U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#261

Post by mpyne » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:21 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #250

mpyne wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the flipside of the normal rule of law, where it only gets directed at the poor. Now you're saying it's OK to mug someone, as long as they're rich and wouldn't have really needed the money anyways.

What a ridiculous thing to say. I never said it was ok to mug someone because they're rich. (1) this is an organization, not a person (2) they're not being 'mugged' (see below), it's us that are being mugged every time we want to read about some piece of research (3) whether or not they 'need money' isn't a factor (4) use of the word 'mugging' implies violence, which was not applicable here The law has long recognize…

> There is no innate right to wall off a chunk of human heritage and claim ownership, even though lobbying power and money have distorted the balance of power substantially.

That I agree with, along with our problems with the public domain and copyright reform. I just don't like the reasoning couched in language about how much benefit a particular party has obtained.

E.g. we might decide that copyright period of, say, a year is hurtful and should be extended because overall (or on average) not enough benefit is obtained overall for those with copyright protection, causing an overall hurtful effect to society. But we wouldn't base that decision just on party A or B.

I understand you may simply have been using a specific example to speak for the general principle though, and if that's the case I apologize for jumping on your argument like that.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#262

Post by mildavw » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:25 PM UTC

"six months in a low security setting."

That one word, "setting," puts her squarely in bullshitter territory. The obvious and honest word is "prison". But that's too dark a color for the painting she's holding up for us.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#263

Post by ataggart » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:26 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #192

scott_s wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosecutors routinely use their own discretion in both deciding what to prosecute, and how severe of a sentence they will pursue. To say "Hey, the law is the law, I'm just doing my job by enforcing it" denies this reality, and serves to remove her own agency from her actions.

Six months in a minimum security jail seems perfectly reasonable to me for repeatedly breaking the law and in no way some sort of "overreach" or "witch hunt". Her job was to find a settlement acceptable to both parties.

I not clear on how incarceration is reasonable punishment for someone convicted of a non-violent crime and who is not a physical danger to anyone.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#264

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:33 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #261

jacquesm wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a ridiculous thing to say. I never said it was ok to mug someone because they're rich. (1) this is an organization, not a person (2) they're not being 'mugged' (see below), it's us that are being mugged every time we want to read about some piece of research (3) whether or not they 'need money' isn't a factor (4) use of the word 'mugging' implies violence, which was not applicable here The law has long recognize…

> There is no innate right to wall off a chunk of human heritage and claim ownership, even though lobbying power and money have distorted the balance of power substantially. That I agree with, along with our problems with the public domain and copyright reform. I just don't like the reasoning couched in language about how much benefit a particular party has obtained. E.g. we might decide that copyright period of, say…

There was a mix-up between academia and the publishers, with academia's financial issues used to bolster the case against sharing this data. But in actual fact the academic institutions pay the publishers and those publishers are very wealthy.

On another note, why is there only one 'kind' of copyright? Why do the same rules that apply to work written for profit apply to work written for scientific edification? Some differentiation there would go a long way towards solving these problems.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#265

Post by javajosh » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:34 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #198

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #15

Prosecutors (and lawyers in general) are all about drama and story. Everything is amplified. Reality is distorted. It's worse than cable television. Ortiz framed a brilliant, selfless young man as a criminal who should be locked up behind bars. She and others inflicted mental torture on him until he couldn't bear to live any longer. She is no doubt a wordsmith, but she is not a nice person, no matter what the gullibl…

> She and others inflicted mental torture on him until he couldn't bear to live any longer. That is an idiotic thing to say, and it only raises doubt about all of your other statements. Aaron was chronically depressed for years. People who are chronically depressed tend to kill themselves, or at least try to. Their external circumstances are rarely the cause of their suicide. It's up to you to prove that this lawsuit…

Aaron was indeed unusually vulnerable. This vulnerability does not excuse the prosecutorial overreach which triggered his suicide. This overreach would merely have been devastating and life-altering to a normal person, but for Aaron, it pushed him over the edge.

