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does every research team and lab use SciHub and/or Library Genesis?

I mean, they don’t, exclusively, or no-one would be giving money to JSTOR. And certainly, no-one would be scanning millions of old journal articles for free.

Comparatively few individuals are giving money to JSTOR these days.

Mostly institutions that they’ve previously captured.

And yes: not sure how you missed it, but for like a decade or more people have been scanning in millions of papers and books.

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

#368

Post by foldr »

DANmode wrote: post #367
foldr wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they don’t, exclusively, or no-one would be giving money to JSTOR. And certainly, no-one would be scanning millions of old journal articles for free.

Comparatively few individuals are giving money to JSTOR these days. Mostly institutions that they’ve previously captured. And yes: not sure how you missed it, but for like a decade or more people have been scanning in millions of papers and books.

I don't know where people get the idea that JSTOR is one of the bad guys. It's a non-profit that scans old journal articles that would otherwise be a huge pain to access. It costs money to do that. What specifically have they done that you disapprove of?

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

#369

Post by DANmode »

foldr wrote: post #368
DANmode wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparatively few individuals are giving money to JSTOR these days. Mostly institutions that they’ve previously captured. And yes: not sure how you missed it, but for like a decade or more people have been scanning in millions of papers and books.

I don't know where people get the idea that JSTOR is one of the bad guys. It's a non-profit that scans old journal articles that would otherwise be a huge pain to access. It costs money to do that. What specifically have they done that you disapprove of?

I don’t know where you got the idea I was talking about my opinion of JSTOR.

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

#370

Post by badlibrarian »

rand593843 wrote: post #365
thousand_nights wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was a bright and broken child i wasn't there and i didn't know him, but talking about a 26 year old man like this makes it seem like you're just taking away his autonomy

broken child? Citation please

"One of the early victories for me was persuading a young boy of 14 or 15 years of age, named Aaron Swartz, to become the technical architect of the Creative Commons. It took a little persuading, but I told him that this is what he had to do." --Lawrence Lessig

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Cost_of_...

Doctorow, Kottke and others didn't seem to think it was odd that a 14 year old was being flown around the country without his parents present. They pre-gamed at a house instead of a bar because Aaron was too young; the host, then nearly twice his age, later dated him. Didn't end well. And then things really didn't end well.

Epstein made his first contribution to MIT that same year (2002). Lessig arranged for Joi Ito to meet Aaron a year later. According to MIT, Joi Ito met Epstein for the first time one month after Aaron died in 2013.

In the most charitable reading of the situation, Aaron was robbed of his childhood.

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