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Aaron Swartz commits suicide

tech.mit.edu

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Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#501

Post by kanzure »

betterunix wrote: post #378
tesmar2 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone with access to a university network has access to those documents The JSTOR site says "Libraries and organizations license full-text content for their patrons, and if you are affiliated with one of these institutions, you can access those complete articles." Their site seems to say anyone with a uni affiliation.

Or anyone who is a patron of a university library system , which in this day and age means anyone who has been given access to a university network. Where I am, anyone can get one-week access if someone who is affiliated signs in and generates a unique token for the guest; we frequently do this when researchers from other schools or companies visit my group, but there is no actual restriction on who can be given acce…

    > Or anyone who is a patron of a university library system,
    > which in this day and age means anyone who has been given
    > access to a university network.
Not everyone is in a university, in fact there are billions of people who aren't in school and who would absolutely benefit from having access to the scientific knowledge contained in these tax-payer-funded documents. The current majority of people who read papers are, of course, going to be in colleges because they are the ones who have access in the first place.

I challenge you (in a very light-hearted, positive way) to demonstrate how to access papers as a member of the public. Most universities seem to require you to show up in person to use the library computers. You can subscribe to classes and get a student id to access literature, but then you no longer count as the public, do you?

Also, DeepDyve and ReadCube are scams. Anyone who reads a healthy amount gets charged out the wazoo. I didn't even know I had a wazoo!

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#502

Post by kdon08 »

beadmomsw wrote: post #252

Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful. Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is unfathomable. Aaron's mother

Having dealt with suicide of my brother I feel for you. It truly is a horrible thing to deal with... The pain never does go away. I hadn't heard of Aaron but have read some amazing articles about him since this story broke. Depression is terrible... Both dealing with it and watching someone else suffer. The feeling with both is just helplessness. Your son has done some truly amazing things in his life... I pray that these are the things that everyone remembers him for and not just the way he passed. My heart goes out to his family and friends, I see he had many.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#503

Post by philwelch »

throwit1979 wrote: post #463
philwelch wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. While I'll agree it was overzealous to make a federal case out of this, you can't blame federal prosecutors for doing their fucking jobs just because someone kills themselves. Many people have survived federal prosecution without dying or killing themselves. I'm shocked and horrified by this news too. It's awful that Aaron died. But it's foolish to blame anybody but him for h…

Your unwavering sycophancy toward the Almighty State in the face of a clearly wrong prosecution is absolutely sickening.

You're attacking a bit of a straw man there. Clearly the prosecutors are guilty of overzealous prosecution, and the law itself is overzealous. It simply doesn't follow, however, that these people are responsible for Aaron Swartz's decision to commit suicide. Only Aaron Swartz is responsible for that.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#504

Post by philwelch »

monsterix wrote: post #376
philwelch wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. While I'll agree it was overzealous to make a federal case out of this, you can't blame federal prosecutors for doing their fucking jobs just because someone kills themselves. Many people have survived federal prosecution without dying or killing themselves. I'm shocked and horrified by this news too. It's awful that Aaron died. But it's foolish to blame anybody but him for h…

> "You can't blame federal prosecutors for doing their job?" Since when was it their "job" to tactfully subject a civilian under stress of facing criminal law with potential 35 years of imprisonment? Apart from above, the intent to know the people and faces behind such a bench (read DOJ) is not the same as blaming them for the part called suicide in this entire story. We should definitely know who said what in the ca…

You don't get to make up the law as you go along. If its possible to serve 35 years in prison for what Aaron Swartz did, that's absurd and needs to change, but the prosecutors aren't the ones who made that law.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#505

Post by monsterix »

philwelch wrote: post #504
monsterix wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You can't blame federal prosecutors for doing their job?" Since when was it their "job" to tactfully subject a civilian under stress of facing criminal law with potential 35 years of imprisonment? Apart from above, the intent to know the people and faces behind such a bench (read DOJ) is not the same as blaming them for the part called suicide in this entire story. We should definitely know who said what in the ca…

You don't get to make up the law as you go along. If its possible to serve 35 years in prison for what Aaron Swartz did, that's absurd and needs to change, but the prosecutors aren't the ones who made that law.

I agree. That prosecutors aren't the ones who made the law, but aren't they responsible for their actions?

