The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion • Hacker News Board

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#111

Post by gavinlynch » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:25 PM UTC

"I think this is really one of the core reasons so many hackers disagree with this lawyer mindset. A hacker or an entrepreneur is someone who breaks rules to create something. Innovation and consensus are antonyms, not synonyms. Innovation does not happen by committee."

Honest question, curious about response: I get your general point about "breaking rules", but do you think it needs to be taken literally to the point of breaking laws? Is that an imperative call to action for all modern hackers? And furthermore, would you recommend Aaron take this action again, if given the choice? Would you recommend we all take similar actions?

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#112

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:27 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #110

rayiner wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the present time, yes, there's a high correlation. But 15,000 years ago, there were no laws, yet humans still engaged in mutual cooperation. Depending on how you look at it, either "law" exists even in primate tribes, or what they do can't be considered "mutual cooperation." That is to say you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you…

you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you have to concede that a tribe working in such conditions is not really engaging in mutual cooperation. I don't think "dominant male" is a valid description of the organization of all pre-civilized human tribes. I agree that the incentive for mutual cooperation is not the only incentive in play;…

> If the interaction is non-iterated, yes. In an iterated interaction you can't--or rather, you can but the other person will just retaliate by ceasing to cooperate...

You're assuming things about the nature of the equilibrium that I don't think you can assume.

There is I think an illuminating but relatively unexplored set of parallels between human social dynamics and algorithms. There is a lot of social theory that is predicated on assumptions that can be likened to the assumption that a given optimization problem has greedy solution. Convergence versus divergence, the existence of polynomial time algorithms to solve particular problems, etc, I think all have a lot of potential to illuminate social theory.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#113

Post by travisp » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #108

travisp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>More than 50% of voters voted for Democrats in Congress (even when you discard seats where there was only one party on the ballot, still over 50% voted that way), and a large majority in polls want Congress to become less partisan. The problem with your argument is that people voted based on how the election system is currently setup. If the system were setup differently, then people might have voted differently. It…

According to polls, people who don't vote are overwhelmingly Democratic. So if you count people who didn't vote, the election becomes even less representative.

Quite possibly true. However, I'm not talking about everyone who didn't vote, I'm talking about people who would vote if the system were different or if the outcome of the election in their area were more likely to be different.

This can roughly be seen by the difference in voter participation in swing states vs non swing states, not everyone who doesn't vote at all. (I'm assuming the people who don't vote in swing states wouldn't vote under a popular vote or different election system).

There's also the fact that get out the vote campaigns and campaign advertising would be conducted differently under different election systems. Under the current system, neither presidential campaign advertised much in Vermont or Oklahoma, but under a different system they might have, and the actual percentages coming out of those states might have been different.

All I'm really trying to say is that it's difficult to look at the results of one election system and easily predict what the results would be under a different system. The results under our current system may still be generally representative of what we'd get.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#114

Post by ep103 » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:31 PM UTC

gavinlynch wrote: post #111

"I think this is really one of the core reasons so many hackers disagree with this lawyer mindset. A hacker or an entrepreneur is someone who breaks rules to create something. Innovation and consensus are antonyms, not synonyms. Innovation does not happen by committee." Honest question, curious about response: I get your general point about "breaking rules", but do you think it needs to be taken literally to the poin…

Yes to all of the above questions. As to the specific one about breaking rules vs laws, a moral or patriotic individual has a civic duty, in a democratic society, to disregard or oppose rules and laws which they believe to be immoral or wrong. Hackers, of all people, should know this.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#115

Post by mindslight » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #91

jacquesm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody that engages in civil disobedience does 'the minimum', sometimes civil disobedience at the minimum level will be ignored and ineffective. The Rosa Parks story is interesting because she did something that was clearly good in the eyes of many but against the law anyway and that was 'bad' in the eyes of only a slight majority at the time. That same thing can be said of Aaron Swartz, there are many people…

" Unlike with Al Capone, we're not talking about flooding the streets with an intoxicating liquid, we're talking about to something that should be a basic human right here: the right to educate yourself through accessing our communal pool of knowledge. " You just made a value judgment there, morally evaluating one form of lawbreaking over another, structurally similar, one. The point of democracy is to have such deba…

> (given that the activity has already been put in the domain of law versus free markets).

