11–20 of 130 posts
That said, I'm glad it was here if only to read jamesagilar's pointing out that "aaronsw turned down a slap on the wrist plea bargain". Thanks James!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At root this is a philosophical problem. The professional philosophers have created a disarray in the field of values, claiming that they are subjective and arbitrary, and that's resulted in the inability of people to rally around common, objective values of right and wrong. And when you say something like this, you generally just get what these philosophers have said repeated back to you, and some weak-kneed alterna…
No offense, but I think I'll listen to systems thinkers and legal experts rather than philosophers for a little while.
Slightly less sinister hypothesis: aaronsw turned down a slap on the wrist plea bargain. The prosecutor charged the maximum because it is a waste of time to take a guy to federal court over a $20k fine and a year of probation. You know that maximum about malice, incompetence, etc.? I'm not saying I _know_ for sure but it strikes me that most people think they are doing good in the world and I don't get why this prose…
Why not just drop the fucking case then? Jesus, how many millions of our tax dollars were spent doing our best to drive this kid to suicide? JSTOR didn't want prosecution and arguably neither did MIT. I can't stand these justifications that seem to make everyone a slave to the machine. Heck, you and I break hundreds of laws a day, maybe even a felony or two or three. Federal prosecutors can do whatever they want with…
What the OP is talking about is why prosecutors are the way they are, and suggesting the answer is more complicated than "these specific people are evil". This is worthy of discussion and it's not up to you to kill it by accusing the OP of defending a situation he is clearly not defending.
Why is this on the front page? This is barely even about Aaron Schwartz -- he wasn't disabled, friendless, or prone to drooling for example. Less of these kinds of posts, please. That said, I'm glad it was here if only to read jamesagilar's pointing out that "aaronsw turned down a slap on the wrist plea bargain". Thanks James!
It is all too seldom about "justice" and all too often about "career".
And... these prosecutors are public employees. Our employees. We cannot and should not divorce ourselves from their malicious malfeasance, when and as it occurs.
Nor can we nor should we divorce ourselves from the system that creates it.
Swartz's case gains publicity through his prominence. But similar oppression, often combined with a grinding and defining lack of opportunity, plays out thousands of times every day, on the streets and in the families of this country.
We can't make it perfect. But we should be trying a damned sight more to make it better. If we are sincere about this.
Why is this on the front page? This is barely even about Aaron Schwartz -- he wasn't disabled, friendless, or prone to drooling for example. Less of these kinds of posts, please. That said, I'm glad it was here if only to read jamesagilar's pointing out that "aaronsw turned down a slap on the wrist plea bargain". Thanks James!
How can it be fixed?
At root this is a philosophical problem. The professional philosophers have created a disarray in the field of values, claiming that they are subjective and arbitrary, and that's resulted in the inability of people to rally around common, objective values of right and wrong. And when you say something like this, you generally just get what these philosophers have said repeated back to you, and some weak-kneed alterna…
Why is this on the front page? This is barely even about Aaron Schwartz -- he wasn't disabled, friendless, or prone to drooling for example. Less of these kinds of posts, please. That said, I'm glad it was here if only to read jamesagilar's pointing out that "aaronsw turned down a slap on the wrist plea bargain". Thanks James!
Slightly less sinister hypothesis: aaronsw turned down a slap on the wrist plea bargain. The prosecutor charged the maximum because it is a waste of time to take a guy to federal court over a $20k fine and a year of probation. You know that maximum about malice, incompetence, etc.? I'm not saying I _know_ for sure but it strikes me that most people think they are doing good in the world and I don't get why this prose…
Why not just drop the fucking case then? Jesus, how many millions of our tax dollars were spent doing our best to drive this kid to suicide? JSTOR didn't want prosecution and arguably neither did MIT. I can't stand these justifications that seem to make everyone a slave to the machine. Heck, you and I break hundreds of laws a day, maybe even a felony or two or three. Federal prosecutors can do whatever they want with…
Now, maybe you think "breaking in" to a poorly protected network should not be a crime. Maybe you think mass copying of copyrighted materials should not be a crime. But if you take action like Swartz did to protest these laws, you are engaging in an act of civil disobedience and inviting prosecution. And sometimes that's justified, but being prosecuted is part and parcel of civil disobedience.
The rhetoric around this unfortunate incident borders on intellectually dishonest. Our democratically-elected Congress has passed laws, and under those laws breaking into a poorly-protected network isn't any less "hacking" than breaking into a poorly-protected house is trespassing. Those laws also say that scientists own the copyright to their papers, and can license them to distributors, even when their research is paid for with public grant dollars.
The prosecutor in this case pursued her case according to the law. Not some technical "letter of the law" definition of the law, but in response to exactly the kinds of actions the laws were designed to address. Our democratically-elected Congress chose to make those specific things that Swartz did illegal.
That doesn't mean that no one is on the hook. But it's not the relatively simple matter of stopping overzealous prosecution in one agency. The techie community has a far bigger task: convincing elected officials and those that vote for them that there are degrees to "hacking" and that publicly funded research should be freely available. That's the root of the issue here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At root this is a philosophical problem. The professional philosophers have created a disarray in the field of values, claiming that they are subjective and arbitrary, and that's resulted in the inability of people to rally around common, objective values of right and wrong. And when you say something like this, you generally just get what these philosophers have said repeated back to you, and some weak-kneed alterna…
Is that actually, causally, the reason for the U.S.'s rather harsh justice system? I mean, postmodernism is not exactly popular in the US. Are law-and-order populist politicians pushing "tough on crime" agendas and long sentences all secretly fans of French philosophers? If anything, the problem is that they are too sure of their own values, and willing to enforce them with imprisonment.