131–140 of 223 posts
"Whoopsy. Also: throwing Prof. Abelson under the bus."
What makes you think he was thrown under the bus? I figured they chose him because he's widely respected within the MIT community. edit: http://xkcd.com/386/
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That is a fine display of histrionics; but, the specifics of this case DO merit removing Ms. Ortiz and her assistant Mr. Heymann from office. Those of us who were following the case before Aaron's tragic episode knew that a great injustice was being perpetrated, but that it could not realistically be undone until after the damage had happened. Ms. Ortiz and Mr. Heymann should be held accountable for their decision to…
If a great injustice really was being committed, the EFF and the ACLU would have fallen over themselves to represent Aaron pro bnono (for free). The fact they did not suggests otherwise.
if (respectedOrganization(lawyer.getOrganization())) {
return INNOCENT;
} else {
return GUILTY;
}Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIT has a sad history with regards to suicide. As a result, the administration is usually much more sensitive and self-aware when it comes to suicide-related incidents.
You're not exaggerating: http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/ Not just the number of suicides, but also the contexts (Elizabeth Shin's story is particularly chilling - that one stuck with me because I used to live with her former roommate's brother).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a fine display of histrionics; but, the specifics of this case DO merit removing Ms. Ortiz and her assistant Mr. Heymann from office. Those of us who were following the case before Aaron's tragic episode knew that a great injustice was being perpetrated, but that it could not realistically be undone until after the damage had happened. Ms. Ortiz and Mr. Heymann should be held accountable for their decision to…
If a great injustice really was being committed, the EFF and the ACLU would have fallen over themselves to represent Aaron pro bnono (for free). The fact they did not suggests otherwise.
Do you realize that Aarons case had yet to go to trial? And that there is a good chance the EFF would have stepped in if it had? And that even if they didn't that would have said nothing about Aarons guilt or lack thereof?
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MIT is a lot more similar to NASA than to the banking sector or the federal government.
I'm speaking to the assumption that promoting an agreeable person will necessarily have a favorable outcome. There's a huge presumption that Abelson's role in this precludes unfairness.
I have independent access to most of the relevant information (but haven't looked, since it would make it harder to speak publicly without potentially disclosing sensitive information), so it'll be easy to tell if the report is fake. And I suspect there are a lot of people at MIT who have access to information, and would be more than likely to call it out. And Abelson is a particularly ethically-conscious individual, so the only way I'd really be concerned is if he resigns the position partway through.
If there's a report, it will be pretty clear if it's comprehensive. MIT may or may not act based on the report, but it will at least be obvious.
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> Surely he did have an option to "get off without pleading guilty" - to be found not guilty by a jury of his peers. 1. That would have bankrupted him anyway. 2. He was guilty, as far as the law book is concerned.
I'm not sure but weren't all the charges he was accused of require mens rea?
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You're asking readers to grant you an awful lot of your assumptions. For example: "committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness." Neither you nor I know that. Suicide is often precipitated by stressful incidents. Is the mental illness the direct cause? What if the stress is the direct cause and the mental illness simply prevents the depressed person from handling it, much as AIDS damaging the immune sys…
> What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly IF he did what is alleged, it is pretty hard to see how it could not be knowingly. He had access to JSTOR as part of his work at Harvard. If he didn't know what he was doing was violati…
Underlying Leap; People only obfuscate their identity whilst doing malicious activity.
Contextual Leap 1; Aaron was aware that what he was doing was a federal crime.
Contextual Leap 2; He hatched a plan to perform that activity in context of knowing that his actions were a criminal activity
Leap 1 is decidedly false as people obfuscate their identity for all sorts of reasons including anonymity. What if Aaron was simply trying to be anonymous?
Leap 2 and leap 3 follow on the basis of what was going on inside his mind, and that is something we are not aware of, so let's not comment.
That said, here's my counter to your assertions, if indeed Aaron was as brilliant as his track record suggests, then do you not think he would have hatched a better way to obfuscate his identity if he knew it would cost him his entire fortune and deprive him of his freedom? Do you not think that he would have come up with an alternate, more anonymous plan such as accessing JSTOR at another library under a fake ID? Or have the common sense to pay some homeless guy $100 to put the laptop in their instead of doing it himself?
Of course this assumes that intelligence in one specific field translates to better planning capabilities in other, that he had the will and the ability to do so. However it can be demonstrated, given his track record, this is not an unreasonable assumption to make and that he was indeed capable of such planning if he assigned importance to it.
First, he didn't create the RSS single-handledly for us. He was part of a committee of about a dozen people that took over RSS from Netscape when they didn't support it anymore. Admittedly that's impressive for a 14 year old to be involved in but the media narrative seems to be "we owe RSS to this guy".
Secondly in the Reddit case he wasn't actually a founder, although the articles insist he might as well have been one. Actually meaning another team was working on the Reddit project, and he was working on something different and they merged early on before Reddit was really popular. Which made him rich when the company was later sold. So we don't really owe Reddit to this guy either, which you might count in his favor, i guess..
Also he dropped out of high-school. Then he got accepted into university because he was so bright and dropped out again after one year because they weren't intellectual enough for him. Then he was made a Hardvard fellow until he hacked a computer network. Yeah.
And now let's look at his latest stunt that landed him in legal trouble. From what i read about it, it went something like this. He used his laptop and the public Wifi + a spider to download academic documents in bulk in defiance of the ToS and brought the network to a halt. They detected him, banned his MAC address and didn't pursue it any further. He tried again after changing his MAC, and this time they cut him off for good. There was no question at this point that his access was unauthorized and he was well aware of it. So what does he do ? He sneaks into the building and connects his laptop physically to a network router, and then tries to retrieve it the next day dressed like some kind of Batman and he gets arrested.
Anybody else who tried this kind of utterly incompetent intrusion thrice detected would've been prosecuted as a felon. It was only because this guy had academic and tech industry protectors who backed their precious manbaby that JSTOR and MIT were reluctant to pursue the issue themselves.
Obviously i don't think he deserved 50 years for this but that's because i don't think any crime but murder deserves 50 years. But he certainly deserved more than a slap on the wrist even if your only concern is deterrence and rehabilitation.
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Yes, and if you looked carefully you'll notice that he didn't actually do anything until he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted , without the option to get off without pleading guilty. And all that for trying to do something good. You describe yourself as a 'public interest lawyer'. I suggest you try to live up to that title and have the public interest at heart. The subject of your littl…
So from what I've read, he had the option to plead guilty to some charges and I'm sure spend very little time in jail, but he didn't want to plead guilty at all. He had options.