The United States are broken beyond repair, this is just the beginning of the shitstorm of corruption that has been building up since the end of the 19th century.
The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#52The only conclusion I can draw from his life and the events leading up to his demise is that he must have upset someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power. Otherwise the witch-hunt just doesn't make any sense. After all ask yourself what motive did the prosecutor possess for going after him like that?
No conspiracy, guys. The prosecutor was just doing her job. A simple case like Aaron's probably took up less than 1% of her week. It may have been a big case to Aaron, but compared to their normal cases, it was a relative vacation for the prosecutors working on it. The problem was not that Aaron "upset someone deeply entranched." The problem is that Aaron's activities fall into the definition of a particular form of…
It may have been a big case to Aaron, but compared to their normal cases, it was a relative vacation for the prosecutors working on it.
This makes it even sadder then.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
He returned all of the articles he downloaded to JSTOR when he was asked to. He did not distribute them. UPDATE: Here's JSTOR's confirmation of the above: http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz
How do you return something that was downloaded?
Since I have slightly trollish inclinations, I emailed JSTOR's customer service after they made that weird announcement about wanting files "returned", expressing my worry over which content was "missing", and when they expected it to be returned and available again. I got a short response claiming the media had misreported the situation:
Thank you for your message. Some of the media details about this incident have been a bit misleading. I can confirm that no content is missing from JSTOR as a result of the recent misuse case. Copies of the files were downloaded from the site, no content is unavailable as a result.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#54To people wondering if prosecutors have a choice, they absolutely do. I was recipient of an NSF check of over $10,000 from a guy with a history of writing bad checks(a criminal offense). It is a clear cut case with ample proof and victims. Yet the DA's office in neither NYC or San Francisco has taken action against him for over a year.
Meanwhile the guy continues to scam more and more people, pushing one woman to brink of shutting down her business. I know because I made a site(http://cliffkaplanfraud.com) and the stories that trickle in are gut wrenching and infuriating.
So yes, the DA's office seems to have a lot of power to pursue someone unlike what some people here suggest.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?
Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.
Man! What a crime you describe! Do you think any of these scholars--very few of whom probably use JStor on a regular basis (even at a very good liberal arts school, Columbia, did I rarely use it)--would advocate a >$1.5*10^6 or jail time for their lost productivity (which, again, was likely negligible)?
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?
Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.
He didn't cause anyone to lose access.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#57The only conclusion I can draw from his life and the events leading up to his demise is that he must have upset someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power. Otherwise the witch-hunt just doesn't make any sense. After all ask yourself what motive did the prosecutor possess for going after him like that?
No conspiracy, guys. The prosecutor was just doing her job. A simple case like Aaron's probably took up less than 1% of her week. It may have been a big case to Aaron, but compared to their normal cases, it was a relative vacation for the prosecutors working on it. The problem was not that Aaron "upset someone deeply entranched." The problem is that Aaron's activities fall into the definition of a particular form of…
> The prosecutor was just doing her job.
If that is the case, then she is BAD at her job. You can't have it both ways. Either way, let everyone know that she is either bad at her job or overzealous.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#58Once there lived a king, he had em' ministers
and whole lot of them entertaining fucks.
One day, the Elvis of 17th Cent., comes to impress the king.
He goes,
>A little less conversation, a little more action please >All this aggravation aint satisfactioning me >A little more bite and a little less bark >A little less fight and a little more spark >Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me >Satisfy me baby
But then, he JUST STOPS.
"My Dear King you are fucking NAKED."
The story ends abruptly and Elvis headless.
xxxxx
Now what Aron did was, he didn't even sing the intro. He went all lulz on the King.
The story should have ended, with Aron going all Jesus.
But being philosophically considerate, I guess he went all Loki.
O' Aron I do wish you hadn't played this.
It is rather peevy of me, but I will take a look at your HardDisk if that Sean chap disseminates it online.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's that the U.S. got their asses handed to them in a previous case involving PACER, and were out for blood. Sadly, that's what they got.
I'm not seeing any reference to PACER in any obit articles and in a lot of the stuff on reddit and elsewhere. This is a very important point. Essentially, Aaron had already defeated the feds for open access and was trying again. I imagine the petty bureaucrats burned by PACER really were out for blood this time. Apparently, our government's mission is to destroy young people over petty grievances its employees have w…
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would have been persecuted for the Blue Box if they did it today.
The government has been like this for a long time. But it sure feels like they have accelerated on behalf of their corporate paymasters.
Re: The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
#60To people wondering if prosecutors have a choice, they absolutely do. I was recipient of an NSF check of over $10,000 from a guy with a history of writing bad checks(a criminal offense). It is a clear cut case with ample proof and victims. Yet the DA's office in neither NYC or San Francisco has taken action against him for over a year. Meanwhile the guy continues to scam more and more people, pushing one woman to bri…
1) A bad check is a state level offense, not a federal offense, and the discretion afforded to state and local prosecutors is far greater than the discretion afforded federal prosecutors (though federal prosecutors have broader powers).
2) They may have prioritized murders and rapes over crimes, such as bad-check-passing, that can be remedied in a civil courtroom. That's generally what happens when state and local budgets get cut. For example, in 2009 and 2010, San Bernardino and Riverside counties simply did not enforce drug possession charges for meth or marijuana for quantities below the dealer amount because they didn't have the prosecutorial resources to handle those cases after prioritizing violent crimes.
3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes.