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Aaron Swartz commits suicide

tech.mit.edu

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Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#211

Post by rohamg »

jacques_chester wrote: post #196
paraschopra wrote: post #141

It's easy to deride suicide but fact of the matter is that it is the final but a very powerful option we have at our disposal. Instead of saying that a particular person should not have committed suicide, our hope should be that if a suicide happens, it is well thought through and is not done in haste. If a particular person decides that decades of painful life is much worse than simply ending the existence, who are…

Context certainly matters. Depressed people are not perfectly rational agents. By the time you are contemplating suicide, it's not even close. And depression is a factor in almost every suicide. Depression is insidious because it makes all the alternatives to suicide seem much more difficult than they actually are.

This is right. I'm shocked at the "suicide apologists" in this thread.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#212

Post by mailshanx »

Aaron Swartz was an excellent programmer and writer. I have bumped into his code and writings often. The raw nerve series ( http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve ) have been especially influential in shaping my thinking. Above all, he was a wonderful human being: the world is a bit worse off and a sadder place without him. Rest in peace, Aaron.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#213

Post by doe88 »

I'm sad, really sad. I didn't know him personally and have never spoken to him. But few times when I read one of his tweets or when I visited a page of his site from a link elsewhere, I was saying to myself that it should be hard to be in his position actually, that it must put your life on hold and shut any of your plans to be stuck in such a preposterous legal situation. I as a simple citizen command you Aaron Swartz for all your inspirational work, Thank You.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#214

Post by vor_ »

jacquesm wrote: post #159

Man this so sucks. If you hit someone with enough felony counts sooner or later something can snap. This in response to those that claim the DOJ didn't have anything to do with Aaron killing himself. For some people the mere fact of being suspected of a crime they didn't commit is enough to push them over the edge. When you're placed in a holding cell the police will remove your laces from your boots so you don't han…

You're essentially arguing that the ends justify the means.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#215

Post by alan_cx »

achompas wrote: post #86
jlgreco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have no problem directing our attention at bullying when we consider elevated teenage suicide statistics, but if those bullies happen to be in government they are suddenly off limits and deserve no blame?

Man, I don't want to make this point here, but comparing this to bullying is ridiculous. There's a difference between a child who is victimized while growing socially and emotionally and an adult man who allegedly broke the law knowingly.

Only in that it makes finger pointers feel better while getting their slab of meat. The difference between the two is arbitrary and simply made up.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#216

Post by vor_ »

option_greek wrote: post #204
jacquesm wrote: post #159

Man this so sucks. If you hit someone with enough felony counts sooner or later something can snap. This in response to those that claim the DOJ didn't have anything to do with Aaron killing himself. For some people the mere fact of being suspected of a crime they didn't commit is enough to push them over the edge. When you're placed in a holding cell the police will remove your laces from your boots so you don't han…

There is no need to speculate. The DOJ bought by corporate interests is directly responsible for his suicide. They are more worried about protecting corporate interests than worrying about the spirit of law.

Don't be ridiculous. Nobody is directly responsible for Swartz's suicide but Swartz. That's what suicide is.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#217

Post by jacques_chester »

jacquesm wrote: post #207
jacques_chester wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've confused the roles of judges and a prosecutors. They're not the same.

I took these to be part of the DOJ: "The criminal investigation and today’s indictment of Mr. Swartz has been directed by the United States Attorney’s Office. It was the government’s decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR’s. As noted previously, our interest was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter." So it's not as if anybody outside the govern…

Prosecutors can usually act on their own initiative. It's because of the historical legal concept that an offence against a person is really an offence against the Crown. So the Crown takes a legal monopoly on force and logically, this means that the Crown gets to decide what to pursue. The USA inherited this concept from England.

What I was trying to say above is that a prosecutor's goal is to prosecute as many cases as fully as possible. They do not consider whether it is meritorious to pursue a case according to some outside moral standard, that's not their job. Most of the time cases are picked if there's strong evidence.

I know you want to imagine that the DOJ prosecutors were some sort of Disney villains, according to a moral standard that they themselves do not abide by. A good man is dead, we all want somebody to kick.

But the place to make an argument that a case is flawed, or that a case is irrelevant, or repugnant to the letter or the spirit of the law, it's not in the prosecutor's office. It's in front of the judge.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#218

Post by aneth4 »

BrokenPipe wrote: post #133
jlgreco wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, this isn't really comparable to bullying, the imbalance of power is much more extreme. It is comparable to an adult beating a child for using a profane word. A completely mindbogglingly disproportionate response; convicted rapists get less time on average than what he was looking at. JSTOR didn't want him pursued like he was, but the justice department was trying to nail him to the wall anyway. They wan…

I agree with you. The parallel to bullying is a good fit and the only reason it is not _really_ comparable is because of the imbalance of power. I would not be surprised to find myself and most others taking the same sort of action in a similar, unjust, situation. Would you rather die today or suffer more than you lived so far in prison for something like that ? Isn't just a matter of the law being unjust, I think th…

This is so absurd. While you may disagree with the punishment sought and the law, the government is enforcing the law, as written at the time the crime was committed.

They guy actively broke many laws over a long period of time. The government is neither acting without reason nor intimidating someone for lawful behavior.

Bullies don't enforce proscribed consequences based on written law. Bullies don't use courts with impartial judges, juries, and defense advocacy. Comparing this to bullying is insulting to anyone actually bullied.

Comparing this to beating a child? Seriously?

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#219

Post by tricolon »

I never met Aaron Swartz but always wanted to. His work has had a profound impact on my life.

His blog was thought-provoking. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/

His work on the RSS 1.0 Specification enabled richer, more efficient information consumption. http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec

His work on Markdown enabled intuitive, unobtrusive formatting and structuring of information in plaintext and conversion to HTML. http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/#acknowledgement...

His work on reddit enabled thousands—now millions—to share online information in a social manner. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit

His work on the web.py framework gave countless Python programmers a head-start on serving information through web applications. http://webpy.org/

His work with DemandProgress gave Americans a political voice to protect and win back their freedom and the freedom of information. http://blog.demandprogress.org/people

His work with Creative Commons promoted the freedom of information and fair use and helped inform content creators of options other than copyright. http://creativecommons.org/

Thank you, Aaron Swartz, for all the above and all the other activism and works (https://github.com/aaronsw) I haven't mentioned here. You'll be missed and remembered by many.

.

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