Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by deaux » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 4:01 AM UTC

ninjahawk1 wrote: post #373

deaux wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s difficult to actually punish a machine that acts almost like infrastructure. It's not at all. There is zero reason this couldn't be applied to Zuck. [0] There's also no reason why fines couldn't be 10% of global revenue, or more. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/business/evergrande-found...

I agree that they should, my point is that it’s difficult for several real logistical reasons. These companies for one do a large amount of lobbying and fundraising for political campaigns, they do control most digital infrastructure, with AI expanding are securing multi trillion dollar datacenter funds, etc. There’s a ton of money at stake for the weathly aristocrats. They push politicians to delay or do things in f…

> and like I already said punishment is hard specifically because how do you fine someone with infinite money?

This isn't true though, if they had infinite money they wouldn't be spending every single second of their waking existence trying to get more of it and move higher on the leaderboard. If your opinion is that Meta/Zuck wouldn't care about being fined a year's worth of global revenue, or in his personal case, 90% of his net worth, then I'd really like to hear why. Because it contradicts all of their actual actions showing that all they care about is hoarding as much money as possible, meaning they'd very much care about it being taken away. Maybe I'm missing something.

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

#402

Post by marysol5 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

elmer2 wrote: post #245

Aaron broke into a room to setup the system to do the scraping. Much different than scraping web content from the Internet.

It's also weirdly interesting how people defend Swartz activities, while calling on other people (or corporations) doing it to be prosecuted.

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

#403

Post by marysol5 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #282

alex1138 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He was treated poorly. But somehow a lot of otherwise-smart people think you should not charge a person who suffers from depression or suicidal thoughts.

"You are hereby charged with the offence of rape. How do you wish to plead?"

"I am sad"

"Okay, you are free to go"

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

#404

Post by marysol5 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

alightsoul wrote: post #285

goldie_wilson wrote: post #185

Maybe I'm missing something, but didn't Aaron break into an MIT network closet and then spoof and use exploits to secure data vs Meta who is just scraping everything that can be found on the public web. I despise just about everything Meta does, but it seems like people are quick to compare two situations that are not identical so they can further their "big corp and America = bad" agendas.

Oh my god I have seen this argument here repeated so many times with different rephrasings. I do not want to believe it is a bot or astroturfing.

Believe what?

It's the truth of the situation, it's reality.

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

#405

Post by marysol5 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #62

searealist wrote: post #44

Swartz was federally charged with wire fraud and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act based on allegedly unauthorized access, not simply prosecuted for copyright infringement or “downloading articles.” Also, he was offered a plea deal of 6 months and his own attorneys did not expect him to serve any time even if rejecting the plea deal and convicted. Meta is accused of civil copyright infringement. Very dif…

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.

As someone, who was wrongly accused of a crime, and had to go to court over it. I can relate, I was massively suicidal, made a whole plan and stockpiled what was required to do it. I was having vivid dreams of even more extreme ways I could go about it.

As you can tell that never happened, but at the same time I always argue in comment sections over his case, as people so wildly misrepresent what happened to their own gains. Especially the fact he willingly and continuingly went around blockers put in place to stop the activity from happening, even after being caught.

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

#406

Post by necovek » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #378

necovek wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying it's impossible to come up with numbers, but that they will be somewhat made-up. You'd also need to amortize the damages over years, and then spread it to all the speeding tickets issued. So I'd actually simplify it: if we say $40000 billion (11k deaths annually times $2b plus non-deaths too and financial damages to cars and infrastructure) of damages amortized over 10 years and spread to 40M tickets…

2 billion dollars per 200 deaths, not per death. So that immediately drops your rough calculation to $500 per ticket, not too far off from actual ticket values.

Got it, thanks for the correction: it does surprisingly line up!

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

#407

Post by foldr » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

DANmode wrote: post #397

foldr wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SciHub mainly redistributes scans of print archives made by JSTOR and other organisations. And it does not have everything that JSTOR has. For example, this paper is not, as far as I can tell, available on SciHub: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178697 Somehow, you appreciate SciHub without appreciating one of the organizations that did the actual work necessary to make many of those PDFs exist in the first place: http…

Are you being intentionally obtuse? If the JSTOR copy didn’t exist, the pre-print copy would be scraped from the author’s website, or the text / results submitted by the author or someone close anonymously. Less, more slowly, but the same point.

Sure, we’ll scrape journal articles from the 1950s from the authors’ websites...

Many more recent articles also aren’t available on the authors’ websites, such as the one I linked.

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

#408

Post by foldr » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 9:41 AM UTC

DANmode wrote: post #398

foldr wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, no. In the case of old print journal archives scanned by JSTOR, it's JSTOR paying the cost of the scanning.

Anyone can scan, host, and curate - including one or many peers. We do not need any entity in between researchers and other researchers.

Practically speaking, no-one is going to scan centuries' worth of historical journal articles for free. And JSTOR isn’t really an entity outside the research community; it’s a non-profit that grew from within it.

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

#409

Post by Gander5739 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

_ink_ wrote: post #193

keeda wrote: post #181

A key aspect folks should understand about US Copyright Law is that it much more severely penalizes infringement with distributing, or an intent to distribute, unauthorized copies than to just consume privately. Distributing unauthorized copies is a federal crime (which can escalate to a felony based on various factors) whereas doing whatever for private use is usually a much milder civil liability. If you look at al…

A German publisher is currently sueing OpenAI, because they think it is distributing unauthorized copies of its work. [1] It's in German, but I think the example picture speaks for itself. So essentially big tech is doing exactly what the torrenters were persecuted for. I still think big tech will be treated differently. [1] - https://www.heise.de/news/Rechtsverletzende-Kopien-vom-NEINh...

You can read it in English: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Rights-infringing-copies-of-NEI...

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

#410

Post by ajam1507 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #155

MattDamonSpace wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

JSTOR isn't just full of publicly funded work.