I think it's important to bring up names and faces of people (state agents) who make/made laws as well. As someone pointed out somewhere on HN today - "killing in the name of duty is an absurd bug in human psyche. The Lucifer effect? [1]. Those in public duty should probably be publicly visible along with their actions."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Eff...

[Edited at few places]

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#506

Post by nullc »

rprasad wrote: post #476
chimeracoder wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone on Reddit explained this better than I can, but JSTOR is basically a scam. It pockets the money that it receives and doesn't pay anything back to the authors. As an author, you yourself have to pay for access to your own work (or your university does, via a subscription). JSTOR has scholarly articles dating back centuries - when you consider that that information deserves to be free, and the societal cost of…

JSTOR is a non-profit created to store scholarly articles and maintain archives of scholarly work for future access. JSTOR is and was a driving force behind the digitalization of scholarly works and most academic journals. JSTOR's sole function is to maintain these archives, even if/when it is not commercially viable to do so. All of this costs money. Universities and companies pay for JSTOR so that it can keep doing…

Except that the access fees paid by any single large university would be enough to completely fund an open digital archive.

Yes, the fees are paid to the publishers— who themselves do not pay the authors, reviewers, and even (sometimes) the editors of the journals. As part of the NYC non-profit high society Jstor is far from the most efficient non profit— but their fault is not their inefficient spending and high salaries. Their fault is facilitating a system which is amoral and harmful to society.

Absent Jstor the universities and libraries would have an easier time reforming the system because writing a single big check per quarter wouldn't remove most of their problems (while leaving everyone outside of those institutions without access).

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#507

Post by asveikau »

jakerocheleau wrote: post #342
rdtsc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Troubles with the justice department don't alone cause a bright young man to kill himself. A potential to spend a longer part of his life than he has already lived in prison, will probably have a serious impact on anyone's mental state.

This, seriously. People need to stop excusing the federal government for the monster that it really is. Yes Aaron was depressed, do you really think the DoJ had absolutely nothing to do with that? I'd argue their constant indictments had a lot to do with it.

> People need to stop excusing the federal government for the monster that it really is.

As the son of a federal employee, I feel I should address this specific sentence. Let's not confuse a couple of jerks for the entirety of the federal government. Many large organizations produce stupid, indefensible actions but I feel like your phrasing is overly broad.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#508

Post by Leonidas300 »

beadmomsw wrote: post #252

Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful. Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is unfathomable. Aaron's mother

This news shocked me today. I didn't know much about your son but I admire what he did. This world has lost another great person.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#509

Post by philwelch »

monsterix wrote: post #505
philwelch wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to make up the law as you go along. If its possible to serve 35 years in prison for what Aaron Swartz did, that's absurd and needs to change, but the prosecutors aren't the ones who made that law.

I agree. That prosecutors aren't the ones who made the law, but aren't they responsible for their actions? I think it's important to bring up names and faces of people (state agents) who make/made laws as well. As someone pointed out somewhere on HN today - "killing in the name of duty is an absurd bug in human psyche. The Lucifer effect? [1]. Those in public duty should probably be publicly visible along with their…

They are responsible for their actions. Not Aaron's. I think the conscientious thing to do would have been to drop the charges, but then again I thought that when Aaron was alive, too.

Re: Aaron Swartz commits suicide

#510

Post by nullc »

monsterix wrote: post #44
Claudus wrote: post #16

Here's the JSTOR Statement related to the downloading incident: http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-... What Happened Last fall and winter, JSTOR experienced a significant misuse of our database. A substantial portion of our publisher partners’ content was downloaded in an unauthorized fashion using the network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of our participating institutions…

Can we not know who exactly (their faces/names etc.) were the people working in the "US Attorney Office" bent to indict him? It's easy for people to term it was not JSTOR, it was the Attorney Office but ultimately these things happen only because people forget how to treat other people properly.

It was Carmen Ortiz who was responsible for the unjust overzealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz which ultimately contributed to his death.

Carmen Ortiz's blind ambition has caused her to run roughshod over people's freedom in the past: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/141253-15th-annual-muzzle-...

We can only discourage the over-zealousness of prosecutors by making sure that it becomes a career limiting move instead of a career advancing one.

Lessig was kind enough in his writeup to not name names: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bull... but this kindness is both undeserved and unwise. Carmen thinks big convictions will get her a federal judgeship or other appointment. The public needs to make sure this isn't the case.

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