Consider a hypothetical example. I'm not sure if this ever really happened in the Civil Rights movement (or if it did, that it was reported), but you can imagine that a black man, on the brink of death, was refused care at a "white only" hospital. He dies on the way to the "negro hospital". The public, faced with this stark story, see the deep injustice of it, and clamor for segregation to end and for the resignation of the hospital personnel responsible for the man's death.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#266

Post by mattmaroon » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #219

mattmaroon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but they don't make ones that can be proven via a simple email. They do it when they think there's a very real chance they'll not be caught.

Actually, email was exactly what tripped up Oliver North. Even getting rid of incriminating emails is worse than keeping them for inspection. North and John Poindexter (sp?) exchanged emails, deleted them when they realized they were in hot water and those emails were subsequently recovered.

Well, people treat email a little differently now than in 1986.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#267

Post by kanzure » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 10:29 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #242

Peaker wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or his actions could have spread the wealth of information to many who lack access to it, facilitating further progress. The notion that publicly funded research works are behind paywalls is absurd. In any case, we will never know, because he never got around to actually distributing or doing anything with the downloaded products of public funding.

Are you sure that every article behind the JSTOR paywall was 100% publically funded? That's one question I've never heard the answer to. Not to mention, let's say we're talking about stuff funded by the U.S. taxpayers... are you sure they would want those scientific articles to be freely available outside the U.S.? Similar questions apply to things funded by the U.K., France, etc. Who gets to make that choice? In Aar…

> Are you sure that every article behind the JSTOR paywall was 100% publically funded?

No, but we also don't know if his 'keepgrabbing' script was checking whether or not an article was in the public domain. This metadata is somewhat present on the JSTOR pages so it's conceivable that he might have been checking.... or not.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#268

Post by cristoperb » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 10:32 PM UTC

corporalagumbo wrote: post #79

colin_jack wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Aaron had distributed them he might have damaged around a thousand different institutions involved in an important segment of the knowledge and innovation industry" I know there is his manifesto from a couple of years ago but we can't be sure what he was going to do with them.

Do you have a link to that?

Here it is on archive.org in several different formats:

http://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#269

Post by jamesaguilar » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 10:34 PM UTC

VSerge wrote: post #220

ChuckMcM wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with your analysis, however you will find that lawyers disagree on the threat assessment. A prosecuting lawyer always says "these are the charges [specific charges] which carry a maximum sentence of [worst possible sentence]" and rarely (and never that I can find for first time convictions) are those maximums given. The implication in the press, and denied now by Orbitz, is that she told Aaron's law…

Empty words from Carmen Ortiz, and quite Orwellian indeed. Adding 9 felony counts just about proves that the prosecutors were NOT measured in their approach. Whatever MIT's responsibility, it doesn't diminish how wrong the behavior of Ortiz et al was.

Erm, I can see a reasonable case for adding charges, even if you don't intend to ask for the maximum. You can only charge a defendant once for any given crime. You can't bring charges under different theories of guilt if your first attempt fails. So, no matter what sentence you are going for, you want to charge the defendant with all the crimes they could be guilty of. Otherwise, if they evade the largest charge, there is no way to ever punish them at all, even if you could have proven the lesser charges.

Re: U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz Issues Statement on Aaron Swartz Case

#270

Post by jamesaguilar » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 10:38 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #243

FireBeyond wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And here is Ortiz in her own press release telling the entire world the DOJ is threatening Swartz with a maximum penalty of 35 years and $1M in fines: http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... . AARON SWARTZ, 24, was charged in an indictment with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on…

> It doesn't say anything about "prosecutors are seeking..." Wrong. It's up to the prosecutor which charges are filed, which are dropped, which are pursued in court. If they are taking those charges to trial, and they were in this case, it means they are seeking those penalties. Now, they may ask the judge for a lesser sentence ... everyone wants to appear merciful after you beat the guy down, but they most certainly…

> If they are taking those charges to trial, and they were in this case, it means they are seeking those penalties.

I don't think this is true. I think they just want to make sure they can convict him if they can prove lesser charges but can't prove the main charge.