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1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

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Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#81

Post by danso »

wavesounds wrote: post #79
danso wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wall Street Protests failed, because among other things, they had too many vague, overarching goals with no end plan. And so now with Swartz's death, people have a human face to put on the failures of our justice system...and you want to berate them for not being strategic enough?

OWS was an overwhelming success, it got the country talking and many of their ideas were implemented, like increasing taxes on the top 1%. Aarons death can also be a catalyst for change and I think a cause OWS would be interested in supporting as well.

Really? Taxes on the rich were just a small part of their many, many ideals. In terms of creating real political force, the Tea Party has done far far more.

I'm not saying OWS was useless...I agree with you that the amount of conversation and awareness they raised was far more than I would've suspected walking by their Zucotti Park encampment everyday...they had a decent amount of success despite their wide diversity of goals, and that's admirable. But to the parent commenter's point, their unfocused aims limit their success. The Tea Party, in contrast, is an actual force in Congress.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#82

Post by pekk »

danso wrote: post #81
wavesounds wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OWS was an overwhelming success, it got the country talking and many of their ideas were implemented, like increasing taxes on the top 1%. Aarons death can also be a catalyst for change and I think a cause OWS would be interested in supporting as well.

Really? Taxes on the rich were just a small part of their many, many ideals. In terms of creating real political force, the Tea Party has done far far more. I'm not saying OWS was useless...I agree with you that the amount of conversation and awareness they raised was far more than I would've suspected walking by their Zucotti Park encampment everyday...they had a decent amount of success despite their wide diversity…

Lots of political movements have created real political force, but there are many historical examples of real political forces which were not constructive.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#83

Post by moultano »

jahewson wrote: post #42
robomartin wrote: post #39

I've been taking all of this in trying to both formulate a reasonably valid mental framework to understand and, yes, be able to personally judge or form an opinion about this entire story. Not an easy task when you don't have direct knowledge of the facts and the people involved and, to make matters worst, morons add noise to the wire. To say that this is a catastrophe at many levels is an understatement. This should…

JSTOR don't own any content, they just make content available online as a service. Subscribers pay a fee which covers costs and pays for the licenses from the publishers. The whole operation is non-profit. It's meaningless to talk about buying JSTOR in order to own their content.

Yeah I didn't realize that initially either. JSTOR are actually the "good guys" in terms of releasing content to the public compared with the journals that they aggregate. You can argue that they should be pushing journals to let them open up even more, but at the moment a world with JSTOR is better than one without.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#84

Post by lostlogin »

benevpayor wrote: post #76
lostlogin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point. What is essentially a two party system doesn't really allow smaller groups to participate in high level political discourse.

SOPA much?

As a non-American I only have a passing understanding of SOPA - although I do know that it's scope would affect me here in New Zealand.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#85

Post by Zak »

rohern wrote: post #54
robomartin wrote: post #39

I've been taking all of this in trying to both formulate a reasonably valid mental framework to understand and, yes, be able to personally judge or form an opinion about this entire story. Not an easy task when you don't have direct knowledge of the facts and the people involved and, to make matters worst, morons add noise to the wire. To say that this is a catastrophe at many levels is an understatement. This should…

> If it is true that MIT initiated this and they, along with JSTOR, could have made tons of noise to pull back the DOJ, they really need to engage in deep introspection in order to make sure this never happens again. A person suspected of breaking federal law will be prosecuted by the Federal government at its own discretion. The alleged victims get no say in that. Their forgiveness may be taken into account by a jud…

A prosecutor's duty and role is to seek justice[0]. Justice isn't always black and white, but it certainly isn't applying the toughest charges that could possibly be made to stick nor seeking the highest possible penalty in every case. The prosecutor should attempt to determine what a just outcome to a case would be, then seek to achieve it.

Being aware of a situation where it is probable to win a conviction under the letter of the law in no way obligates a prosecutor to seek that conviction.

[0] http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_sec...

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#86

Post by ntumlin »

popee wrote: post #59
alan_cx wrote: post #45

Just for Aaron? Oh man, what about every one else? US law is insane, hurting too many people to list. Mostly, Americans, but also world citizens who don't even get to vote in the US. You need to deal with law its self, not this one single individual. Not just the law, but I suspect your entire value system. I had sympathy yesterday, but this is turning in to hero martyr worship. Its getting ridiculous. Step back and…

Guys, you in US really need new kind of anti-establisment movement, because you are fighting against Goliat here. MIT and others ARE part of establishment and if establishment decide to take control over internet, they will do it. Wait, they ARE DOING it right now and as you can see people are getting killed just because someone said "i want you to click and pay". Damn, if someone said to me few decades ago that inte…

To be fair, people aren't being killed, one guy in particular killed himself. While a tragedy, don't turn it into something it isn't.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#87

Post by icelancer »

benevpayor wrote: post #76
lostlogin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point. What is essentially a two party system doesn't really allow smaller groups to participate in high level political discourse.

SOPA much?

Only stopped due to Wikipedia, Google, and other large corporations throwing their weight behind it for self-interested reasons.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#88

Post by berlinbrown »

nerdfiles wrote: post #9

I don't understand. I've downloaded articles from JSTOR, Project Muse, books on top of books, and am publicly re-hosting them through my own Dropbox, which I publicly link to on my own Website. Maybe I'm missing something here. Was he made an example? Is this the fundamental nature of the protest and the outrage, that we perceive that he was made an example of, that we are aware, and that it is unfair, in some essent…

He downloaded 4 million articles and physically hard-wired his machine on the network.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#89

Post by benevpayor »

lostlogin wrote: post #84
benevpayor wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SOPA much?

As a non-American I only have a passing understanding of SOPA - although I do know that it's scope would affect me here in New Zealand.

SOPA is an example of a law with bi-partisan support that was blocked after technologists outside of the two-party system rallied to block it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#90

Post by lostlogin »

benevpayor wrote: post #89
lostlogin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-American I only have a passing understanding of SOPA - although I do know that it's scope would affect me here in New Zealand.

SOPA is an example of a law with bi-partisan support that was blocked after technologists outside of the two-party system rallied to block it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

Ah, your comment was refuting my statement (US has a 2 party system that excludes views of small groups). Thanks, great example.
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