However, it is important to realize that in the case of computer networks, "the law" hasn't done the requisite work to analyze the domain and create appropriately scoped proscriptions. Instead, it has taken the expedient way of making everything illegal unless explicitly allowed (with possible three decade sentence), and then letting a small autocracy (prosecutor/court) decide individuals' fates.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#116

Post by pdonis » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:53 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #112

pdonis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can either consider the will of the dominant male and the acquiescence of the other primates to be a form of law, or you have to concede that a tribe working in such conditions is not really engaging in mutual cooperation. I don't think "dominant male" is a valid description of the organization of all pre-civilized human tribes. I agree that the incentive for mutual cooperation is not the only incentive in play;…

> If the interaction is non-iterated, yes. In an iterated interaction you can't--or rather, you can but the other person will just retaliate by ceasing to cooperate... You're assuming things about the nature of the equilibrium that I don't think you can assume. There is I think an illuminating but relatively unexplored set of parallels between human social dynamics and algorithms. There is a lot of social theory that…

You're assuming things about the nature of the equilibrium that I don't think you can assume.

I'm assuming that the "payoff matrix" for the two-person interaction has the same general form as the Prisoner's Dilemma matrix does, yes, which means that the Nash equilibrium, which is mutual defection, is also the outcome with the lowest aggregate payoff summed over both players. Is that what you're referring to? If so, I agree that this is an assumption, but I don't think it's a very extravagant one.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#117

Post by btilly » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:23 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #106

btilly wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not miss that. The #3 that you discuss follows as a logical consequence of #1 and #2 if #2 exceeds #1. Which it did in this case. But the statement that #1 should be the principle under which Aaron should be sentenced does NOT logically imply that it is in all cases that right applicable principle.

Huh? Either I'm missing something or your logic is in error. To briefly restate: let P = the amount of punishment imposed; let D = the minimum amount of punishment sufficient to deter; let R = the "reasonable limit" on the amount of punishment. #1 says: not P > D. #2 says: P #3 says: P >= D. There are no logical implications between any pair of the above. #1 and #3 combined force P = D. But that is incompatible with…

#1 actually is The only point of punishing Aaron is to deter him which means both that there is no point in punishing Aaron beyond the level of deterrence, and that as long as increased punishment increases deterrence, there is a point in increasing punishment.

The point being that deterrence is not a binary yes/no. Even if tossing Aaron in jail will not stop him, tossing him in jail for 6 years delays his next offense more than tossing him in jail for 5 years, so that would be an argument for increased punishment.

Therefore #1 as I meant it is both an argument for an absolute upper limit on punishment, AND an argument for as much punishment as possible as long as you are within that limit. Therefore if #2 limits punishment below the absolute maximum from #1, you can still satisfy all of the principles at once.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#118

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #116

rayiner wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the interaction is non-iterated, yes. In an iterated interaction you can't--or rather, you can but the other person will just retaliate by ceasing to cooperate... You're assuming things about the nature of the equilibrium that I don't think you can assume. There is I think an illuminating but relatively unexplored set of parallels between human social dynamics and algorithms. There is a lot of social theory that…

You're assuming things about the nature of the equilibrium that I don't think you can assume. I'm assuming that the "payoff matrix" for the two-person interaction has the same general form as the Prisoner's Dilemma matrix does, yes, which means that the Nash equilibrium, which is mutual defection, is also the outcome with the lowest aggregate payoff summed over both players. Is that what you're referring to? If so, I…

You're extrapolating from the payoff matrix for a two-person interaction to the equilibrium behavior of millions of people. You're also assuming rational actors, etc. You're making a mountain of assumptions here.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#119

Post by vph » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

temphn wrote: post #9

Swartz had something else in mind it seems; just taking the law into his own hands I think this is really one of the core reasons so many hackers disagree with this lawyer mindset. A hacker or an entrepreneur is someone who breaks rules to create something. Innovation and consensus are antonyms, not synonyms. Innovation does not happen by committee. If you wait for a "democratic process" that is bought and rigged by…

You are sounding as though in order to be creative one must break the laws.

Re: The Criminal Charges Against Aaron Swartz – Part 2: Prosecutorial Discretion

#120

Post by vph » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #62

I love this George Bernard Shaw quote: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Orin Kerr strikes me as a very reasonable man. There are lots of reasonable men. They're all going to stand around and argue about how many legal angels can dance on how many pins. Meanwhile, unreasonable…

The quote has lots of zing to it, but it ain't true.

What it says essentially is that progress is an outcome of revolution. While revolution leads to big changes, progress is a product of evolution. And evolution has to be done in "reasonable" ways by "reasonable" man.

To say that "all progress depends on the unreasonable man" is wrong.